Green Goddess Salad

Green Goddess Salad

May 20, 2013

After bat­ten­ing down the hatches to any­thing new on their din­ner plates for the past few months, I’m sens­ing the kids might be about to open a win­dow. Well, maybe not open­ing exactly. Maybe more like crack­ing. The prob­lem is that they egg each other on at the table. Julian will have a fork almost to his mouth and if Esme says she doesn’t like the pasta sauce he will put it down. Work­ing in our favour is Julian’s new favourite book, Lit­tle Pea by Amy Krouse Rosen­thal, about a lit­tle pea who prefers spinach to the candy he’s expected to eat for din­ner. Thank you Amy Krouse Rosen­thal for get­ting my two year old to chime, “Me love spinach!” Thank you so much. And Esme seems to be com­ing around again to try­ing new things.

So I’m act­ing fast and bring­ing back some of my own favourites. Like salad. How I’ve missed sal­ads… Tra­di­tion­al­ists among you will scan this recipe and feel like it can­not be a Green God­dess with­out tar­ragon. I hear you. But I just find tar­ragon so bossy. And look­ing at the way the Green God­dess has changed over the years I felt okay with tweak­ing it to my own lik­ing. This salad also mim­ics one I have a cou­ple of times a week from a cafe around the cor­ner from the SPC office, Cafe Bernate. They call it a Verde and it’s hardy enough to get me through my typ­i­cal 3 pm carb crav­ings. My ver­sion is really easy to make. Once you’ve steamed the aspara­gus all you have to do is some chop­ping and you’re done. For now we’re strictly a sauce on the side kind of house when it comes to the kids but I love the creamy, rich­ness of this dress­ing. So worth the bit of effort to get beyond my usual bal­samic and olive oil combo. 

Pho­tos by Maya Vis­nyei 

Print
Green Goddess Salad

Ingredients

  • For the salad:
  • 2 or 3 hand­fuls of Boston or Bibb let­tuce
  • 1/2 avo­cado
  • 1/2 Eng­lish cucum­ber
  • 1/2 bunch (maybe 6 or 7 stalks) of aspara­gus
  • 1 hand­ful of cherry toma­toes
  • 1/4 cup feta cheese, crumbled
  • For the dressing:
  • 1/2 avo­cado
  • 3/4 cup but­ter­milk
  • 2 Tbsp chives, basil (you could use tar­ragon, dill, pars­ley, etc)
  • 3 tsp white wine vine­gar
  • 1 tsp anchovy paste
  • 1 cup scallions

Method

Put all of the dress­ing ingre­di­ents in a blender and whiz away

Have a taste and see if it needs a bit more but­ter­milk to thin it out or a splash more vine­gar to brighten it up.

It's meant to be quite creamy but feel free to adjust it to your likeness.

Trim the tough ends off of your aspara­gus and steam them for 3 to 5 min­utes.

Plunge them in cold or ice water to stop them from cook­ing — and to keep them super green — once they're just tender.

Wash and dry all of your other veg­gies.

Tear and arrange your let­tuce on a large plat­ter or on each plate — as you like.

Take your half, pit­ted avo­cado in one hand and score the flesh into cubes.

You can just use a table knife.

Then run your knife under the flesh to pop out the lit­tle squares of avo­cado.

Scat­ter them across the lettuce.

Cut up the aspara­gus into small pieces, about 2 inch lengths.

Toss those on.

Scat­ter the cucum­ber and toma­toes over your salad. Slightly dress the salad before cov­er­ing in feta.

 

 

 

Tags SaladAvocadofreshSummertomatoescucumber
Category SummerLunchBy IngredientVegetablesAppetizersBy SeasonBy Meal Type

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