Salad Days

I've been bad, I know. Who knows what I was thinking baking all those tarts and cheesecakes one after the other. So it's a salad today instead. What I did last night was really put together odds and ends from my fridge to make dinner. But these do happen to be my favorite salad ingredients and the whole combination worked so well that you should totally know about it.

It started with steamed corn. I put corn in a microwave safe bowl, added a little water and cooked on high for 2 minutes. With the corn done steaming and now cooling, I looked into the fridge for other ideas.

To me, a salad needs a green leaf. I do salads without greens sometimes but nothing feels as fresh as a heap of lettuce. My favorite type is the iceberg and that's the one that goes in this salad. To washed lettuce torn into bite sized pieces, I added the corn, a chopped tomato and some cubed paneer.

Then I made vinaigrette. Now my salad dressing is very different from the traditional recipes. Most people will tell you to make it with three parts oil to one part vinegar. But I just like it tangier. So I poured a tablespoon each of olive oil and white wine vinegar in a bowl. Added a large pinch of sea salt and a sprinkle of pepper, then beat everything with a fork to emulsify the dressing.

Once I'd poured the dressing onto the salad and tossed everything, I felt that the salad needed another texture, maybe a bit of crunch. So what you see scattered around on top of salad is a small bag of mixed nuts. Add it after you toss the salad with the dressing, in fact just before eating, so it keeps crunchy to the end.