Good morning! Today we have for you:
Just a big beautiful chopped salad
I have exactly two modes when it comes to salad: minimalist and maximalist. The former is often bagged or clamshell arugula, maybe thinly sliced iceberg or torn radicchio, dressed with olive oil and vinegar, salt and pepper. That is my simple, minimal side salad, the requisite vegetable element for many a meal. The maximal salad is a meal salad, because anything that requires that much chopping and a dressing that isn’t just “drizzle things on” deserves star status. Lidey Heuck’s beloved taverna salad is a maximalist salad, as are fridge salads, like this French lentil salad. And, of course, we can’t talk maximalist salads without mentioning the chopped salad. Melissa Clark’s chopped salad is a veritable checklist of textures (creamy, crisp, crunchy, juicy) and flavors (sweet, salty, tangy). Her combination of blue cheese, chopped cooked bacon and hard-boiled eggs is pretty classic, but I don’t see why you couldn’t make some swaps based on your preferences and fridge contents. I, for one, will do some chicken breast instead of the bacon (which I suppose puts it in Cobb salad territory) and, as suggested by a reader, add some Dijon mustard to the lemon vinaigrette. And I might toss in some thinly sliced red onion because I like that bite. That’s the nice thing about maximalist salads — more is more. Featured Recipe Chopped SaladAnd some dinners with the side salad built inHot sauce roast chicken with tangy kale salad: This recipe is a wonderful way to 1) feed your guests at a casual dinner gathering, and 2) use up one of those many, many vinegary hot sauces you have in the fridge (or is that just me?). Alexa Weibel, in her adaptation of a recipe from “Amá: A Modern Tex-Mex Kitchen” by Josef Centeno and Betty Hallock, combines that hot sauce with melted butter to create an easy, balanced baste for your chicken; shredded cabbage and kale get a limey vinaigrette to mirror the hot sauce’s bright acidity. Sesame salmon bowls: You don’t even have to assemble the crunchy cabbage salad separately in this one-pot Kay Chun favorite. Instead, just pour your gingery soy vinaigrette over the cucumbers, coleslaw mix and sliced avocado you’ve placed on your assembled rice bowl. Bavette steak with tahini-vegetable salad: One could easily argue that the star of this dish is actually the salad, not the steak, given its wild mix of bright, crunchy things: radishes, cucumbers, sweet turnips and rhubarb. But seared steak is always a treat, and this recipe from Kate Kavanaugh, adapted by Melissa, walks you through how to achieve a perfect medium-rare bavette steak. For a limited time, you can enjoy free access to the recipes in this newsletter in our app. Download it on your iOS or Android device and create a free account to get started.
And before you goAllow me to leave you with Genevieve Ko’s oatmeal pancakes, the pancakes I have made nearly every Saturday morning now for at least three months. (Sometimes I make them on Sunday instead, to shake things up. I know, I’m wild.) I follow her tip and make them with eggs instead of the ground flax, and I use kefir instead of buttermilk because that’s what my corner store carries. Oh, and if you have ghee, use that to cook the pancakes. You won’t be sorry.
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