Ever try to stuff a huge piece of lettuce, dripping with salad dressing, into your mouth? It's my salad discomfort zone. My solution is the chopped salad.
I go through salad phases, and my latest one is chopped salads. An easy chopped salad to make is this version of a chef salad, chopped a bit more than usual. That's all. Nothing fancy. Finely chopping makes a big difference because the pieces are bite size, so you can get more variety in one forkful. You can tell I think a lot about the best way to enjoy a salad. I'm a salad lover. And feel free to chop even more so than I have in the picture.
The photos in this post don't show chopped hard-boiled egg or the cherry tomatoes, but I usually add those as well, so I recommend doing so. Also, feel free to substitute anything, but it's good to get a bit of salty olives on top, especially if you're not going to add chopped cured meat.
The dressing is a basic vinaigrette, with fresh herbs. If you don't have fresh herbs on hand, dried will be fine.
Signing off from cool Seattle. I'm certain we set a record, or got close to a record, for the coolest summer ever. Sigh.
So glad we got to play in the surf while in New York.
Chopped Chef Salad
Ingredients
Salad
- 1 head romaine lettuce sliced and diced
- 1 red pepper sliced and diced
- 4 slices cured meat or other protein, sliced and diced
- 1 cucumber sliced and diced
- 8 cherry tomaotes sliced
- 6 Kalamata olives pitted and diced
Dressing
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
- ยผ cup olive oil
- ยฝ cup fresh herbs basil, parsley, or others
- pinch of salt
- drizzle of honey
Instructions
- Combine all the salad ingredients on a plate or in a bowl. I layer from the bottom up: lettuce, peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, and then the rest on top.
- Place all the vinaigrette ingredients in a food processor or blender and whirl it around until the herbs are finely chopped and all is well mixed (emulsified).
- When ready to serve, pour the dressing over the salad.
Karen says
Thank you. Especially for the nut flour recipes... The fig newtons are my favorite I think though I haven't yet tried the cashew bread. I love your recipes.
I'm with you on the coolest summer. I'm south of you in the mid Willamette Valley in Oregon. Feels like fall the past couple of days. How can we have fall when we skipped summer? My tomatos are just not happy.... I have yet to have one ripen. Hard year that way.
Thanks for a great blog!
Ina Gawne says
I am your neighbor - Victoria B.C. We too have had the coolest summer I can remember. I am still picking lettuce in August! Not that I am complaining....but still, a little extra heat would have been nice! Not much zucchini in my garden this year. I love chopped salads...the only way to go!