Green Market Salad

April 14th, 2010

If you are ever in need of live food inspiration, turn to Sarma Melngailis’ great cookbooks, blog, and restaurant (which will be our first stop next time we’re in NYC – we’ve never been). Her vision combines health and elegance, never echoing the “granola” approach, that is often associated with raw food.
With this Green Market Salad (from Raw Food/Real World), we wanted to bring you the palette of spring, as it slowly transforms the landscape with fragrant blossoms and freshly crowned trees. The salad greens are at the peak of their season in Florida, and there is so much pleasure in bringing these delicate leaves from the market straight onto our table. The dressing is truly this brilliant in real life, if not greener – as if it has been squeezed out of a tube of gouache.
I usually make this salad when friends come over – it’s impressively complex in flavour, and the amount of dressing you end up with is enough for quite a few portions.

I like to garnish this salad with marinated mushrooms from another recipe in the same cookbook:
1/2 pound of Shiitake and Crimini mushrooms (or any wild mushrooms) – sliced
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons lemon juice
some fresh herbs (I used basil and cilantro)
some sea salt
garnish with freshly ground black pepper

Combine the ingredients. After 2 to 3 hours of dehydration at 115F, the mushrooms become soft and taste just as if they were sauteed. This is a great way of preparing mushrooms, I use it frequently in other dishes.







I substituted some ingredients in the original recipe with what I had on hand, those alterations are included.

Dressing:
1 avocado – peeled and pitted
1 cup orange juice – freshly squeezed
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons lime juice – freshly squeezed
1 green onion
1 tablespoon chopped yellow onion
1/2 small jalapeno – seeded
handful of cilantro
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 cup olive oil
garnish with freshly ground black pepper

Blend all the ingredients until smooth, gradually adding the olive oil while the blender is still running.

Salad:
Salad greens
Radish – any kind, I used Daikon radish, cut on a spiral slicer
Macadamia nuts – coarsely chopped and mixed with a pinch of sea salt, some ground black pepper, and nut oil (or any other cold-pressed oil)

Pour the dressing over the salad. Garnish with the marinated mushrooms.

Thanks for the great discussion on the previous post. We’re currently exploring Waldorf schools.
Post by: A<

Tags: a, food, raw food, recipe, salad

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