Name: Chop Chop Salad
Prep time: 30 min
Yield: 4 salads
Ingredients: 1/4 cup Greek yogurt (I like full-fat yogurt); 1/4 cup kalamata olives; 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar; 1 teaspoon dried oregano; 1/2 teaspoon sugar; 1/4 cup olive oil; salt to taste; 4 cups chopped iceberg lettuce (about 1/3 of a head); 4 cups chopped romaine lettuce (about 1 heart of romaine); 4 cups baby spinach; 4 ounces salami, chopped; 1 cucumber, peeled and diced; 1 pint grape tomatoes, halved; 1 14.5 ounce can chickpeas, drained and rinsed; 1 8-ounce package cremini mushrooms, sliced (optional); 1/4 cup chopped kalamata olives; 1/4 cup sunflower seeds; 4 ounces mozzarella cheese, shredded (freezing the mozzarella for about 30 minutes before shredding makes this much easier)

Chop Chop Salad with Creamy Kalamata Dressing

April 25, 2016

Chop chop salad with creamy kalamata dressing is my version of the house salad from Crust Pizza, one of my very favorite restaurant salads.

Chopped salads were a big trend a few years ago. Honestly, I can’t really tell you what sets “chopped” salads apart from “regular salads, because essentially all of the salads that I make are chopped salads. I guess the word “chopped” just refers to having a bunch of ingredients in addition to whatever green you are using that are chopped up with a knife. Am I right or am I wrong? Someone help me here.

I remember when I was a teenager reading somewhere that you shouldn’t use a knife to chop lettuce because it would cause the cut edges to turn brown. While that’s true (it has something to do with how the cutting action damages the cells of the lettuce), unless you are going to serve the lettuce a few days later and/or you are really concerned about a little bit of browning, who cares? Personally, I am not down to tear up a huge pile of lettuce. I have better things to do with my time, and I imagine that you guys do too. I’ll use my knife, thank you.

One of my favorite pizza places in town is Crust Pizza (home of the cracker-thin crust…I thought I loved Pizza Hut’s thin crust the best until I ate at Crust). When you go there for their lunch buffet, you get a salad to go with your pizza. Their house salad is one of the best chopped salads I’ve ever eaten, with iceberg lettuce, romaine, spinach, cucumbers, mushrooms, tomatoes, red onion (you guys know I pick that out), garbanzo beans, sunflower seeds, and mozzarella cheese. I always order mine with their creamy kalamata dressing, which I liked long before I had my olive awakening last year. I guess it helped to ease me in. That salad…that salad is art. For a house salad, it’s pretty huge and served in a cute stainless steel bowl (unfortunately I don’t have one that size).

My chop chop salad is my ode to that amazing salad. I tossed together all of the ingredients except, of course, the onions, and the mushrooms because Philip didn’t realize that cremini mushrooms are the same as baby bellas (that’s my fault because I thought about that and forgot to tell him that they were the same thing…I couldn’t remember how Publix labels their creminis. They label them as baby bellas. Oops. I threw in some kalamata olives on top too, because why not?

To top my chop chop salad, I of course whizzed up a creamy kalamata dressing. All of the recipes I found when I was researching kalamata dressing online were vinaigrettes and I WANTED A CREAMY DRESSING, so I had to make this up on my own. It worked out. I am now officially obsessed with this salad and I want to eat it every day. And this past week, that’s just what I did for lunch.

Make this chop chop salad for lunch or dinner this week!

Mary

Yield: 4 salads

Chop Chop Salad

30 minPrep Time:

30 minTotal Time:

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Ingredients

For the kalamata dressing

1/4 cup Greek yogurt (I like full-fat yogurt)
1/4 cup kalamata olives
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/4 cup olive oil
salt to taste

For the salad

4 cups chopped iceberg lettuce (about 1/3 of a head)
4 cups chopped romaine lettuce (about 1 heart of romaine)
4 cups baby spinach
4 ounces salami, chopped
1 cucumber, peeled and diced
1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
1 14.5 ounce can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 8-ounce package cremini mushrooms, sliced (optional)
1/4 cup chopped kalamata olives
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
4 ounces mozzarella cheese, shredded (freezing the mozzarella for about 30 minutes before shredding makes this much easier)

Instructions

In a food processor, process the Greek yogurt, kalamata olives, white wine vinegar, oregano, and sugar on high until mostly smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl frequently. Add the olive oil slowly through the pour spout with the machine running. Salt to taste. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
Toss the greens together in a large bowl. Divide between 4 salad bowls or plates. Divide the remaining ingredients among the plates. Drizzle each salad with 2 tablespoons of kalamata dressing. Serve immediately.

https://chattavore.com/chop-chop-salad/

Chop chop salad with creamy kalamata dressing is my version of the house salad from Crust Pizza, one of my very favorite restaurant salads. | recipe from Chattavore.com

Beet Salad with Goat Cheese

January 22, 2016

This beet salad with goat cheese is fresh and full of vibrant flavors. A homemade green goddess dressing ties the whole thing together!

I have never been an eater of beets. My mom loves pickled beets and there’s an ever-present jar of them in my parents’ fridge. To this day, my 37-year-old self has never eaten a pickled beet. It may never happen.

My problem with beets? They smell like dirt. I mean, they grow underground, submerged in the dirt, so on some level it makes sense. However, once I have scrubbed, cooked, and peeled said beets, I don’t want the dirt smell to linger. But it does. Oh yes, yes it does.

That said, I will eat roasted beets. It’s honestly a little odd that I will eat roasted beets but not pickled, because I love pickles. I think it’s just that cold jar of lip-staining red beets soaking in juice that’s so red that it’s almost black that just turns me off.

Here’s the thing about putting things in a salad: if you mix enough great things into a salad, you don’t really notice the individual pieces but rather the sum of the parts. Boy, I am really not selling you guys at the idea of eating beets right now, am I??? Sorry. What I’m getting at is that salads are a great way to start eating beets, or really just about any other form of plant life that you know you should eat (because it’s good for you) and just can’t quite bring yourself to eat.

Honestly, I’ve never loved goat cheese either. Somehow, though, when I mixed beets with goat cheese, greens, and toasted pecans and dressed the whole thing with an amazing green goddess dressing (I borrowed the idea for this salad from Beast + Barrel), everything worked together beautifully. I think I might start eating more beets and goat cheese, whether they’re in this beet salad with goat cheese goat cheese or not.

Mary

Yield: 4 salads

Beet Salad with Goat Cheese

10 minPrep Time:

45 minCook Time:

55 minTotal Time:

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Ingredients

1 large beet, scrubbed (any color/variety is fine)
1/4 cup chopped pecans.
1 bag mixed greens
1/2 cup green goddess dressing (bottled is fine, but I used Elise Bauer’s recipe from Simply Recipes)
2 ounces goat cheese

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Wrap the beet in foil. Place the beet in the oven and roast for about 45 minutes. Allow to cool for a few minutes then peel the beet (the skin should slip away easily when rubbed with a paper towel). Quarter the beets then thinly slice the quarters. Set aside.
While the beet is roasting, toast the pecans in a dry skillet until lightly browned. Pour into a bowl and set aside.
Divide the greens among 4 bowls. Drizzle each bowl with two tablespoons of dressing.
Crumble the goat cheese and sprinkle the goat cheese over the bowls. Sprinkle each salad with a tablespoon of pecans. Divide the beets among the bowls. Serve immediately.

https://chattavore.com/beet-salad-with-goat-cheese/

Click here to print the recipe for beet salad with goat cheese!

This beet salad with goat cheese is fresh and full of vibrant flavors. A homemade green goddess dressing ties the whole thing together! | recipe from Chattavore.com

Warm Cauliflower Salad

January 11, 2016

This warm cauliflower salad is healthy, with clementine sections and pomegranate seeds, but also lush with vinaigrette, pine nuts, and buttered bread crumbs.

I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. I don’t know who said it first, but it definitely seems like New Year’s resolutions are made to be broken. If you are a resolution-maker, please correct me if I’m wrong…but I feel like if you make a resolution, the second you slip up, your resolution is kind of toast.

Instead, I decided to work in terms that are a little more familiar to me: setting goals for myself. I’ve worked in special education for the last fifteen years and every child that I work with has an individualized education plan (IEP) that has long terms goals and, in some cases, short-term objectives. Objectives are essentially just smaller pieces of the goal. THAT I can do.

The holidays kind of did me in. I went off the deep end a little bit in terms of what I ate, and I was really okay with that because this: I knew I was going to make some changes are I went back to work. I considered doing a Whole30 but finally decided that my goal was to eat fewer processed foods and more fruits and vegetables. I think that making these changes will make me feel better over time and, quite possibly, help me lose a few.

