Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Strawberry And Spinach Salad With Guava Nectar Vinaigrette

There's a checker at my local Ralphs who is very friendly. As she scans your items, she surveys the lot and always asks, "How are you going to use the X?" or "Does all of this go together?" or "Yum, I like Y and Z." I think that's pretty great. I'm sure she's bored to tears, so a bit of conversation helps the day to pass. I'm also pleased that she's willing to engage customers in conversation. I always hated working retail, but I like to think that I tried not to inflict my contempt for the work on the customers.

     At any rate, the checker liked the fact I was paring walnuts, strawberries, spinach and guava nectar into a salad. She said it sounded good. While she may say that to everyone, it made me feel all squishy and warm inside. That's a lot better than the sticks and stones most people hurl at one another in this crazy town.

      This salad is darn near identical to the pear and spinach salad I made. I just wanted to see if I could get strawberries to work in a salad. They did and there was much rejoicing. For my next few salads I will try to get away from spinach.

     The reason why I've been using it so much is that it's affordable at 89 cents a bunch. The packaged baby arugula or mixed greens at Ralphs is almost $5. That's kind of a lot for salad. I understand the strategy, though. Lots of people eat salads to be healthy, so why not cash in? I've been told that other varieties of greens can be had for cheap at Trader Joe's or Kosher markets (like Glatt), so I'll see what I can do.

Strawberry And Spinach Salad With Guava Nectar Vinaigrette

Yield4 servings

Ingredients

1 bunch of spinach leaves
16 strawberries, each cut into 6 wedges
¼ cup guava nectar (I use Kerns)
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon minced shallots
Kosher salt and black pepper to taste
½ cup coarsely chopped walnuts, toasted

Directions
1. In a small bowl, add the honey. Next, whisk together each ingredient one at a time. The ingredients include the guava nectar, vinegar, oil, honey, shallots, salt and pepper.

2. Toss spinach, strawberries and walnuts in a large bowl with vinaigrette.

Notes
Be careful not to burn the walnuts when roasting them. They will taste bitter if you do.
The spinach leaves can be pretty big, so a rough chop will do to reduce the leaves to a more manageable size.

1 comment:

  1. Holy heck! This is your wife and you can prepare this for us anytime, mister!

    ReplyDelete