Fun with Salad

Photos by the Olympus Stylus 770 SW

(Click here for hi-res versions)

It was a brutally hot Memorial Day weekend, and after all that meat on Saturday, I knew we had to increase our veggie quotient and eat something a bit more healthy and refreshing.

Here we’ve got some grilled skirt steak that I marinated in a Vietnamese-style marinade overnight, plus some King Oyster mushrooms that have been sliced lengthwise and grilled with a soy/butter glaze.

This salad has romaine lettuce, hearts of napa cabbage, garlic scapes, cherry tomatoes, english cucumbers, red onion, red bell pepper and rice noodles. The dressing is based on “Thai Beef Salad” from Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet

Salad presented with sliced skirt steak, king oyster mushrooms, blanched Gai Lan tips, peanut garnish.

Closeup

If you grow chives in your herb garden and you let them grow too high, they will start to flower. But this is not a problem, because the flowers are actually edible, and they have a very strong oniony flavor. So you’ll want a sweeter-style salad dressing if you use them.

Chive flower closeup

Here we’ve got a mesclun and spinach salad with supremed graprefruit slices, in a garlic/mustard/honey vinaigrette, with pignoli nuts.

Closeup of salad using chopped chive flowers as garnish.