Kale salads aren't just for winter

Halloumi croutons are a nice touch.

Many of our local crabapple trees are in full bloom, signaling a seasonal shift. The early blooming varieties are shifting from canopy to carpet as spring waxes and wanes on its way to sudden summer.

So you might think kale season is about to be behind us, since it's often used as a reliable way to get greens in winter. But here's a reminder (to gardeners like me, at least) that kale sneaks up on you, so incorporating some throughout the growing season when the leaves aren't yet riddled with holes will leave you far less to deal with after frost hits.

Kale salad with halloumi croutons and preserved lemons

From Food & Wine, February 2024. I would link to it online, but I can't find it on their site. The original called for mint instead of lemon balm, but I don't do mint and I have an exuberant quantity of lemon balm growing even in winter, since it self sows wantonly and hitches a ride inside in pots.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons finely chopped shallots
2 tablespoons olive oil
1½ tablespoons Dijon mustard
1½ tablespoons sherry vinegar
1½ tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon maple syrup
½ teaspoon za'atar
¼ teaspoon kosher salt

2 bunches lacinato kale, stems removed and leaves coarsely torn or chopped
1 cup shredded purple cabbage
1 tablespoon thinly sliced preserved lemon peel, about 1-inch long
Canola oil for frying
1 8.8-ounce package halloumi cheese, patted dry and cut into ½-inch pieces
½ cup dried tart cherries
¼ cup fresh lemon balm leaves, chopped
¼ cup fresh parsley leaves, chopped

Method

Combine shallots, olive oil, mustard, vinegar, lemon juice, syrup, za'atar and salt in a small bowl.

Combine kale, cabbage and preserved lemon peel. Toss with ⅓ cup of the dressing and massage well into kale leaves. 

Heat ½ inch of canola oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Add halloumi in a single layer. Fry, turning often, until golden brown on all sides. Remove from pan to drain on a paper towel on a plate. Let cool 5 minutes.

Add halloumi cubes, dried cherries, lemon balm and parsley to kale mixture. Serve along with the additional dressing available on the side.

Rating: Tangy. The combo pack of the salty preserved lemons and the lemon balm work well here. And crunchy cheese chunks are just fun. Nicely colorful. 

 

Kale and fennel salad with cherries

Adapted from Dan Buettner's "Blue Zones Kitchen: One Pot Meals," which aims to marry up those flavors we like with stuff that's also good for us and not so time-consuming that it discourages one from making them. I cut the amount of fennel in half because I find that unless it's roasted, fennel can easily overtake a dish. My take is that this serves 6 as a side salad.

Ingredients

1 bunch kale (dinosaur kale works well), stems discarded and leaves torn into bite-size pieces
½ fennel bulb, sliced very thinly (a mandoline does an admirable job, if you have one)
4 to 6 tablespoons apple balsamic vinaigrette (see below)
½ cup pitted fresh cherries
¼ cup pine nuts, toasted
Fennel fronds or other chopped fresh herbs for garnish

Dressing:

½ cup apple cider
½ cup olive oil
¼ cup balsamic vinegar
¼ cup apple cider vinegar
4 teaspoons Dijon mustard
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves (if you've got lemon thyme, that's a bonus)
½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper

Method

Combine dressing ingredients, either with a whisk or blender until emulsified. Place kale and fennel in a large bowl. Add 2 tablespoons of the dressing and massage into the kale. Add more dressing to taste. Top with cherries, pine nuts and herbs. Chill until ready to serve. This benefits from having more time for the kale to absorb the dressing.

Rating: The dressing bears repeating. While it does a decent job of breaking down the kale, I actually appreciated the dressing more when I tried it with a simple lettuce and arugula salad with pepitas. As for the salad itself, it was a good counterpart to an otherwise brown meal. I liked the cherries and pine nuts both flavorwise and for looks. I also drizzled some of the dressing over some chicken before roasting and it worked well as a sort of marinade.

