|| 17 March 2016

Arugula, Pear & Wild Violet Salad

I love arugula — the peppery salad lettuce that I usually call by its French name roquette. My arugula is now in bloom. Pretty white flowers, though flavor is milder than earlier in the season. Still tasty for salads.

A favorite salad is pear, feta and endive. But this spring, with two big patches of arugula producing in abundance, I have been substituting a mix of supermarket romaine and my homegrown arugula for endive. And, as you can see from the photo above, I have added wild violets to make it pretty. (Yes, wild violets are edible.) Bosc pears are the ones I prefer for this salad, and my supermarket recently had bags of them on sale.

The salad is simple. On a bed of romaine and arugula, I crumble feta cheese and add small cubes of pear. I have some black mission fig balsamic vinegar that works beautifully with roasted walnut oil as a dressing. (In the photo, what looks a little like grilled fish chunks is actually pear drizzled with balsamic.)

In the original Chic & Slim I wrote about how with a good, flavorful oil, you will actually need less to give taste to your salad. When I first made this salad, I sprinkled on one teaspoon of the black fig balsamic and two teaspoons of the very flavorful La Tourangelle roasted walnut oil. Too much. I cut the walnut oil back to one teaspoon of oil and it was just right. (Note: this salad also works well with a good olive oil, but does not have the nutty flavor the walnut oil gives it.)

Last December one of the Chic & Slim readers sent me a lovely box of French food items to try. The assortment included a very nice French sea salt. (Merci encore, Susan) A pinch of Sel Guérande accents all the flavors of the salad beautifully.

be chic, stay slim — Anne Barone

 

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