spring salad

Last week I was shopping at Tony's Finer Foods, the grocery store that's only a quarter mile from my house. I go there a lot. It's strengths are dirt cheap, freshly made corn and flour tortillas; a huge produce section that includes everything you would want for Mexican or Central American cooking; a wide array of dried beans. It has a pretty good selection of general grocery items, but there are certain things you will never find there. You can't swing by and pick up quinoa or rice milk or kale, or flour tortillas made without vegetable shortening. (They actually do have rice milk, I think, but it's so expensive that I doubt anyone ever buys it.)

The produce isn't exactly local or seasonal, but they do have good citrus all winter from Florida and California. Last week I scored a huge bag of ruby red grapefruit. So sweet and juicy! I used it in a Simple Spring Salad, following the recipe on 101cookbooks.com but leaving out the red onion. This is a terrific basic salad that we ate all week. It's good without the nuts and olives, too.

I realized that it's a variation on my favorite fall and winter salad. For that, I use cubed, roasted butternut squash, toasted walnuts or pecans, and a dressing of walnut oil or olive oil, lemon juice, white wine vingegar, apple cider, a little minced shallot, and salt and pepper. If I was feeling ambitious, I might reduce the apple cider for a more intense flavor. A nutty cheese, like manchego, would be a nice addition.

Really, any salad made of freshly toasted nuts, some baby greens, and a light vinaigrette is going to be a winner; just add seasonal produce that has some sweetness. This would definitely work with apples, raspberries, beets, strawberries, and other winter squashes. Roasted sweet potato. Dried fruit, definitely. What wouldn't work? Parsnips, carrots, summer squash, white potatoes, pineapple. Tomatoes, cucumber, turnips, rutabega . . . the list goes on. Maybe the criteria should be "fruits or vegetables that you could use to make a pie." (That would cut beets right off the list, but I'm willing to make that sacrifice in order to come up with a universal rule.)

Freshly roasted nuts, like freshly squeezed lemon juice, are laborious but worth the effort. I ususally roast mine in the oven at 350 degrees, stirring every five minutes until fragrant and just golden brown. When they are almost done, I check them every two minutes. You can also make them on the stovetop in a skillet, but I tend to burn them when I go that route. If you try it, watch those nuts like a hawk. People swoon over freshly roasted nuts, especially pecans.