Tuscan kale salad with pecorino and lemon

From  Crate and Barrel

Ingredients

2 small heads of lacinato kale, stems and ribs removed, leaves coarsely chopped
3-plus tablespoons olive oil, divided
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 ounces Pecorino cheese
2 tablespoons toasted pine nuts

Method

Place kale in a large serving bowl. Sprinkle with kosher salt an a drizzle of some of the olive oil and then massage it in with your hands for a minute.

In a small bowl, combine lemon juice, mustard, 2 tablespoons grated Pecorino, ½ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon black pepper. Whisk in 3 tablespoons of olive oil until combined.

Pour dressing over kale and toss to combine. Garnish with pine nuts and some Pecorino cheese shavings.

Rating: Super simple and fast to make, and sometimes the simple things are simply good at being what they are. Far less fuss than the other recipes and with fewer odd ingredients to assemble. Not quite as elevated perhaps as the other recipes in terms of ingredients and looks, but I still would feel fine serving it to company.

Super seedy kale salad

From Bon Appetit, Winter 2026, a recipe adapted for the home kitchen from Nick Curtola, executive chef at the Four Horsemen in New York.

Ingredients

For dressing:
1 large garlic clove, finely grated
⅓ cup olive oil
¼ cup almond butter
¼ cup fresh lemon juice (you'll use the zest of a lemon below, so I'd zest it first before juicing it)
¼ cup white wine vinegar
2 teaspoons Calabrian chile paste
2 teaspoons onion powder
2 teaspoons sugar
2 tablespoons water

Salad:
2 tablespoons olive oil
¼ cup pine nuts (raw shelled sunflower seeds were listed as an alternative)
3 tablespoons raw shelled pumpkin seeds
Zest of 1 lemon
⅓ cup golden raisins
2 bunches Tuscan kale, ribs and stems removed and leaves thinly sliced

Method
For dressing, in a medium size bowl combine combine garlic, ⅓ olive oil, almond butter, lemon juice, vinegar, chile paste, onion powder, sugar, water and a large pinch of salt and whisk together well, (Incorporating the almond butter takes some vigorous whisking, so I recommend a large bowl than the ingredients would seem to call for to allow for splashing room.)

Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a medium-size non-stick skillet over medium heat. Cook pine nuts and pumpkin seeds until golden brown, stirring as you go to avoid burning them. Remove from heat and add lemon zest, raisins and a generous pinch of salt.

Put about a quarter of the salad dressing in a large bowl. Add chopped kale and massage with your hands for a minute to combine. Add enough of the remaining dressing to coat to your liking. Then mix in a quarter of the nut-raisin mixture. Garnish with remaining mixture and serve.

You could pass the remaining dressing on the side for people to suit their taste. For us, adding all of it would have resulted in a completely drenched salad; perhaps the bunch size in the restaurant is different. At any rate, you won't mind leftovers of the dressing, which can be made ahead.

Rating: Dave, unprompted, called this a pleasant combination of flavors and textures. This is a perfectly lovely salad all around. The dressing has a nice balance; you detect a very subtle amount of heat but the almond butter and other flavors temper that. It's a nice combo of crunch between the kale and the nuts. It hits a cook's sweet spot of effort vs. outcome: Fairly minimal upfront effort with good enough for company outcomes. The dressing could have all sorts of uses. This was my favorite of the four recipes I tried and is going in the keeper pile, despite the price of pine nuts.

Leftover factor: Since we made the entire recipe, which is said to serve 4 (quite, quite generously) we had leftovers. We added grilled chicken and a tad more of the leftover dressing for a perfectly passable lunch. 

One more in the pile to try: Better Homes & Gardens posted a copycat recipe of Chick-Fil-A kale crunch salad. I've never been to one, so I can't vouch, but it looks interesting.

3 slaws that slay

Curtido should preferably be made at least a few hours ahead and keeps for 2 weeks.

Sometimes I feel the need for a different kind of coleslaw. There's absolutely nothing wrong with a well-executed standard mayo-based slaw dressing, but sometimes I want the slaw to do a bit more work as part of an overall menu, delivering both a good solid crunch factor and some added what's-it in a way that the more mild-mannered versions don't. 

