The Dedon House Salad

Salad is part of our dinner every night, but I keep it pretty simple on most nights. You might call it the “Dedon House Salad”. Start with fresh greens–lettuce, spinach and/or arugula are favorites. Then I add onions, radishes, tomatoes, avocado, cucumber, red peppers….whatever we have.

For the House Salad dressing, I use a method I learned from an Adelle Davis book years ago. It’s very simple, tastes fresh, and is truly as fast as opening a bottle of commercial dressing that contains who-knows-what.

I toss everything with a bit of olive oil. It doesn’t take much olive oil; if you toss it well, the lettuce leaves will be coated. Then I add salt and pepper and a bit of vinegar or lemon juice and toss again. Coating the lettuce leaves with olive oil before adding the vinegar helps to keep them from getting wilted too quickly.

Last night’s salad was simply lettuce, radishes and bits of avocado tossed with olive oil and white balsamic vinegar.

If I feel like getting “fancy”, I might add a bit of dijon mustard and minced shallots or garlic to the vinegar before adding it to the salad. Most nights, though, I keep it simple.

Update April 29, 2010:

Kalyn posted a beautiful salad on her blog,  Kalyn’s Kitchen, and it included peperoncini peppers. Bob loves peperoncinis, but I had never thought of adding them to a salad. So here is another version of “The Dedon House Salad”. It’s the same simple dressing with red leaf lettuce, peperoncini peppers, red peppers, and red onions. Quite tasty!

Here’s how it looked before I tossed it with the oil and vinegar: