Grapes across America

In the last six months, just about every salad we've made includes grapes. We keep a steady supply of seedless grapes on hand, and these gems have earned a place of prominence in our salads.  We slice them down the middle and the interior exposure collects and intensifies flavors from the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, the spices, and sea salt.    

There are several varieties of seedless grapes grown in North America, and interestingly, grapes can be crimson, black, dark blue (seriously?), green, yellow, and pink in color.  The USA is the eighth largest grape producer in the world, and because of the grape's natural hardiness, they are grown in numerous areas across North America. Although we've yet to add the dark-blue varietal to our salads, it's good to know that there's an exciting flavor (and color) frontier in the grape world that we haven't experienced yet.

Ode to the sea

The ingredients that we use for any given salad can vary widely. We can be just as happy eating a salad in which the main ingredient is cucumber, or pineapple, or mandarin oranges. We've added pears, apple slices, or peppers to these salads, and they've all turned out well. The reaon for this is that these salads have one thing in common:  Sea Salt and Herbs.

There's something about a good sea salt and herb combination that brings out the very best in every other ingredient in a salad. We've been using the Sea Salt and Herb bundles from O & Co., especially the Sea Salt Mix for Pasta and Salads, which includes dried sea salt, marjoram, tomato flakes, chives, and onions.  We often supplement the herb list with our own oregano, basil, and always an ample serving of fresh ground pepper.

We'll talk more about O & Co. in later posts on this blog, but regardless of where you get your sea salt, it is an essential ingredient in any salad. 

Vegas, baby...

Years ago, we found ourselves in Las Vegas, stopping there on our way to the north rim of the Grand Canyon.  Vegas has never been a travel destination for us in itself.  We've been there for conferences, or to meet people while on our way to some other place.  The interesting thing about Las Vegas is that it's a great food town.  Almost every serious meal we've had there was superb.  I never associated Las Vegas with great food because when my parents started traveling to Vegas for vacations in the 70s, they would always talk about getting a steak dinner for 99 cents, or breakfast for free.  I thought to myself: "How good can this food be if they're giving it away?"

However, we found ourselves at The Grotto restaurant in the Golden Nugget hotel, and the house salad featured one of our all-time favorite salad ingredients: Hearts of Palm.  At the time, we'd been serving hearts of palm as an appetizer with a spicy mustard vinaigrette, but never as the main ingredient in a salad. The Grotto salad included red bell peppers, scallions, and tomato, tossed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  It was brilliant. Since that experience, we are firmly committed to adding hearts of palm to almost every salad we make, and it is the main ingredient in many of our Sunday salads.

The house salad

Across from the Vancouver Museum of Art, there is a little nondescript bistro called The Bellagio. Unlike its over-the-top cousin in Las Vegas, you could walk past this little establishment and not have any sense of the greatness that awaits you inside. On a rainy afternoon, in late December, we happened into this place and ordered lunch. Truthfully speaking, we don't remember the entrees that we ordered.  The true revelation was the house salad. It was magnificent. There wasn't very much to it -- mostly just spring mix -- but the dressing was simply unbelievable. We made such a fuss over it that our unflappable waitress asked the chef to write it down for us. The ingredients are:

• Olive oil
• Fresh-squeezed lemon juice
• Basil
• Salt
• Pepper
• A splash of balsamic vinegar

Since that day, we have been wrestling with the proportions of these ingredients with the passion of medieval alchemists, trying to recreate that salad. It was light, flavorful, and it seemed to invite you into the garden from which all good things come. We have yet to make that exact salad, but every attempt at it is a revelation in itself.

In Praise of Spring Mix

I never liked salads. In my lifetime, I've choked down countless servings of iceberg lettuce coated with Wesson oil and generic vinegar -- only to feel as if I didn't eat anything closely resembling food. Throw in a tasteless tomato slice or a wedge of cucumber, and that my friends, was the salad.

But then, stores started carrying spring mix, that lively combination of greens that inspires committed salad haters to buy the most expensive extra virgin (first cold pressed) olive oil and Italian balsamic vinegar. Is it the arugula? The fresh spinach leaves? Or is it the chopped romaine that causes an irresistable desire to add currants or walnuts to the medley of flavors? It's hard to say, but we're going to discuss it in this blog. Welcome to salad du jour.