I love salad. I’ve loved salad since I was young, when my mom used to take me to the Ponderosa Steak House and I’d get mounds and mounds of salad from their salad bar.

Of course, today I’ve grown up and I like making my own special salads. I thought I’d document how one comes together.

Choose a flavor profile

What’s this going to be like? It all starts with the dressing. For mine tonight, I wanted lemon, but lemon can overpower big salads. I often soften my use of lemon with honey mustard or plain honey. Honey it was tonight.

Believe it or not, make your dressing first. Mine got one large garlic clove, chopped, plus the lemon zest plus juice. Salt, pepper. It’s important for the salt to hit the garlic (or shallot if you use that). It draws out the flavor. I whisked the lemony stuff with EVOO and about 1/4 of a ripe avocado. It gave the dressing body and then I let it sit for awhile.

What’s going to crunch?

Every salad I make usually has a crunchy component. It can be seeds, croutons, or nuts. This time around I chose to use up an old half-loaf of Billy Bread. I cut it up after “refreshing it” in the microwave. Billy Bread is among the best bread you can buy in Richmond, VA, but it goes stale really fast. I covered the crust with cold water, then microwaved it in its paper bag for 35 seconds in the microwave. The moisture will steam the bread from the inside, making it much better. I took away hard crusty sections, then made my cubes. They went into hot EVOO, then I added a garlic clove and crushed herbs: thyme and oregano. Kosher salt. They brown up and get color by 8-9 minutes. I just took the pan off the heat when I was done.

What vegetables fit?

Now that two components were selected, I had to pick and base and the special vegetables. I got a salad mixture from the store that was bland, but I it’s a good foil for special ingredients. Tomato and garlic is good, so I made wedges from a salad tomato. I boiled a yellow beet that was left over, and used the same boiling pot to soften some young baby carrots and a few spears of asparagus. The 5 minute cooking of carrot just made them tender enough, and maybe even heightened their sweetness.

The asparagus got 3 minutes in the water, and then on a plate, I “marinated” these two vegetables in sherry vinegar for a different flavor profile.

You already know I used some avocado. It gives a nice silky contrast to the crispy croutons.

I scooped them out after discarding the pit using my index finger. Placed flat on the board, they’re easier to chop into smaller pieces.

After 45 minutes, the beet root was ready.

I cut this up too. If I had more time, I’d made little diced cubes out of everything, but who cares. This is rustic, and the flavor is all the same.

After everything was assembled, I began thinking about the composition of the salad. There’s the “tossed” variety, then the “composed” variety. A choice of non-vegetables would make the decision for me.

Non-vegetable additions

I picked up a great Vermont cherrywood-smoked mozzarella cheese. I cut that into pieces, and also picked up some nitrate-free, uncured pepperoni slices. I think everything was about assembled.

Assembly

The smaller things got mixed in a bowl with tongs with the lettuce and dressing: beet and avocado. I placed one-half of this mixture on the dinner plates, then added tomato slices on top of the lettuce bed before covering it up again. This way the tomatoes were “hidden.” At this point, as you might have noticed from the picture above, I salted my vegetables. With salt added to the dressing, the salty flavors get mixed throughout. Salting things like tomatoes and beets brings out their flavors.

So, this became a mostly composed salad. On top I placed the carrots, asparagus, and then the cheese, and finally the pepperoni. And of course, croutons. It was a meal. You may elect to mix your croutons with the lettuce if they were as “robust” and sturdy as ours, from the Billy Bread. It all worked out.

Thanks for reading about our salad experience. Try out your own soon! For all the photos, visit the Flickr collection.