My strategy? For starters, salad. All the salad. We’re a week in as I write this and I have eaten a lot of salads. I’m not tired of them yet. I really believe that’s because I’ve made an effort to shake up my salad game. Salads do not have to be about some tired lettuce in a bowl with some bottled dressing and maybe a couple of half-hearted toppings. I started dreaming of a warm cauliflower salad with some sweet elements, some savory elements, and some crunchy elements.

I don’t believe in fat-free dressings, or fat-free salads, or really anything fat-free unless it come from nature that way (i.e. fruits and vegetables). Science has actually shown that a little fat with fruits and vegetables help the body to better absorb the nutrients…so I thought, “Sure, this salad has olive oil in the vinaigrette, but why not some buttery panko bread crumbs?” I mean really, why not? I did not regret it. I love vegetables anyway, but with ingredients like I put in this warm cauliflower salad, I don’t think eating more of them is going to be an issue!

Did you make resolutions this year? And what is your strategy for getting more fruits and vegetables into your diet?

4-6

Warm Cauliflower Salad

10 minPrep Time:

25 minCook Time:

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Ingredients

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 head cauliflower, cut into florets
salt and pepper
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup panko crumbs
1/4 cup pine nuts
3 clementines or 1 seedless orange, peeled and sectioned (if using an orange, cut into pieces)
1/2 cup pomegranate seeds

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Pour the 2 tablespoons of olive oil onto a baking sheet and spread it around.
Place the cauliflower florets onto the baking sheet and toss with the olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place the cauliflower into the oven and roast until lightly browned, 20-25 minutes.
While the cauliflower is roasting, make the vinaigrette: place the mustard, salt and pepper, and the red wine vinegar into a small bowl. Slowly drizzle in the 1/4 cup olive oil while whisking constantly.
In a small skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the panko crumbs and the pine nuts. Cook, stirring constantly, until the bread crumbs and pine nuts are lightly browned.
Place the cauliflower into a bowl and toss with the vinaigrette. Sprinkle over the clementine or orange sections and the pomegranate seeds. Sprinkle the bread crumbs and pine nuts over the top and serve immediately.

https://chattavore.com/warm-cauliflower-salad/

This warm cauliflower salad is healthy, with clementine sections and pomegranate seeds, but also lush with vinaigrette, pine nuts, and buttered bread crumbs. | Recipe from Chattavore.com

Barbecue Chicken Salad

September 23, 2015

This barbecue chicken salad is chock-full of good stuff…oven barbecued chicken thighs, crisp lettuce, fresh tomatoes and corn, delicious cheese, and creamy barbecue-ranch dressing, all topped off with a few crunchy corn chips.

I spent most of August trying to figure out how to get fresh corn into all the things. I did manage to get it in most of the things, at least. I wish I could have shared this salad with you earlier, but hey…I didn’t. So, corn is out of season now, but that’s okay. The great thing about corn is that frozen corn is almost as good as fresh…no cooking, just thaw it and throw it on the salad.

Barbecue chicken is not something that I’ve made at home a lot, and honestly the idea of a barbecue chicken salad always seemed oddly overwhelming to me. That may seem bizarre if you read my blog much and you know the types of food that I cook on a regular basis. The thing about me, though, is that I am really, really bad at making meals that require me to make more than one item at a time. That’s why I make so many one-pot and one-dish meals and almost never make a “meat and three” type of meal (I recently acquired Ina Garten’s book Make it Ahead and with her encouragement I hope to get better at, well, making things ahead. Why, just last night we had a dinner of cornbread dressing that I assembled the day before, cranberry sauce I made the day before, and turkey thighs cooked in the slow cooker).

Anyway, why on earth was I scared of barbecue chicken salad??!?!? I must have read a recipe that was overly complicated. My recipe is not. Sear the chicken, slather it with sauce, throw it in the oven. While it’s roasting, chop and assemble the rest of the ingredients. Boom. Done. The Fritos were my naughty touch. I love those things (and my sister is gagging because we have an inside joke about Fritos) and I cannot stop eating them. Oh well. They were awfully delicious on top of this barbecue chicken salad!

