Arugula and roasted pear salad with maple-Dijon dressing

Yard long beans. Armenian cucumbers.  Parisian carrots. Winter Wonderland kale. As the seed packet orders start arriving, my appetite for greens and greenery needs an outlet.

So I turned to “The Complete Kitchen Garden,” a blend of garden design and 100 seasonal recipes to savor the garden produce you plant. It’s a feast for the eyes, with charmingly rendered illustrations to map your theoretically idyllic backyard. 

Naturally the drawings convey an orderly plan that in reality would never exist in my raised beds and potted potager, at least not for more than two perfect days in June. Then the weeds and pests hit. Produce is either scant or overabundant.  Eventually some wayward vine finally foils all efforts to make it climb its pretty trellis and the next thing you know it’s a really cold day in fall and you’re on a ladder rescuing a spaghetti squash from high up in the lilac tree branches.

But a gal can dream, at least in March.

Arugula and roasted pear salad

Adapted from “The Complete Kitchen Garden,” by Ellen Ecker Ogden

Ingredients

2 tablespoons pine nuts

1 tablespoon butter

4 small pears, peeled, cored and sliced lengthwise

2 tablespoons sugar

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1 garlic clove, minced

½ teaspoon Dijon mustard

½ teaspoon maple syrup

6 cups arugula

¼ cup dried cranberries

Parmesan shavings for garnish

Method

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper or grease it.

In a small skillet, toast pine nuts. Remove from pan and set aside.

Melt butter in the skillet. Remove from heat and toss with pears and sugar. Transfer pears to prepared baking sheet. Bake until just tender, about 10-15 minutes depending on thickness and ripeness.

In a large bowl, combine oil, vinegar, garlic, mustard and syrup to emulsify. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Toss mixture with arugula.

Place dressed arugula on 4 salad plates. Array baked pear slices around the top. Sprinkle each with 1 tablespoon of cranberries, ½ tablespoon of pine nuts and Parmesan shavings.

Rating: Quite a nice salad. It’s certainly similar to some I’ve made before, so perhaps it’s padding the new recipe count, but it’s a particularly nice rendition. Next time I might sub in sliced almonds or chopped pistachios for the pine nuts for a different flavor and texture component. And I will say that I think depending on the size of your pears, you could easily get by with a half pear per person, rather than a whole.