Jamie’s America is another cookbook I bought because (a) it was Jamie and I like his books, and (b) it looked to have a really interesting selection of recipes, but somehow I just never managed to use it. Since I was making a range of different salads and this was near the beginning of the book I decided to make it. To be honest it was a bit of a disappointment, it was pleasant but nothing special (whereas Jamies cucumber salad in my previous post was really tasty). Maybe it would work better with frisee ? I’d used romaine lettuce which may not have had a strong enough flavour. This book gets great reviews and Jamie is normally very good on salads so I’m not too sure what happened here.
Note as I entered the ingredients and instructions I realised I’d forgotten to add the blue cheese. I’ll try again with frisee and all his ingredients next time!
Ingredients
- 4 large handfuls of salad greens (eg. fresee, romaine, arugula, watercress, baby spinach)
- 2 large handfuls of seedless green or red grapes, halved
- 3 medium celery stalks, trimmed
- 2 large handfuls of walnuts (approx 100g), roughly chopped
- Small bunch of flat leaf parsley
- 1 red apple
- 150g blue cheese (dolcelatte)
for the dressing
- 1 heaped tsp Dijon mustard
- 2 tbsp red or white wine vinegar
- Good quality extra virgin olive oil
- 1 heaped tbsp natural yogurt
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
- Toss together salad greens and grapes. Peel outer layer from celery. Slice at an angle then add to greens and grapes.
- Toast walnuts in a dry frying pan, shaking every 25 seconds. Watch them closely to make sure they don’t burn.
- Cut off tough ends of parsley stems and discard. Finely chop remaining stems and save them for the dressing. Chop the leaves and add to the salad greens. Add chopped parsley to rest of dressing ingredients — add enough olive oil to equal about three times the amount of the combined mustard and vinegar (in other words the acidic part of the dressing). Add the yogurt, salt and pepper and either whisk together the dressing or put everything in a jar and shake it up until the dressing has emulsified.
- Drizzle dressing over salad leaves. Slice apple into matchsticks (or thin slices, which is what I did) and scatter over the salad. Add toasted walnuts and use hands or tongs to mix everything together.
- Transfer salad to platter, piling grapes and walnuts on top. Scatter bits of blue cheese over everything. Finish with a quick drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.
100 Cook Books 