Yield: 4 salads

Barbecue Chicken Salad

20 minPrep Time:

20 minCook Time:

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Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 1/2 pounds chicken thighs, trimmed
salt and pepper
1/4 cup ranch dressing
1 cup barbecue sauce
2 hearts of romaine, chopped, washed, and dried
1 cup corn kernels (frozen-thawed, or fresh-1-2 ears)
2 medium tomatoes, seeded and diced
1/4 cup monterey Jack cheese + 1/4 cup pepper Jack cheese (or you can use 1/2 cup of just one of these)
corn chips (e.g. Fritos)

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Heat the oil in a medium oven-safe skillet over medium-high heat. Sprinkle the chicken thighs on both sides with salt and pepper. Cook for 2 minutes on each side.
While the chicken is searing, whisk together 1/4 cup barbecue sauce with the dressing. Cover and place in the refrigerator. Brush the chicken liberally on both sides with the remaining barbecue sauce (I like mine good and sticky, so I used all of the sauce). Place the skillet into the oven and cook the chicken for 15 minutes. Remove and place on a cutting board to cool slightly.
To assemble the salads, divide the lettuce, corn, tomatoes, and cheese among 4 plates. Cut the chicken into strips or chunks and divide among the plates. Drizzle each salad with 2 tablespoons of dressing then top with desired amount of corn chips. Serve immediately.

Notes

To assemble into a Mason jar salad, allow the chicken to cool completely then place the ingredients into the jar in this order: dressing, chicken, cheese, tomatoes, corn, lettuce. Place corn chips in a separate container.

https://chattavore.com/barbecue-chicken-salad/

Click here to print the recipe for barbecue chicken salad!

This barbecue chicken salad is a simple and delicious weeknight recipe...topped with corn chips for a perfect finishing touch! | chattavore.com

Spinach Caprese Salad with Pesto Dressing

August 26, 2015

Spinach caprese salad with pesto dressing is everything you love about caprese salad-that is, tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil-with enough substance to make a meal of it!

When late July rolls around every year, I start to get jump up and down excited. No, not because it’s almost time for school to start back…because of tomato?season! When I was at the produce stand buying the tomatoes for this post, I bought four-one classic beefsteak tomato, one yellow tomato, one green tomato, and the Cherokee purple that I used here. The guy that rang me up remarked, “Well, you’re getting a tomato in every color, aren’t you?”

Yes, yes I am. Because the season in which tomatoes in lots of beautiful colors are readily available and actually taste like something (that is, like pure edible heaven) is devastatingly short and I have to get my hands on as many as possible while I can. That means buying them in every color that I see. Tomato sandwiches, BLTs, fried green tomatoes, cherry tomatoes as finger food in my lunch…I will eat a fresh tomato pretty much any way I can get it, as many times a day as possible (I über-love a couple of fat slices of tomato and some avocado alongside the fried egg I eat every morning for breakfast).

Not least of my favorite summer tomato applications is the caprese salad. Usually, I’ll throw some cubed tomatoes into a bowl with some diced fresh mozzarella and julienned basil, drizzle over some olive oil, and I’m golden. That never seems substantial enough to be a meal, though, and by some strange twist of fate, I married a man who doesn’t really care for raw tomatoes. He’ll eat them, but they aren’t his favorite, so it’s helpful if I can throw in a few leaves of something to make it a little more palatable for him.

Enter spinach.

Spinach is such a substantial salad green and pairs perfectly with tomatoes and mozzarella. So…spinach caprese salad? Yep. Yep yep. One bag of spinach is enough spinach for the two of us…I tossed it together with a giant cubed tomato, a little fresh mozzarella, and some pepitas (aka pumpkin seeds). I whisked up a vinaigrette with some jarred pesto (feel free to make your own, but I had a jar of Colavita pesto in the fridge that needed to get used), lemon juice, and olive oil and drizzled it over. Spinach caprese salad: for the win!

Yield: 4 salads

Spinach Caprese Salad with Pesto Dressing

15 minPrep Time:

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Ingredients

For the vinaigrette

2 tablespoons basil pesto
juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
salt to taste

For the salad

2 8-ounce packages spinach
2 large tomatoes - seeded and diced
4 ounces fresh mozzarella - diced
1/4 cup pepitas (roasted, salted pumpkin seeds)

Instructions

To make the vinaigrette, whisk together the pesto and the lemon juice in a small bowl. Drizzle the olive oil in very slowly, whisking constantly to emulsify. Add salt to taste.
Divide the spinach among 4 plates (you may not use all of it-to make two salads, I used about 2/3 of an 8-ounch package). Top with the tomatoes, mozzarella, and pepitas.
Drizzle each salad with 2 tablespoons of dressing. Serve immediately.

Notes

This recipe is easily halved or multiplied!

https://chattavore.com/spinach-caprese-salad/

Click here to print the recipe for spinach caprese salad!

Spinach caprese salad showcases all the flavor of perfect summer tomatoes with a delicious pesto vinaigrette! | chattavore.com

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