Summer is the season for salads. Some days it just gets too hot to turn
on the stove. And you never get quite as hungry on those days anyway. A
salad for dinner makes perfect sense. Still I am always challenged to
figure out how to make salad feel like a meal. Especially without
adding fish or grilled meats.
Friday night was one of those
salad nights. I had planned on making a chickpea and spinach dish but
cooking was out of the question. A spinach salad was devised instead.
Fortunately there were several delicious things on hand to make the
salad something special. In this case Stilton cheese, red onions that
were "bloomed" in vinegar, glazed pecans, and Mission figs.
I
think the secret to a salad that feels like a meal is a formula of
three elements. First off it needs some protein. It can come in the
form of grilled chicken or fish or even steak. Or it can come in the
form of cheese or nuts or beans. The second element is layers of
flavors. Just as a good vinaigrette is a balance of oil and vinegar,
for a salad to become a meal it too needs a balance of flavors. In this
case there was the bite of the onion and the blue cheese, balanced by
the sweetness of the figs and the dressing. The last element is
texture. The Stilton provided a bite of flavor and a creamy texture.
The nuts not only added protein and sweetness since they were glazed,
but a crunchy texture as well.
The dressing for this salad was a
vinaigrette of olive oil, blood orange olive oil, and fig balsamic
vinegar. It's helpful to think about the dressing last, after you have
composed all the other pieces. Sometimes you can add that extra flavor
element that a salad is missing with the right dressing. Or it can
highlight a flavor in this case it accentuated the figs. Other times it
may be all about the texture. A good creamy blue cheese dressing is an
example of this, it balances the cool, bland crisp crunch of iceberg so
very well. I hope this salad inspires you to make up one of your own
the next too-hot-to-cook day.
Spinach Fig Salad
4 big handfulls of baby spinach leaves
3 thin slices of red onion (soak briefly in vinegar to remove bitterness)
1/3 cup or so crumbled blue cheese of your choice
1/3 cup or so pecan halves
4-5 figs, cut into quarters
Vinaigrette
2 Tablespoons Olive oil
2 Tablespoons blood orange olive oil (or more plain olive oil)
2 Tablespoons fig balsamic vinegar (or regular balsamic)
salt
pepper
Glaze
the pecans by tossing in a saute pan with a tablespoon of sugar, melt
over low heat and cook stirring until toasted. Let cool. Meanwhile
assemble the other salad ingredients and whisk together the ingredients
for the vinaigrette. Taste the vinaigrette and add salt and pepper to
taste. Toss salad with vinaigrette and pecans.
Amy Sherman is a San Francisco–based writer, recipe developer, restaurant reviewer and all around culinary enthusiast. She blogs for Epicurious , GlamDish , Bay Area Bites and Cooking with Amy .