Main Dish Salads

This time of the year, when lots of salad greens are coming in my CSA share box, and I don’t want to turn on the oven, I love to have a refreshing and satisfying salad for dinner. This is not a new idea; salmagundi was the colonial name for what we call a chef salad today. The French have the salade nicoise. And in Thailand, they enjoy a spicy beef salad called laab. Here is a simple formula for assembling main dish salads when it’s too hot to cook.

A few tips for success:
1. Use fruits and vegetables that are seasonally available.
2. Plan ahead to save leftover cooked meat, chicken, lentils, and beans so they are ready when you want to assemble this salad for dinner.
3. Keep certain ingredients on hand in the freezer (frozen peas and edamame) and cupboard (tuna, beans, artichoke hearts, sun dried tomatoes, and olives)
4. Use a theme to decide what to use in each layer. For example, if you have leftover leg of lamb, follow a Greek theme including spinach, olives, and feta cheese. What about a BLT salad with low fat blue cheese dressing and rye croutons?
5. Assemble the salad in a wide shallow serving bowl or on individual plates.


Layer 1: Lettuce base
Wash, dry, and tear into small pieces, whatever kind of lettuce you have (a mixture of colors and textures is ideal), including baby spinach, tender beet leaves, mint leaves, and other fresh herbs. Plan for about a cup of lettuce per person.

Layer 2: Raw vegetables
Wash, and slice or dice the raw vegetables and scatter uniformly on top of the lettuce. Right now, I would use: sprouts, cucumber, radishes, celery, green onions, snap peas, snow peas or shell peas, strawberries. As they become available, you can also use tomatoes, blueberries, apple slices, fennel, peppers, and zucchini. Here is where you can add defrosted peas and edamame, too.

Layer 3: Cooked vegetables
Blanch, drain, and chill any of the following as they are available in season: asparagus spears, green beans, sliced carrots, quartered beets, quartered red skin potatoes, corn, and broccoli or cauliflower florets.

Instead of scattering this layer, I am more inclined to place each type into a neat pile on top of the previous two layers.

Layer 4: Protein
Try one or two of the following items, arranged in neat piles on top of the previous layers:
• Al dente cooked lentils (Cook 1 cup of lentils in 1-1/2 cups water or broth for 45 minutes until the liquid is absorbed, and the lentils are tender but not mushy.)
• Leftover cooked chicken, ham, beef, or lamb. Cut into strips or cubes.
• Canned tuna or crabmeat
• Canned garbanzo beans or black beans
• Leftover cooked sausage, sliced
• Hard cooked eggs, sliced or quartered

Layer 5: Extras and toppers
Finish your salad with any of these additional items, but be careful to not overdo it with those that are high in fat:
• Blue or feta cheese crumbles, Parmesan shavings, Swiss cheese strips
• Olives, artichoke hearts, pickles
• Pumpkin or sunflower seeds, toasted walnuts or pecans
• Raisins or dried cranberries
• Bacon
• More fresh herbs or edible flowers
• Homemade or store-bought croutons.
• Homemade or store-bought low fat dressing. My favorites from the grocery store are: Ken’s Steak House lite varieties and Marie’s yogurt dressing.


Serve your salad family-style with tongs or on individual plates with bread or rolls on the side.