While coleslaw might most often be thought of as a summer cookout side dish, I think it really shines the most in late winter, when we haven't seen a truly decent green salad for months. Then cabbage, kale and other sturdy carriers for dressing fill that void, with the added bonus that cabbage is open to a lot of different flavor combinations. Here are three to try:

Curtido

Adapted from Food & Wine May 2023 issue. The recipe is credited to Evelyn Garcia of Jūn in Houston. This slaw was a topping for pupusas, and would work in other sandwich/wrap usages. I just served it as a side with a sturdy soup.

Ingredients

4 cups thinly sliced green cabbage
½ cup thinly sliced red onion
¼ cup shredded carrot
1 medium jalapeño chile, sliced (or I used 1 tablespoon sliced pickled jalapeños)

1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh cilantro stems, plus leaves for garnish
1 cup white vinegar
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon fine sea salt

Method

Toss together cabbage, onion, carrot and jalapeño in a large bowl. In a small saucepan, combine vinegar, sugar and salt. Bring to a boil, stirring until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and poor hot vinegar over cabbage mixture. Combine well, cover and chill at least an hour, and preferably overnight. Garnish with cilantro leaves.

Rating: This one will make you pucker up. It actually provided a nice bright flavor contrast to an Italian sausage soup served with cornbread. I don't think I'd make it again as a serve-alone slaw because a little goes a long way with that sharp vinegar, but if you cut the recipe in half and use it as a relish, it definitely has merit. 

 

Napa cabbage slaw

Adapted from Better Homes & Gardens July/August 2024 issue, although I can't find the original recipe on their site to link to, where it was served as a side for a pork dish. Serves 6-ish.

Ingredients

5 cups shredded Napa cabbage
1 cup sliced yellow pepper strips
½ cup shredded carrot
½ cup snap peas, chopped on the diagonal (or slivered snow pea pods)
¼ cup chopped green onion
3 tablespoons seasoned rice vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon tamari or soy sauce
¼ salt
¼ teaspoon pepper

Method

Combine cabbage, pepper strips, carrot, snap peas and onion in a large serving bowl.

Whisk together vinegar, oils, tamari and salt and pepper. Drizzle over slaw mixture and toss to distribute dressing.

Rating: Colorful, crunchy and with a snappy dressing. It was a nice contrast to a bowl of chili.

Leftover factor: While the Napa cabbage is fairly sturdy, I wouldn't count on making this a day ahead without it losing at least a bit of its crunch. But you could certainly assemble the slaw parts and dressing separately and then toss them closer to serving time. It's not like it instantly wilts or anything like that, so I imagine a hour ahead of serving would still be just dandy. I was struck by how well this slaw would do on a chicken/bean wrap, so I suspect it has other uses.

.

Kaleslaw

Adapted from "Fifty Shades of Kale" by Dr. Drew Ramsey and Jennifer Iserloh. Serves 8 quite readily.

Ingredients
1 bunch dinosaur kale or a mixture of kinds of kale, stems removed, about 10 cups chopped
1 red, orange or yellow pepper sliced thinly or a mix thereof
6 grated carrots (I used a mix of the tri-colored snacking carrots for extra color
1½ Kale-onaise (see recipe below)

Method
Combine chopped kale, sliced pepper and carrots in a large bowl. Toss with dressing and chill for at least an hour before serving or overnight to give it time to break down the kale a bit.

Kale-onnaise

2 cups chopped packed kale
½ teaspoon sea salt
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 cup mayonnaise
Zest and juice of 1 lemon

In a food processor blend kale, salt and garlic until finely chopped. Add mayo and lemon zest and juice and process until smooth.

Rating: The salad is fine enough, but the dressing is one of those that you could inhale. It has a very bright, fresh flavor that tastes of sunnier days. It works well on the salad, as a sandwich spread, pretty much anything you can think of. It does not taste particularly kaley, so it's a great way to use up part of a bunch of kale before it eventually wilts. This usage is a keeper.

