Tell me your main course salad recipes, please

[ElusiveMoose]

My new year's resolution was to increase my vegetable intake, so to this end we've had some salads for dinner in the last couple of weeks. To my utter astonishment surprise DH has raved on about how nice they were, and demanded more.

Trouble is, all my recipes for salads are a) too 'light' (we're quite hearty eaters, so three prawns and an artfully arranged lettuce leaf won't cut it), b) too fiddly (take 63 different items and griddle them all individually), or c) too expensive (marinated fillet steak served with 17 different Asian leaves).

So, can you give me ideas for main course salads that are filling, relatively straightforward and not crazily expensive? (BTW, our successes so far have been a potato/broccoli/smoked mackerel combo, an American cobb salad with sour cream dressing, and a broccoli, butter bean and feta creation, which sounds grim but was actually really nice.)

CointreauVersial that sounds divine! Am going to try that this weekend.

What is the difference between low carb and low GI. Just don't get it.

Thanks for keeping them coming. Melted brie salad - now you're talking . (I understand that lots of people are on diets, but my aim was only to eat more veg - and have some nice dinners - not to eat fewer calories or less fat.)

After doing South Beach Diet and loosing weight, to maintain weight I no longer eat bread, rice, potatoes or pasta (other than spelt pasta once in a blue moon). And won't eat things that are high in natural sugar like pineapple, beetroot, sweetcorn etc - I literally feel shaky after eating it. So what 'diet' am I following?

So on a low GI diet would CointreauVersial's recipe be allowed or not?

Sorry completely changed the thread but am really interested.

I love these threads. There's also a really good thread here from last year with some more ideas.

Chorizo, Stilton and New Potato salad is lovely.

Boil potatoes until just tender. Halve them lengthways. Fry in olive oil, add chunks of chorizo and fry up potatoes are golden brown and chorizo is cooked.

Pile it on to a plate of mixed leaves, chopped toms, cucumber, celery (and any other salad items you fancy really). Dress with lemon & coriander creme fraiche (half creme fraiche, half olive oil, lemon juice, bit of dijon mustard, s&p and chopped coriander) and crumble stilton on top. Its really yummy.

Yum yum. And thanks for the link, franke. She probably picked a slightly better time of year than me to ask the question .

Thanks Annie!

My current favourites (I take salad to work each day for lunch)

mixed leaves, roasted red pepper (from a jar!), letils and crumbled goats cheese

spinach, crumbled blue cheese, dried cranberries and sunflower seeds

spinach, beetroot and goats cheese

nicoise

pampered chef sweet potato salad is bloody lovely. The salad leaves are rocket (don't know what arugula is?!

Never realised my brie & bacon salad would be so..er...contreauversial.

Mighty confusing all this diet stuff; but I have to say that limiting the carbs and upping the protein has been a revelation. A flat tum for the first time in 20 years.

I don't sit around scoffing steak and swigging cream, though; most of the time I eat what the rest of the family eats, but just without the stodge.

But yes, Annie, I agree, not the "healthiest" of salads.....!

Pasta with broccoli and cashews

Cook pasta shapes of your choice (I like those curly spiral things as they hold the dressing well), then drain, toss in olive oil and set aside.

Heat some olive oil in a pan, then stirfry some peeled and chopped broccoli over a medium heat (I usually try and match the size to the size of the pasta shapes, for easy forkage). When the broccoli is approaching pierceable-with-a-fork tenderness, throw in a diced red onion and cook for one minute more.

Mix the pasta, broccoli and red onion together in a large bowl, then add lots of unsalted cashews that you have toasted under the grill for a few minutes.

Mix together some mayonnaise, white wine vinegar and grain mustard (sorry, can't give exact amounts as I always just do it by taste) till you have a thick, creamy dressing - I quite often use a mixture of low fat Greek yoghurt and mayo if I'm making an attempt to be virtuous. Mix the dressing with the salad and dish up.

It's well nice! The original recipe also used sauteed mushrooms but since they are the devil's food I always leave them out.

Some good ideas on here.

Spinach, mushroom, cheddar/parmesan/blue cheese, tomatoes, avocado, bacon

Roasted winter veg (white/red onions, carrots, parsnips, beetroot, squash) with puy lentils, rocket or watercress, and feta

Salade Nicoise

Chicken Ceasar salad (with homemade dressing - really easy and completely delicious)

Annie - low-carb diets help lower cholesterol. It's well documented and happened to me. You are confusing saturated fats, which occur naturally in food, with trans fats, which are often man-made and are bad for you. Bacon, brie etc are saturated fats not trans fats. There is a TON of research on this - if you are interested try reading any of the Gary Taubes books on the subject.

CointreauVersial - in fact low-carbing is healthy because when you are not eating sugar you are using your own fat stored for energy. This is called ketosis, and it alters the way your body processes fat. Although you eat a lot of saturated fat in the form of brie, bacon etc, which might seem counter-intuitive, it is all naturally-occuring fat and your body effectively eliminates it. Eating fat and carbs isn't healthy; eating fat and protein is.

(Sorry, to clarify - eating fat and protein, while avoiding starchy carbs, is healthy. Last word on the subject, I promise!)