The art of a basic salad

Salads help us balance our eating as we can get plenty of vegetable serves from a basic salad, and they are quick and easy to make.

We eat a lot of salad, so it’s important to me that I make it interesting and enjoyable for my family. I love lettuce (not everyone’s preference I know!), and nearly all of our salads feature lettuce. I usually used a mixture of leaves, rocket or baby spinach leaves. I make my own vinaigrette, and more often than not include nuts or seeds in my salads.

The Basics

For a basic salad, I use some mixed leaves. I tear them up to make it easier for the kids to eat. Then I toast some nuts or seeds. You can use whatever you like. Combinations that are popular in my house are pistachio and sunflower kernels, pine nuts and sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds, and almonds and sesame seeds. I have a small square frypan about 10cm x 10cm. I put that on the heat, add a handful of nuts or seeds, and lightly toast them.  This takes about 1 to 2 minutes. I take it off the heat and let it cool down for 5 minutes.

The Dressing

Next I make the vinaigrette which serves as the salad dressing. I like a very strong taste of vinegar in mine, so I usually do equal parts of oil to vinegar. Most chefs recommend more oil than vinegar, but I guess if you keep practicing you’ll soon work out what you like! For a side salad for 2 adults and 2 children I use about 1 tablespoon of olive oil and 1 tablespoon of vinegar, and a small pinch of pepper. I have lots of flavoured vinegar, and I recommend you give them a go. Champagne vinegar and red wine vinegar are my current favourites.

To Serve

When I’m ready to serve dinner, I’ll pour the vinaigrette over the salad leaves, and use my hands to toss the leaves to make sure some dressing is on each leaf. I put a bit on each plate, wash my hands and then put some of the nuts or seeds over the top. I sometimes have extra seeds or nuts, so I store them for use on another day.

Simple, healthy, and delicious! I’ll be posting some more salad ideas and also some different vinaigrette dressings later, so stay tuned!