Leftover factor: Even kale will start to lose a tad bit of its sturdiness in the face of being in dressing for a few days. It was still OK enough the second day, but I think if I were do it again I would have tossed in some chickpeas with the leftovers and put it over leftover grains for a grain bowl treatment.

Three winter salads, plus a whine about a Gmail setting

Roasted squash salad with bacon and pumpkin seeds

A trio of salads: Kale cobb salad, radicchio salad with blue cheese dressing, roasted squash salad with bacon

All of these salads were brought to you by winter: They combine sturdy ingredients into robust salads while we wait out the season where lettuce won't grow with grace. So instead, think kale, and its obliging partner, bacon. Radicchio and roasted squash. Greens with roasted squash AND bacon.

One of the salads was also brought to you by a combination of irritation and opportunity. Dave flagged a Huffington Post article alerting that there was an automatic opt-in for Gmail users that could allow Google access to your messages and attachments to train AI models. Ish. It shared instructions for the two places to turn off smart features that allow this harvesting, and since that seemed like something I don't want in place, I dutifully turned it off.

And then found out, of course, just what all is joined at the hip in smart features. I could possibly live with out grammar check or autospelling, but everything all in one email inbox? Ugh. Plus, they only let you tailor your inbox notifications if you enable smart features. Double ugh. That leaves you with the option of either opting out of most promotional email (gasp, how will I find out when Harney's and Penzey's have a sale when I need to stock up??) or risk missing an actually vital email amid all the crud. 

So, for now, I've caved and am on a mission to kill down my overall inbox before I try again, opting out as I go. To say that I've never been an inbox-zero person for anything other than the equivalent in Slack is putting it mildly. My promotions box had ballooned to more than 17,000. I've now got that down below 2,500, but I'm loath to just kill out everything without looking through, because hello, recipes! Like the recipe for radicchio salad with blue cheese, below. Sure, I got the magazine in October, but it apparently didn't trigger my interest until I saw it promoted in my Gmail and remembered that I have both radicchio and gorgonzola in my frig that need using.

So I'm wading through the rest of the messages, and really irritated by one trend that can't be over soon enough: Promotional emails designed to trade on shame, guilt, anxiety and other malaise. I'm looking at you, Martha Stewart minions. Amid the potentially useful how-tos like how to make sour cream or reuse old sheets are these stink bombs: 

9 hosting habits that guests secretly despise

12 sneaky reasons your home never feels completely clean

The 6 worst front door colors for curb appeal

7 home decor mistakes you should avoid

6 outdated garden trends

She's not alone in the negative phrasing, by any means. A quick search for "never" in my promotions box unearthed a trove of headlines destined for inbox trash. Colors to never paint your bathroom, etc. A cleaning step you always miss. "Wrong" is another big offender, along with "mistake," as in "You're making scrambled eggs wrong," instead of "how to make terrific scrambled eggs."

Along with umbrage. I have taken delight in killing out these joy zappers. I would paint my bathroom one of the never-do colors, but I've forgotten what they were already, because you should be able to paint your bathroom whatever color makes you happy.

But I did get at least one decent recipe out of the inbox before deleting it. Only 2,500 to go, and then it's off to zapping NextDoor rants.

Roasted squash salad with bacon and pumpkin seeds

Adapted from Cooking Light. I can't find the original recipe to link to but I believe it was in the October 2005 issue. If you’re looking to restore its lightness, go for cooking spray instead of olive oil, 1 slice of bacon instead of 3 and half the amount of dressing.  Serves 6 as a side course or 4 as a main dish.

Ingredients

4 cups cubed and peeled butternut squash (1-inch cubes), half of a medium squash

2 teaspoons olive oil

3 tablespoons sherry vinegar

1½ teaspoon Dijon mustard

3 slices of bacon

1 medium shallot, minced

10 cups mixed salad greens, about 10 ounces

Toasted pumpkin seeds for garnish

Method

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss squash with olive oil and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Place on a rimmed baking sheet and roast for 30 minutes or until tender, stirring once half way through cooking time. 

