Harvest Apple Salad

It's apple season!  I love being able to get fresh apples.  Not the almost crispy ones they sell in the stores in June, the ones that are truly crisp and juicy and you just know they were picked that day.  Yum!  Not far from our home there's a place called Lilly Orchard.  Now, when I was a kid it was really an orchard.  Then, an exclusive private school bought the land and built, yup, a school.  They kept the apple store though I'm not certain where they get all of the apples.  We stopped there on the way home from a funeral.  I had every intention of making a waldorf salad.


Then, as usual, fate intervened.  My celery was at work so a waldorf salad was out of the question.  Just that day I'd seen a salad on Annie's Eats.  It had apples in it.  But, it didn't sound like something I wanted to make right then.  But, MomChef's pasta sauce was going to be quick and I needed a quick salad that used apples.  And, I had all the ingredients. There you go.  Fate.


What did we think?  Well, you'll get the idea if I tell you we made the same salad again the next night.  And, if I'd had more apples we'd have made it a third time.  YUM!  I changed out Annie's feta cheese for blue cheese.  We love both but I wanted blue...  The almonds were so good that Connie's asked if I can make them just for snacking.  And, the best thing - Connie's not a huge fan of fruit but he loved this.  If you'd like to see the original salad, here's a link to the recipe on Annie's site.  While you're there, I hope you'll wander around and get some more wonderful ideas like I do.

Harvest Apple Salad

Ingredients:



For the dressing:

¼ c finely minced sweet onion

3 T red wine vinegar (I was out of cider which the original recipe called for)

3 T white wine or champagne vinegar

2 T sesame seeds

Pinch of paprika

2 T sugar

½ c extra virgin olive oil



For the almonds:

2 T unsalted butter

¾ c sliced or slivered almonds

1 T sugar



For the salad:

10 oz. baby spinach leaves, washed and dried

2 medium apples, cored and thinly sliced

4 oz. crumbled blue cheese

Directions:

Whisk all the dressing ingredients except for the oil together. 

Pour the oil in in a steady stream, whisking as you pour. 

For the almonds, heat the butter in a small skillet.  When it's melted, add the almonds.  Cook, stirring frequently, until the almonds have browned nicely.  Sprinkle the sugar over the almonds and stir, stir, stir.  When you've got a nice caramel glaze on the almonds, remove them from the heat and put them on a plate to cool. 

To put the salads together, mound some spinach on each salad plate.   Top it with sliced apples. 

Then, drizzle some dressing over the salads. 

Top them with the crumbled blue cheese and the almonds.

adapted from Annie's Eats

Matt's Spinach Salad

The first time my youngest stepson had this salad he about swooned.  Now, swoon probably isn't a great word to apply to a mid-20's young man.  But, it's the closest description I can come up with.  I'll never again have a spinach salad without thinking about Matt.  He's the kid who'll eat anything but beans.  The first time we took him to a restaurant after I'd started dating his dad, he ordered lamb.  I was in shock.  A teenager who ordered lamb.  This is a kid who knows how to eat!  So, here's to you Matt!


My mother's mother used to make hot bacon salad dressing.  Didn't almost everyone's grandmother?  But, Matt didn't remember ever having it before.  To me it was an old family recipe that I rarely made because it was so wicked.  Now, I mostly make it with olive oil to keep away from the bad fat from bacon.  I still like to put a bit of bacon in the salad though.  When I made this, I had a container of diced pancetta that either needed to be used or frozen.  Since I'm trying to take out of the freezer rather than put in, into the dressing it went.


Matt's Spinach Salad
serves 4


Ingredients:
8 oz box button mushrooms, sliced
olive oil
4 eggs, hardcooked
2 large onions, thinly sliced
1 T flour
4-8 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled (number depends on how wicked you want to be!)
bag of baby spinach
olive oil
red wine vinegar
sugar
celery seeds

Directions:
Saute the mushrooms in a little olive oil. 

Saute the onions in another pan.  You can do both in the same pan but I don't like the way the moisture from the mushrooms tends to keep the onions from browning a bit.  When the onions are nicely softened and a bit brown, mix the mushrooms in then add about a tablespoon more of olive oil to the skillet.  (Here's where I tossed in the package of diced pancetta.) 

Let it heat through, then sprinkle the flour over everything.  Stir well and allow the flour to cook for a few minutes.  Add the rest of the dressing ingredients:  vinegar, sugar and celery seeds.  I confess I didn't measure here...  Once the dressing is sweet/sour to your taste, allow it to thicken. 

Now, it's time to put the salads together.  Put a bed of spinach on each plate.  Top it with the onion and mushroom dressing.  The put a sliced hardcooked egg on each salad and top with crumbled bacon.  You can see in my photo that I did mine with the egg below the onions and mushrooms.  It just doesn't look as pretty!