Monday, October 15, 2012

Autumn Salad with Maple Cider Vinaigrette and Sugar Curried Walnuts

This salad is wonderful and can be adapted slightly based on greens available. It has been a couple years since I've made this salad but it was just as good as I remembered. While the recipe calls for spinach, I used a premixed bag of baby lettuces which worked out great. The recipe also calls for blue cheese, but I'm weird about the texture, flavor and "blueness" of blue cheese and opted to use goat cheese instead. I have had this salad with blue cheese before and it was delicious, so it's your preference. Seeing as how I forgot to buy a red onion, I substituted some green onion which worked out nicely too. The final adaption I made tonight was using white wine vinegar in place of cider vinegar because, well, it seems I was out.

Hmmm... seems I actually made an entirely different salad tonight!

So, here is the recipe as it was written but feel free to adapt! Enjoy!

Salad
10 oz or more baby spinach (use more)
1 ripe pear, cored and thinly sliced
1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced OR 3 green onions chopped
4 oz crumbled blue cheese

Sugar Curried Walnuts
1 cup walnuts
2 TBS butter, melted
3 TBS sugar
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp curry powder
1/8 tsp salt and pepper

Toss walnuts in melted butter. Stir together sugar and remaining dry ingredients. Sprinkle over walnuts and toss to coat. Spread onto nonstick aluminum foil-lined pan. Back at 350 for 10 minutes.

Maple Cider Vinaigrette
1/3 cup cider vinegar
2 TBS maple syrup
1 TBS Dijon mustard
1/8 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
2/3 cup olive oil (or a little less)

Once the walnuts cool a little bit, sprinkle them over the salad.

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