No-Color-Cept-Green Salad
Mom’s recipe
- 3 stalks of green onions
- 3 stalks of celery
- 1 can of artichoke hearts
- 1 can of heart of palm
- Feta cheese—-crumbled
- 1 bunch of red leaf or green leaf or romaine (or any combination)
Wash each leaf thoroughly and lay each one spread-out on a bath towel. Add a layer of paper towel when the first layer covers the towel. Keep washing and layering until all the lettuce is clean. Starting with one end of the towel, roll it to the other end, rolling up everything. Fold the entire roll in half. Using the sprayer attachment of your faucet, shoot water on this bundle, but don’t drench the entire thing. Place in your refrigerator…the best place is the salad crisper. For some reason this method makes the salad crispier and better tasting. It can stay in the frig a couple of days or one hour.
Green onion and celery can be tricky in a salad….most people don’t want to know they are eating either; they are more apt to say…”I hate celery” and “I don’t want to eat onion” than “Wow, this salad tastes amazing!” Strategic slicing is imperative. For the green onion, peel away the dry, outside layer of the stalk. With a very sharp knife cut very thin slices of the bulb…I’m talking poster board thickness thin. Cut working your way up into the green stalk; this is the point when the slices can be about 1/8 inch thick. Stop cutting when you think, “I wouldn’t eat that.”
Celery must be prepped before cutting. I learned this tip from a former roommate’s mom who served every meal with cloth napkins. Celery needs to be stripped—literally. At the top of the stalk, peel the outer layer that radiates outward from top to bottom. Do this from one side of the radius to the other. Clean the inside of the celery and lay it on a cutting surface. Split the stalk lengthwise into three strips by pulling your knife down the stalk like you would draw a line down a piece of paper. Now, dice the strips into fine pieces. Your celery contribution to the salad will be crunchy, but uncelery-like.
Artichoke is like a schizophrenic person—-one plant, but two different personalities. One end is soft and mushy when you chop it into pieces. The other gets tough and nasty. Peal away a couple of the outer leaves of the “top” of the choke. Next, with a very sharp knife (serrated works best with this bugger), slice the choke into very thin strips. Cut toward the “bottom” until it looks “hairy”. Turn the remaining part upside down and chop away.
Heart of palm is the perfect salad vegetable….easy to cut and great to taste in the mix. Caution: Some stalks are tough at one end. Chop up about half a can.
Add crumbled Feta to the top, and you are ready to toss with dressing. Where in the world did the word dressing for that part of the salad come from? I require two things for a dressing: Italian and toss with hands a minute or two before serving.
