"salads" news and stories

Here's what I call gutsy: Take a food you've never eaten before, and instead of making it into something simple and traditional, just to see if you'll like it, make something really out there and weird. Weird in a good way. That's what blogger habeasbrulee has done with this fava bean and cherry salad. Huh? I mean, there's Middle Eastern ful, and there's a soup, or there's a side of favas with a spritz of lemon. But this adventurous soul, who'd never tasted a fava, sautéed the beans in ramp butter (!), added sweet cherries and minced preserved lemon, and claims the salad is delicious. OK, I'm game. See her post for more. For more recipes featuring fava beans (none of which involve ramp butter), see this Slashfood post.

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It's all about the crunch in this salad of fresh snow peas and baby carrots, tossed with an Asian-style dressing of rice-wine vinegar, ginger and sesame seeds. The same brilliantly colorful combination gets treated to a miso-tamari dressing in this recipe.

If the sweet snap of snow peas rings your bell, try Kitchen Daily contributor Adeena Sussman's snow-pea and tofu sauté with a buttery soy-vinegar glaze, a riff on Philippine-style adobo.

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In today's salad, watermelon takes a break from the slice-and-munch role. There's so much more to it than being eaten out of hand. Photographer mary.w.e. combines the cool fruit with sliced tomatoes and crumbled feta, the watermelon complementing the acid and saltiness. Yellow watermelons (like the round 'Sunshine' variety) are often sweeter than their pink cousins, and the 'Amarillo' variety is seedless, too (although you might think that spitting the seeds is half the fun).

Try these Kitchen Daily recipes for a watermelon-and-goat-cheese salad with citrus vinaigrette, and a sweet-and-tangy watermelon salad with cucumber, cilantro and roasted peanuts.

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Day three in our four-day salad fest begins with my personal rule about frisée: Never eat it on a date. Sure, it's light, crisp and textured, and tastes great with lardons, but if you can keep those tickly fronds that jut out every which way in your mouth, and not turn your dinner into a Chevy Chase moment, you're a better eater than I. That said, at home it's worth the struggle. Blogger jinnyjuice slices a fennel bulb and tosses it here with some dill and cucumber, for a simple green salad, with that hint of anise from the fennel. Parsley, too, is a great companion for fennel, as in Kitchen Daily contributor Ruth Cousineau's salad recipe. And it's much easier to eat than frisée.

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Day Two in our four-day run of cool salads for hot days features a combination that is visually stunning but that you may find a bit odd. Shaking up the taste buds is good for you, though, so while at first blush the idea of smoked salmon with melon and strawberries sounds unappealing, give it a shot. Montréal photographer Chrystian Guy used salmon that's maple-syrup cured, so when he mixes it with mâche, the fruit, some yellow onion, chickpeas, and a dressing of olive oil and a squeeze of lime juice, the smooth, sweet maple notes actually blend right in.

I hunted around Kitchen Daily and found that chef Marcus Samuelsson is a fish-and-fruit kind of guy. Try his recipe for jicama-and-mango salad with salmon.

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