Combine vinegar, mustard and a sprinkling of salt and pepper in a large bowl. 

Cook bacon until crisp. Remove from pan and chop into pieces when cool enough to handle. In bacon fat, cook shallots until just tender. Add shallots and some of the bacon fat to vinegar mixture in bowl and combine. Add greens to bowl and toss to mix. 

Place mixed greens on plates. Top each plate with bacon and pumpkin seeds. 

Rating: A nice tasty main course for lunch along with a bowl of soup. The bacon fat helps temper the sharp tang of the vinegar and mustard and the squash mellows things out. A fairly fast fix and reasonably pantry friendly, so I might pull this one out again.

Kale cobb salad

Adapted from Rachael Ray Magazine July/August 2015

Note: The original recipe specified turkey, but I no longer see cooked turkey breasts in stores the way I used to, so I opted for chicken. Depending on the size of your bacon, you may find like I did that three slices of bacon would overwhelm the salad. If your bacon is the thin spindly type, opt for three slices, but if it’s Midwestern farmers market-cut bacon, two is plenty. Serves 2 amply as a main dish salad.

Ingredients
 ¼ cup olive oil
 ¼ cup chopped shallots
 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
 1 bunch kale, stems removed and leaves roughly chopped (Dinosaur kale works well here)
 2-3 slices bacon, cooked and roughly chopped (see note)
 2 ounces cooked turkey or chicken breast, chopped
 2 hard-cooked eggs, chopped
 1 avocado, chopped
 2 tablespoons crumbled blue cheese (I used Deer Creek’s Blue Jay since I had part of a wedge to use up)

Method
Combine olive oil, shallots, vinegar and mustard in a small bowl. Add salt and pepper to taste.  In a large bowl, combine kale leaves and all but about a tablespoon or so of the dressing. Massage in dressing to mix well and soften kale.

Put dressed kale on two plates. Top each with half the chopped bacon, turkey, eggs, avocado and blue cheese. Drizzle top with remaining dressing. Season top with cracked pepper.

Rating: Dave really liked it, possibly because it's a very sturdy salad. It didn't blow me away, but it is a good sort of salad for using up bits of things.

Radicchio salad with blue cheese dressing

From Bon Appetit, October 2025

Note: If you can’t find blanched hazelnuts, the recipe suggests walnuts, pecans or almonds can also work. If you can only find raw hazelnuts and want to blanch them, heat a quart of water in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil and add 1 tablespoon of baking soda per cup of hazelnuts. Once the fizz dies down, add raw hazelnuts and boil for 4 minutes. Then drain the hazelnuts and plunge into ice water. At this point, the skins will largely slip right off. But while it’s easy, it’s still time-consuming, because it’s amazing how many individual hazelnuts are in a half cup, so I highly recommend this as a do-ahead step, Is it absolutely necessary to remove the skins? Technically, no, they are edible. But once you try toasting them you’ll find out that the skins are then sort of half on half off and the loose skins aren’t generally the texture you’re looking for in most recipes. There are some recipes that call for skin-on, but I’d advise following whatever the recipe suggests for blanched vs. raw.

The recipe also suggests you can use a mix of the standard reddish-purple radicchio we tend to see in stores locally with the less commonly seen castelfranco radicchio, a very pretty burgundy-dappled green leaf variety, which I might have to try from seed, because gosh, that’s lovely.

Ingredients

4 ounces blue cheese (I used Gorgonzola)
½ cup olive oil
¼ cup sherry vinegar
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon maple syrup
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
½ teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
½ cup blanched whole hazelnuts
½ medium butternut squash, peeled, seeds removed and cut into 1-inch pieces
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon rosemary leaves, lightly chopped
¼ teaspoon salt
1 medium head radicchio, separated into leaves
1 medium head endive, leaves separated and torn if large
1 small shallot, thinly sliced, divided

Method

Combine blue cheese, olive oil, vinegar, syrup, Dijon mustard and ½ teaspoon kosher salt and pepper in a blender or food processor. Blend until smooth. (it will be thick-ish.) This can be made up to a couple of days ahead; it stays emulsified.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and toast blanched hazelnuts (see note) on a rimmed baking sheet for 8 to 10 minutes until nuts pick up a slight color, shaking once as it bakes.  Set aside to cool.

Leave oven at 400 degrees. Toss squash cubes with 2 tablespoons olive oil, rosemary and ¼ teaspoon salt. Arrange in a single layer on rimmed baking sheet and bake for 25 to 30 minutes until the cubes are tender and pick up a bit of color.

Combine radicchio, endive and a pinch of salt and generous grind of pepper in a large bowl. Add squash and about half each of the dressing, the hazelnuts and the shallot slices, tossing to combine well and coat leaves with dressing. Add more dressing if needed. Mound onto plates or a platter, then garnish with remaining hazelnuts and shallots. You can pass the remaining dressing on the side if you like or save for another use.

Rating: I would describe this recipe as better as a sum of its parts than any individual component. The blue cheese dressing is very unlike your standard white stuff out of a bottle. Unlike some dressings that you would marry, drench anything with or engage in other obsessive behavior, on its own it's interesting but not one you would write home about. It makes copious leftovers, and my first thought was what the heck am I going to use that for? But after trying the salad, I would say it works. The main impressions of the salad are crunchiness and really nice residual flavor.  It's a good choice paired with an otherwise mild meal, like roasted pork tenderloin and brown rice. Not the lookiest of salads, and some of the flavors might be a little assertive for less adventuresome eaters, so I don't know that I'd trot this one out for company as is.

Leftover note: I opted for cutting down the fresh ingredients to make a more consumable portion, since I figured the mixed salad wouldn't really keep well. That meant I also had some roasted squash with rosemary leftover to use to make a pizza topping with goat cheese and bacon. As for that dressing, it takes sturdy greens like kale and shaved Brussels sprouts to stand up to it. It doesn't really lend itself to being repurposed as a dip or spread.

Spring salad with savory granola

It's still early in the Minnesota growing season, so I couldn't find any of the prettier varieties of radishes, which would help in the looks department. Guess I'll have to make it again soon.

 

I made this one because I was looking for something to round out the outlines of a spring supper. I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about savory granola, but there was only one way to find out.

Little gem and savory granola salad

Adapted just slightly from “Come Hungry: Salads, Meals and Sweets for People Who Live to Eat” by Melissa Ben-Isha“Come Hungry: Salads, Meals and Sweets forPeople Who Live to Eat” by Melissa Ben-Ishay, as published in the Star TribuneStar Tribune. The original recipe called for two small heads of little gem lettuce, but I opted for what looked good at the market, store and volunteers in my garden. I’d say this serves 6-ish, depending on what else you’re serving. Savory granola needs to be made ahead to have time to cool, but it keeps well at room temperature.

Ingredients

6  cups mixed greens such as butter head, mesclun and arugula
2 Persian cucumbers thinly sliced, or six mini snack size, sliced thinly, divided
3 radishes, thinly sliced, divided
1 shallot, thinly sliced, divided
Savory granola for garnish

Dressing:
1 small shallot, finely chopped
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
½ cup olive oil
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon seasoned rice vinegar
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
¼ teaspoon ground pepper

Directions

Place lettuce in a large serving bowl along with most of the cucumbers, radishes and sliced shallots. Toss with the dressing as desired and top with remaining cucumbers, radishes and sliced shallots.

For dressing, mix chopped shallot, mustard, olive oil, lemon juice, vinegary, nutritional yeast, salt and pepper in a small bowl. This makes plenty, so count on having some leftover because the salad doesn’t need all of that to be well coated. You can make it ahead and bring it to room temperature before mixing. It stays pretty well blended.

Savory granola

1 ½ cups rolled oats
½ cup pepitas
½ cup sliced almonds
½ cup puffed quinoa
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
2 egg whites
⅓ cup olive oil
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
¼ cup ground pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.

Combine oats, pepitas, almonds, quinoa and sesame seeds in a large bowl.

