Green chopped salad

I’ve made chopped salads before and love the simplicity of the concept – chop a whole load of salad ingredients together with a splash of dressing.  Yup, that’s it.  It appeals to me when I’m working at home and want a quick but healthy sort of lunch. 

It may seem daft to sort of mush up all those lovely ingredients into one pile of finely chopped salad, but I think it actually does something to the flavour.  By chopping things together the flavours begin to mingle to create something new and wonderful.

For this green salad, I started by chopping together lettuce (a crisp crunchy lettuce like cos or baby gem work best – soft leaved lettuce will just disappear into nothing), cucumber, spring onions, and parsley (but you could use herbs and a mixture would be lovely).

Then I chopped up an avocado and mixed everything together in a bowl.  Next, I made a hollow in the salad and added my dressing ingredients – a place of mustard (I used Dijon), vinegar (I used red wine vinegar), extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper. 

Then give everything a really good mix together so that all the ingredients and flavours can start to mingle.

At this point taste it and adjust the dressing flavourings to taste.  You can also add in other bits and pieces – I crumbled in some Cheddar cheese.

Finally, I mounded it into my bowl and topped with a generous sprinkle of crumbled Cheddar.  A fantastic way to eat a lot of vegetables – in this case a lot of green ones – and a different take on the salad.

What do you put into your chopped salad?  Pieces of crispy bacon appeal to me.

April garden update

With the lovely warm weather and sprinkling of rain that we’ve had recently in the UK, my garden has been busy growing.  My blackcurrant bush has lots of bright green leaves and pretty lilac buds forming…

While waiting for my own tiny lettuce seedlings I have ‘cheated’ by buying some plug plants.  My mom has a really good garden centre near her and they always have a fantastic selection of plants and plant paraphenalia.  I choose two different varieties: red baby gem lettuce and green batavia. 

Because the tiny lettuces had been living in a greenhouse at the garden centre I was a bit concerned about putting them outside.  So I kept them for a night in our lean-to/porch, and then managed to recycle these glass jars (that had previously had bulbs in) by turning them upside down and making them into mini cloches. 

I am so looking forward to the first salad of the season.  It is such an exciting time of year in the garden, plus with our new allotment we have also been busy digging, but more on that another day.