salads

[monkey]

I love salad bars. they're always so yummy, but I can never recreate them at home!

I really want to improve my diet & think nice salads would be a good idea, but everything I make is 1. the same 2. gross.

How do you make salads like you get in the salad bars??? Anyone know the secret?

Monkey, I don't have time right now but will post later. I think a lot of the 'yumminess' in salads is in the dressing. Love salads and have tried lots of recommended ones from books etc. Will mail later with some of my favourites!!!

My favourite salads are:

Cous cous - buy a jar of Sainsburys cous cous sauce, cost approx £1.50 and a pack of cous cous. Follow instructions on packet i.e. stir sauce and 4 tbsp cold water into 75g of couscous. Chill for 30mins. Several flavours available.

Tomato and mozzerella. Slice tomatoes. Lay on plate. Slice mozz. Lay on top. Drizzle with olive oil.

Greek. Dice cucumber, tomato (or halve/quarter baby plum toms), red onion. Open jar of marinated Discovery feta cheese. Drain. Mix into salad ingredients.

HTH!

BTW, if you have an Asda nearby and are catering for a party, you can buy their salad bar stuff in bulk.

I make tomato and Mozzarella salad too but also add fresh basil and sometimes make it with goats cheese if I want a stronger taste. Mozzarella can be a bit bland for me. Second the cous cous idea but I make it with vegetable stock instead of water and add roasted vegetables or left over veg and plenty of black pepper. Another nice Nigella salad: fry up some very small pieces of bacon (I do about 3 rashers per salad) until they're going crispy and drain them on paper towel. Add to a bowl of rocket or other green salad and squeeze lemon juice over (her recipe tells you to fry salmon steaks in the bacon fat left in the pan). Someone posted a good potato salad recipe here a while back, I think it was on the "what are you cooking for dinner tonight" thread. I'm not that keen on salads but find that a good salad dressing makes a huge difference to how much I can manage.

I agree completely that a good dressing makes all the difference. This can be really difficult if (like me) you are dieting (or trying to!). Two tips 1. mix the oil free dressings with balsamic vinegar - much better taste and 2. i love the pizza express dressing you can buy in bottles but it is so thick that you can use tons, so i pour half out into a spare bottle and fill it with white whine vinegar. It goes much further for half the calories, but same taste.

Monkey, here are the salads I make most often and although they do taste scrummy, they probably have more calories than fish and chips so not sure how healthy they are

Tart up a bag of supermarket salad by adding a couple (or 6!!!) rashers of grilled bacon, broken into bits, some home made croutons and a couple of eggs, hard boiled for 7 minutes then quatered into the salad. Serve with parmesan shavings.

I dress this with either French dressing - 1 clove chopped garlic, desertsp. Dijon mustard, 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil and 2 tbsp white wine vinegar, salt and pepper or ...
Balsamic dressing - 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar, 4 tbsp ex virgin olive oil, chopped clove garlic, 1 tsp mustard, salt and pepper

Delia's pitta bread salad is yummy and filling:
mix 2 large skinned and chopped tomatoes with 10cms of cucumber chopped into chunks, 4 chopped spring onions, 1 small chopped red onion, 1 chopped pepper, 6 tbsp chopped parsley and 2 tbsp chopped mint. Toast two pitta bread and cut into stamp sized pieces and scatter into the salad. Dress with lemon dressing - 150 mls virgin oil, zest of 1 lemon, 4 tbsp lemon juice and salt and pepper.

Caesar salad (I sometimes vary it by adding chicken and/or avocado) : 1 small cos lettuce and another shop bag of crispy lettuce with rocket, 50 gm tin anchovies with oil saved for dressing, croutons. 1st make dressing in blender (easiest). Crack lg egg into blender and add 1 garlic clove, juice of 1 lime, tsp dijon mustard, dash Worcester sauce and 2 anchovy filets. Switch on blender until everything is smooth then with motor still running, slowly pour in olive oil and anchovy oil. The sauce will thicken and be like double cream. Taste, season then add salad to bowl and mix with dressing, croutons, rest of anchovies snipped and 40 g finely grated parmesan.

I have started to make this one quite a lot from one of the Jamie Oliver books and it is really tasty: marinated mozzarella in creme fraiche
Dead easy (for 2 people), slice 2 balls buffalo mozz. and smear over 3 big tbsp creme fraiche, the grated zest of half lemon and a squeeze of the juice. pour over 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, salt pepper and some thin strips of fresh chilli for a bit of a kick. He suggests this also on bruschetta which is really yummy and moreish.

Good luck! Have just 'phoned DH to pick up bag of salad on way home from work as am feeling inspired and hungry now!!

My fave salad is full of calories but divine.

I use rocket and usually something like cos lettuce. Add sliced baby tomatoes, cucumber, ripe avocado, chopped spring onions and red peppers. Fry up some lardons and chuck them in and while they are still warm finely grate a vast quantity of strong Gouda (Old Amsterdam is the best, from Waitrose)I grate it with a mouli so it's very fine and then stir in quickly so it melts all over the lardons yummmmmmm.

Then bung a load of olive oil and balsamic vinegar in, stir frantically and scoff immediately with lots of very buttery french bread.

God I'm a pig!

Umm - I admit to being thick but err what are lardons?

Umm - I admit to being thick but err what are lardons?

Aha! Wills, I couldn't stand not knowing what lardons were, so I did a google search and found that they are 1cm cubes of bacon! Yum, I love bacon.

oh wow - sold! off to get salad

you can get packets of lardons in sainsburys for 1.99 - they are also fab chucked in with saute potatoes or with pasta or in omelettes - in fact you can use em just about anywhere.

Except cakes.

you can also get bottles of pizza express salad dressing in sainsburys and it is divine!

my mum makes the most gorgeous salad i've ever tasted - you get some pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds and sunflower seeds, then sizzle them in a little olive oil and shoyu (like soy sauce) until they're all crunchy and coated. The grate carrots and raw beetroot (not the vinegar soaked cooked variety), but grate them separately or the carrot will go pink. Dress the grated stuff with a bit of lemon juice. Then sprinkle the seeds liberally over the grated stuff and consume with extreme relish.

Trust me, it's fabulous and very healthy too!

Definitely agree with oxocube the yumminess of salad is in the dressing.
My sister makes the most fabulous salads which she brings to family parties. They are invariably full of oil or nuts or cheese or a combination of all three.
Apparently fat acts as a solvent for the flavours in food. I read it in the Readers Digest so it must be true