Recipes
Basic Italian Salad |
About this recipe
If you’re going to be a real Italian, you need to know how to make a salad. Back home, everyone has a garden, which means fresh lettuce available for every meal. We eat lots of salad (you should too).
Instructions
In a large salad bowl, mix together:
- 2 or 3 types of lettuce (romaine, endive, escarole, Boston, iceberg, leaf, or butter),
- celery stalks plus the leafy celery hearts (cut up),
- purple/Italian onion (sliced thick),
- cucumber (or bell pepper),
- some nice tomatoes (also cut up).
Then add:
- a peeled and cut-up orange,
- maybe some black or green olives.
Drizzle olive oil over lettuce to coat. Then add salt and pepper and toss with your hands (Italian-style). Now it’s time to add some balsamic or red wine vinegar to taste. Keep tossing, tasting, and adding vinegar until you’ve got it just right.
Notes
- Instead of an orange, you can use good red grapes (or a little of both).
- Don’t be afraid to mix with your hands—you touched the onion, didn’t you?
- I also like to add some sliced carrot, but it got rejected as part of the official recipe.
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You definitely don’t put in fresh mushrooms or those little miniature corn cobs—you’ve got to be kidding.
