spinach salad...

Hello everyone...

I harvested a good big basket of my last sowing of spinach last night. I had grown it under row cover until a couple days ago and it was looking amazing so time to harvest before this bizarre September heat wave caused it to bolt.

We love spinach in many ways but our favourite is a simple spinach salad with a homemade creamy garlic dressing. Lets get started...

Beautiful just picked spinach.

I pick the larger leaves off the stems as we find them too coarse to eat. The smaller leaves go in whole. Dump the lot into the sink and give it a really good rinse.

I use a salad spinner to dry the leaves. I generally spin twice, dumping out the water in between. The leaves will not be completely dry but good enough for what we want. 

Boil up a couple of eggs until just hard boiled. These lovelies are from our hens. In order to be able to peel them cleanly it is easier if they are a few days old. Really fresh eggs do not peel very well at all.

The remaining salad ingredients are sliced button mushrooms, the above noted hard boiled eggs, sliced and some grated cheese. Use a fairly course grater for nice shreds of cheese. 

Now for the dressing. In a blender crack one fresh large egg. Add about 1 tablespoon of granulated sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder, 2 oz of white vinegar or white wine vinegar and 7 oz of canola oil. Sometimes if I want a bit of a different taste I will vary the type of vinegar I use such as one of the herbal vinegars that I make.

Whiz away until it is really well blended. It will be slightly thick and taste utterly delicious. Sweet but with a good hit of garlic.

I generally put the spinach leaves into a very large bowl and add a few tablespoons of the dressing to dress the leaves before I add the remaining ingredients. You want a nice thin coating to the leaves...definitely not sopping in dressing. Add the remaining ingredients, another tablespoon or so of the dressing and gently toss. The one addition I sometimes use is freshly made croutons but did not use them this time.

Now sit down and enjoy. We had this with some simple grilled chicken and fresh potatoes from the garden. The remaining dressing will keep for quite some time in a closed container in the refrigerator. Just shake briskly before you use it again. Although this is our favourite dressing for spinach salad it would certainly work well on any robust leaf salad such as romaine.

Do give it a try and let me know what you think. 

Thanks so much for stopping by. Have a great day.

Cheers...  Melanie