🥗 Salad Recipes — Fresh & Delicious
Fresh and delicious salad recipes — from classic Shopska to modern green salads. Healthy and light food for every day.
Napa Cabbage Kimchi
Korea's essential side dish: napa cabbage salted until supple, rubbed leaf by leaf with a paste of Korean chilli flakes, garlic, ginger and fish sauce, then left to ferment into a sour, fizzy, deeply savoury pickle.
Seven-Layer Salad
The American party salad built in a glass bowl — lettuce, red onion, frozen peas, egg, a sealing layer of creamy dressing, cheddar and bacon — made the day before so the layers set.
Goma-ae
The Japanese side dish of blanched spinach in a sweet, nutty dressing of freshly toasted and ground sesame seeds with soy sauce and sugar; small, quick and served cold or at room temperature.
Insalata di Rinforzo
The Neapolitan Christmas Eve salad of boiled cauliflower with pickled peppers, olives, capers and anchovies in a sharp dressing, named 'reinforcement' because it is topped up and eaten right through the holidays.
Thai Mango Salad
The Thai salad of firm, sour mango cut into thin strips and tossed with shallot, chilli, mint and coriander in a lime and fish sauce dressing, then topped with roasted peanuts.
Pkhali
Georgian vegetable pâté — blanched spinach pounded with walnuts, garlic, coriander and blue fenugreek, shaped into balls and studded with pomegranate seeds; served cold among the starters of a Georgian feast.
Zaalouk
The Moroccan cooked salad of aubergine and tomato simmered with garlic, cumin and paprika until jammy, finished with lemon, coriander and olive oil and eaten warm or cool as one of the salads that open a meal.
Roasted Pumpkin Salad with Feta
An autumn salad of pumpkin and red onion roasted until caramelised at the edges, served warm over rocket with crumbled feta, toasted pumpkin seeds and a balsamic dressing.
Shaved Brussels Sprout Salad
Raw Brussels sprouts shaved paper-thin and softened in a lemon and mustard dressing, with apple, dried cranberries and toasted hazelnuts: a crisp winter salad that tastes nothing like boiled sprouts.
Chef's Salad
The American lunch-counter salad — crisp lettuce under rows of ham, turkey and Swiss cheese cut into matchsticks, with boiled egg, tomato and cucumber and a Thousand Island dressing on the side.
Dakos
The Cretan meze — a hard barley rusk softened under grated ripe tomato, crumbled feta, oregano and a generous pour of olive oil, which the rusk drinks up as it sits.
Japanese Potato Salad
The potato salad of Japanese bento boxes and izakaya menus — half-mashed potato seasoned hot with rice vinegar, then folded with cucumber, carrot, egg and ham in rich Japanese mayonnaise.
Buddha Bowl
A one-bowl meal built in sections — quinoa, spice-roasted sweet potato and chickpeas, raw red cabbage, carrot, spinach and avocado — pulled together by a lemon and garlic tahini dressing.
Antipasto Salad
The Italian-American deli salad — crisp romaine heaped with salami, provolone, artichoke hearts, roasted peppers, olives and pickled peppers in an oregano vinaigrette: an antipasto platter in a bowl.
Sicilian Orange Salad
Insalata di arance, the Sicilian winter salad — sliced oranges with red onion, black olives, oregano and good olive oil, where salt and oil against sweet citrus are the whole point.
Mizeria
Poland's cucumber salad — thin slices salted and squeezed, then folded into sour cream with dill and a touch of lemon and sugar; the summer side dish of a Polish Sunday dinner.
Asparagus Salad with Egg and Radishes
A spring salad of green asparagus blanched just tender, with radishes, rocket and chopped boiled egg in a lemon and mustard vinaigrette; the ice bath after blanching keeps the spears bright green and crisp.
Mimosa Salad
The Soviet New Year layered salad — tinned fish, potato, carrot, cheese and egg white under thin coats of mayonnaise, finished with grated yolk that looks like the yellow mimosa flowers it is named after.
Green Bean Salad with Garlic and Dill
A Bulgarian summer salad of green beans boiled just tender and dressed while still warm with crushed garlic, sunflower oil, vinegar and plenty of dill; the warm beans soak up the garlic as they cool.
Salade de Chèvre Chaud
The French bistro starter — rounds of goat's cheese grilled on toasted baguette with honey and thyme until soft and browned, then set warm on dressed leaves with walnuts.
Sauerkraut Salad
The Bulgarian winter salad from the sauerkraut barrel — whole-leaf sauerkraut cut into fine ribbons and dressed with sunflower oil reddened with sweet and hot paprika; a fixture of the table from Christmas Eve until spring.
Fruit Salad
An autumn fruit salad of apple, pear, grapes, orange, kiwi and pomegranate in a honey and lemon dressing made with the oranges' own juice, which also keeps the cut fruit from browning.
Texas Caviar
A Texan salad of black-eyed peas, peppers, onion and sweetcorn marinated in a cumin vinaigrette, eaten as a side or scooped up as a dip. In the American South, black-eyed peas are eaten on New Year's Day for luck.
Smoked Salmon Salad
Folds of smoked salmon over leaves, cucumber and avocado with capers, red onion and dill, in a sharp lemon and mustard dressing that cuts through the richness of the fish.