In a small bowl, mix egg whites, olive oil, garlic powder, oregano, salt and pepper. Pour over oat mixture and toss to coat well. Spread on prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes. Stir, and bake for another 15 minutes or until golden brown and toasted. This makes way, way, way more than you’re going to need to serve as a salad garnish, but you won’t mind. Unless you mind having a shelf-stable inhalable snack in your house.

Rating: It has merit. The salad dressing can be made ahead and holds up well, and the savory granola falls into the category of Uncle Al Sicherman's standard response when asked how he was: "Odd, but likeable." The salad has fairly assertive flavors from the shallots, so if you're in the market for a mild-mannered supporting player, this might not be it. But if you're open to a bit of zestiness, this delivers nicely, and you can mix up the greens/veggies seasonally.

Nit: Puffed quinoa isn't available on the shelves of every grocery store. I grew tired of looking so I puffed my own. If you opt to do so, toast a very small bit at a time in a large shallow pan over medium high heat, shaking the pan as if popping popcorn, for up to a minute or just until it smells nutty. Otherwise you'll end up with something that tastes like burnt old maids in a popcorn bowl. 

Basil honey dressing

 

This is a good one to pull out if you've got a bumper crop of basil about to probably take a dive as the weather trends cooler.

Basil honey dressing

From “The Spoonriver Cookbook,” by Brenda Langton and Margaret Stuart. Spoonriver is no more, but the cookbook remains. The recipe notes that you could substitute rice or champagne vinegar.

Ingredients
1 cup olive oil
1 cup white balsamic vinegar
1 cup packed basil leaves
¼ cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon dry mustard
3 tablespoons honey

Method
Blend all ingredients in the blender. 

Rating: Very bright flavors. The honey helps balance out the vinegar and onion bite, but this can still pack a bit of a wacka-wacka punch.  This is a fairly thin dressing, which personally I don't mind, but if you're looking for something fairly viscous, this isn't it.

Similar to: The dressing on this arugula fennel salad, which gained a place in my dressing rotation, and has the advantage of staying mixed.

Pair with: This worked well on a chopped salad with grilled chicken breasts, blue cheese crumbles, tomatoes and wonton strips.

 

What else I'm cooking this week

It's peak produce-preserving time at our house, so these usual suspects came into play:

Pepperonata makes a wonderful condiment, a great pizza topping with goat cheese and works as a pasta sauce sprinkled with feta.

Ditto with cherry tomato confit, which freezes beautifully, and makes great use of all those volunteer mini tomatoes.

Summer broccoli slaw with creamy dill dressing

 

Creamy dilly summer salad dressing

Adapted from “True North Cabin Cookbook,” by Stephanie Hansen, who also is apparently afflicted/blessed by volunteer dill. I had a super abundance this spring, and it's enjoying a second wave this fall.

Ingredients
½ cup plain yogurt
⅓ cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Zest of ½ lemon
1 tablespoon water (or liquid from yogurt)
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon ground mustard
1 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

Method
Combine everything but herbs to mix well. Stir in herbs a bit at a time until well blended. 

Rating: Good for sturdy salads. The flavor is fine enough when made and used right away, but the dressing improves a bit if you've got time to make it ahead and refrigerate it a bit before using.

 

What to use it for

Summer broccoli slaw. Mix half a package of broccoli slaw mix (or to make your own chop two medium broccoli stems and 1 medium carrot into matchsticks and toss with ½ cup shredded red cabbage) with 7 sliced radishes and 1 cup broccoli florets torn into bite-size pieces. Mix with about half the creamy dill dressing. Makes about 4 servings. Nice mix of crunch and creaminess.

Quick pasta salad: Cook 1 cup orzo according to package directions. To drained, cooled orzo, add 1 cup chopped English cucumbers or snap pea pods,  ½ cup chopped red peppers, 2 chopped green onions and 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley. Mix in creamy dill dressing to taste.

For a completely different take on a dill dressing, try the dressing on this strawberry spinach salad.