If, by any chance, you find hard-boiled eggs lying around your kitchen today, you can use them to make a delicious spinach salad.  Coincidentally, this salad tastes amazing with leftover ham.

Spinach Salad with Hard-Boiled Eggs

Ingredients:

• 1 pound baby spinach leaves
• 2 or 3 cups sliced mushrooms
• 3 hard-boiled eggs, grated
• 1/4 red onion, sliced thinly
• 1/4 cup red wine or balsamic vinegar
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/2 to 2/3 cup olive oil
• 3 T dijon mustard
• 3 T honey
• Sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
• 1 tsp dried thyme, crumbled

Directions:

1. Clean the spinach leaves, pat them dry, then chill in the refrigerator.  Toss together the mushrooms, eggs, and onions in a large bowl.  Set aside.
2. Meanwhile, make the dressing.  Mince the garlic finely and soak it in the vinegar for five minutes.
3. Add the honey, mustard, and seasonings to the vinegar, and whisk together.
4. While whisking constantly, add the olive oil to the vinegar mix in a steady stream until you have a smooth emulsion.
5. Gently toss a generous portion of the dressing with the egg, mushrooms, and onions.  Then gently toss in the spinach leaves until they are coated.  Taste to see if you like the amount of dressing, and adjust, if necessary.  If you accidentally added too much dressing for your taste, throw in some extra spinach and toss well.

Serves 8 – 10.

I first made this slaw to go with fish tacos, but glory be, I generally cannot stop eating it, even without the tacos. It’s so refreshing, crunchy, and tart.  It’s the perfect bright and juicy counterpoint to Tex-Mex dishes, such as the chicken enchiladas we had for dinner tonight.   I’ve tried adding other ingredients and spices to this slaw, but we’ve decided it’s gilding the lily to do so.  It’s just right this way, in its role as supporting salad.

Cilantro-Lime Coleslaw

This salad is fine on its own but is a total delight in conjunction with other dishes that are heavy in garlic, cumin, and peppers.

Ingredients:

• 1 small head cabbage
• 1 onion
• juice of two limes
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 bunch cilantro
• 1 tsp sea salt, or to taste

Directions:

1. Slice cabbage in quarters and remove core.  Shred each quarter thinly so that the individual shreds are slender in width but a few inches in length. 
2. Put cabbage in a bowl and mix in all the other ingredients.  Adjust seasonings to taste. 
3. Serve immediately or chill for half an hour before serving.

Feast your eyes on this beauty!  I did not make this lovely and delicious salad.  You can have it yourself at The Tin Table at the Century Ballroom on Capitol Hill.    It’s made with arugula, roasted golden beets, grana padana, and sherry vinaigrette.  To me, a restaurant’s salad is the litmus test for the rest of the menu.   This well-excecuted salad, with its  fluffy shaved cheese and well-balanced vinaigrette, perfectly foreshadows other amazing dishes here.   I had the mahi-mahi tacos on this night as well.  Total bliss.

This is the first of 100 “real” salads to come.   I’ll list the ingredients and any unusual preparation instructions, but this is mostly a documentation of ingredients rather than actual recipes.   It’s meant to amuse and hopefully inspire you.  I hope you’ll sometimes come away from the blog wanting a salad.    I’m very open to your salad ideas and feedback! 

Pizza Sidekick Salad

Pizza makes the best croutons.  Just tear that pizza slice into bite-sized bits and throw it on your greens.  Voila!  You’re eating your greens.  And those greens taste like pizza.  In theory, it makes you eat less pizza.   Depending on your pizza toppings, you don’t even need to do much with the salad itself.  Keep it simple.

Ingredients:

• Fresh leaf lettuce
• Yellow bell pepper, chopped
• Avocado, cubed
• Artichoke hearts, chopped
• Torn up pieces of pizza as croutons (not shown here)
• Dressing: None needed - but oil & vinegar would be great.

This salad was just okay. I actually would like more ingredients than this on a pizza sidekick salad, especially since the pizza was pretty simple already, but it’s what was in my fridge, and it was still pretty refreshing.