Kale salad with dates & parm
Look ma, no dressing.
I was visiting my mom before she left for a long trip and it was my job to use up every last thing in the fridge. The day before we left, there were fully empty shelves, but then it was time to make lunch.
Blindly, hungrily, I chopped and chucked some things into a bowl. Only after we ate to the song of my mom’s mmhmmming did I notice that the salad only used my 40 forever ingredients. These trusty ingredients, coming through yet again.
That salad is today’s recipe, which has so many good sides. You really can make it for lunch in 15 minutes. It will keep you full. You don’t have to cook a thing. It’s made in one big bowl. You don’t have to separately stir together a dressing! You can eat it right away or stash it in the fridge for tomorrow, or three days from now. It has it all: crunch, salt, sweetness, creaminess, spice, protein, spunk.
After lots of research for this recipe, I found that tossing leaves in oil followed by lemon makes a brighter salad because the lemon hits your tongue first. (It’s also recommended by James Beard, Marcella Hazan, Deborah Madison and Judy Rodgers.) The caveats are your leaves will wilt faster than if lemon came first — eat up ! — and with tough greens like kale, you might want to season with lemon first to soften the leaves.
This method also prevents over- or under-slicking the greens and makes it easier to adjust the final result. If the salad doesn’t taste quite right yet, the answer is probably not both oil and lemon because they offer such opposite qualities. So instead of adding your dressing that you diligently shook or whisked together, add just what your salad needs. Too tangy? Add oil. Dull? Add lemon (and salt). Easy, happy salad.
More salads that get seasoned, not dressed:
