Yummy in My Tummy: Summer Salad Spectacular!

Hi ho there! Greetings from the sweltering heat of this humid Boston summer! Now, granted, I spend most of my days indoors at work or in my air conditioned bedroom (yes, I know, I live a dangerous life -- do not try it at home!), but it is actually impossible to escape the heat. It always catches up to me somehow. Walking home, exploring the city, sitting on the porch, cooking in the non-air-conditioned kitchen, etc. And when it reaches at least 80°F every day, no one really wants to cook in a non-air-conditioned kitchen. I mean, I love cooking, and even I dread the prospect of turning on my gas stove and boiling water for even a minute. Salads, therefore, are basically the lazy, temperature-sensitive chef's best friends in the summer.

As anyone who lives with me knows, I'm a fan of grabbing whatever is in my fridge and/or pantry and making something new and different out of it. In the case of this salad, I did just that. Here's the recipe:

Almond and Pomegranate Salad

Ingredients:
Baby spinach
Arugula ("rocket" for all you Anglophiles in the audience)
Grape tomatoes
Black beans
Pomegranate seeds
Sliced almonds
Salad dressing
Parmesan cheese (optional)

Directions:

1. Wash all vegetables and drain. Remove stems from spinach if desirable. Toss greens together in a large salad bowl.
2. Add tomatoes, beans, pomegranate seeds, and almonds. Mix well.
3. Drizzle salad dressing over salad. Sprinkle with parmesan, if desirable.
4. Om nom nom.

Rachel's notes:

There are no specified amounts in this recipe. I measured nothing out when I threw this together after drinking a bottle and a half of white wine with my roommate and her friends. Everyone likes their salad proportions to be a little different, so play around with the amounts and see what works for you. Personally, I love heavier proportions of tomatoes, almonds, and pomegranate seeds because I think the flavors are so interesting and mesh together so well. One of my closest friends would probably choose to use mixed greens over arugula because she can't stand the taste of it. My roommate in France would have refused to eat the tomatoes. Salad is very much what you make of it, but I felt that this had to be one of the best salads I had ever tasted. And I'm not saying that because I was a little tipsy at the time. I replicated this recipe the very next night when I was 150% sober and still thought it was the best thing since cream cheese. This was a very last minute decision for a meal and it turned out marvelously.

Special note on salad dressing:

I don't usually make my own salad dressing. In this case, at any rate, I didn't. I used the Tuscan Italian Dressing with Balsamic Vinegar from Trader Joe's, and it worked great! I have a default salad dressing that I go to, however, when I run out and am too lazy to run to the store to buy more. I haven't tried it on this particular salad, but based on my past experience with this dressing, it would be a great match! I thoroughly encourage you, dear reader, to try it out and tell me what you think!

Walnut Salad Dressing

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp vinegar (red wine or balsamic)

4 Tbsp walnut oil

1 tsp Dijon mustard

Salt, pepper

Directions:

Mix together all ingredients, stirring aggressively as dressing is apt to separate.

This should easily make enough for 2 people to have salad dressing.

Wine of the Meal

Green Fin 2010 White Table Wine 

This is one of the really cheap wines that you can buy at Trader Joe's for about $4 (maybe even less back home in CA, since two-buck Chuck is three-buck Chuck in MA) and is surprisingly good. Normally, I steer clear of table wines because, as experience with French table wines taught me, they normally taste like someone poured some ethanol into some grape juice. However, my current roommates insisted that it was worth a try one night when they were cooking and, boy, was I surprised!

It's somewhat citrus-y, but mostly sweet and fruity (yeah, yeah, citrus usually equals fruit, but I mean something more like mango here). People who know more about these things would likely say that there are oak overtones or something like that. Maybe. Personally, I think it's the perfect wine to share after a long day at the lab as you sit out on your front porch, waiting for the temperature to go down, trading stories with your friends. It pairs pretty nicely with this salad and is a surprisingly good companion for ice cream, as I discovered this evening.

Frankly, it's a cheap wine that doesn't offend my inner scientist (why would I pay to drink ethanol and grape juice when I could make it for free at work?), helps cool one down on a hot day, and doesn't do a number on my wallet. That's a solid wine in my book.

That's it for this week! It's shorter than the last Yummy in My Tummy, and future entries will probably be somewhere between this one and the first one in terms of length and depth. To make up for the simplicity of this week's recipe, I leave you all with a question: What is your favorite summer salad? Leave recipe suggestions in the comments!

Peace, love, and pomegranates,
Rachel