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When I first opened my restaurant Porsena, I put a simple salad of blanched green beans, fennel, and fried almonds on the menu, inspired by the ingredients I'd raid the kitchen for when making a chopped salad. To this day, it's still one of my great “kitchen sink” salads: What goes into it or how I dress it depends what I find left over from service the night before in the salad station, or what I find in my fridge at home when I don’t feel like shopping or cooking much.
You want to combine some crisp blanched and/or raw vegetables with something briny and bright, like bottarga (salted, cured fish roe), or crunchy like tiny croutons or toasted nuts, and you want an aggressive, full-flavored dressing like this yogurt-based one.
The idea is to have a combination of fresh vegetables that are somewhat similar in flavor and texture. A good way to choose the group is to think about what’s in season at the moment. In the winter, it could be a fine julienne of raw root vegetables like carrots and fennel; in the spring, I like to pair green beans and asparagus or snap peas with some tiny new breakfast radishes; in the middle of summer, I might combine blanched little potatoes and raw zucchini.
The bottarga adds a briny flavor that I love, but you can easily swap that out that with fried croutons or toasted pine nuts, sesame seeds, or sunflower seeds, which will provide a crunchy texture.
On a good day at the restaurant, I can find any number of dressings from aioli to tahini in the salad station, but I'm happiest if we have a yogurt dressing—its bright tangy flavor marries so well with green vegetables and the salty fish flavor of bottarga.
You can make this a meal by adding in some leftover protein, like a little poached or grilled chicken or leftover cooked fish. It’s a salad that should never the same because it's not so much about shopping for the perfect ingredients as it is working with what you have.
This isn’t a shy salad: It should be a combination of many elements—the seasonal vegetables, a powerful dressing, and a crunchy textural accent. For me it’s the perfect way to repurpose leftovers into something new and delicious, and a great way to avoid wasted food.
| 1 | clove garlic |
| 1/4 | cup mint leaves |
| 3/4 | cup thick Greek yogurt or labne |
| Salt | |
| 2 | tablespoons red wine vinegar |
| 3 | tablespoons estate-bottled extra-virgin olive oil |
| 1 | pound green beans, trimmed if you want |
| 2 | small Persian cucumbers |
| 1 | medium fennel bulb |
| 2 | scallions, white and light green parts, sliced on the bias |
| 4 | tablespoons freshly grated bottarga (I only use grey mullet bottarga as I have stopped eating bluefin tuna out of concern for the long term survival of the fish, so that includes bottarga made from tuna) |
| 1 | clove garlic |
| 1/4 | cup mint leaves |
| 3/4 | cup thick Greek yogurt or labne |
| Salt | |
| 2 | tablespoons red wine vinegar |
| 3 | tablespoons estate-bottled extra-virgin olive oil |
| 1 | pound green beans, trimmed if you want |
| 2 | small Persian cucumbers |
| 1 | medium fennel bulb |
| 2 | scallions, white and light green parts, sliced on the bias |
| 4 | tablespoons freshly grated bottarga (I only use grey mullet bottarga as I have stopped eating bluefin tuna out of concern for the long term survival of the fish, so that includes bottarga made from tuna) |
What's your go-to spring salad combination? Share it in the comments below!
This article originally ran on June 2, 2016.
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Written by: Sara Jenkins
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18 Comments
My husband and use our salads for any leftovers we have plus greens. We are vegan but also try to use oils sparingly so in our go-to salad dressing we use dijon like Chef June and we add a whole organic orange with peel and pith plus apple cider vinegar with garlic and maple syrup if necessary. We buy large jars of capers and picholine olives that we add to the salad which go well with the dressing.
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