Salads, salads and more salads. I believe I mentioned before that whenever my family has an impromptu dinner, I get asked to bring salad. This is mostly because my husband and I are quite picky about our salads, and so if we make it, we know we'll like it.
This happened last week, and after asking the spouse what he wanted to eat, he said "do that one with the blood oranges". Needless to say, I hadn't any clue which one he was talking about, so I set to finding a good arugula and blood orange recipe. None of the ones I found appealed to me, so I threw all caution to the wind and made up my own recipe. Here it is:
Arugula & Blood Orange Salad with Mint Vinaigrette
Salad Ingredients
spiced almonds (see below)
parsley, without stems and coarsely chopped
arugula
3-4 blood oranges, peeled and pieced
half a fennel, sliced paper-thin (either use a mandolin, or super-sharp knife/shaver)
manchego cheese, shaved (easier to do when quite cold)
Spiced Almonds
1/2 tablespoon olive oil2 tablespoons pimenton/smoked paprika
1 cup almonds slivered
To spice the almonds, warm up the oil on a frying pan to medium-high. Once hot, toss the almonds until slightly toasted and completely covered in the oil. Then sprinkle the pimenton over so the almonds are uniformly covered. (This may not need all 2 tbsp. of the pimenton) Let cool before adding to salad.
Mint Vinaigrette
2 tablespoons finely chopped mint1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
pinch of salt
1/4 cup olive oil
I usually make my dressings by putting them in a tight-seal tupperware and then shaking the hell out of them. If you're all fancy and gadget-philic, you can use a hand blender to get these ingredients smooth and supermixed. Either way, the dressing tastes best if you let it sit blended for a little while, to let the flavours marry.
Drizzle the vinaigrette over the assembled salad, and toss with gusto. You're done!
