A NEW LEAF

Elevate summer salads from boring to brilliant with these tips, writes Dan Stock

Long gone are the days where it was the unsung side act to the main meal: summer means it’s time to make friends with salad.

Taste magazine food director Michelle Southan says salads are the most versatile summer dish, easy to create, filled with boundless variations, full of colour and easy to jam-pack with vegetables.

“Salads no longer are just the side, they can be the meal itself,” she says.

“Add some protein to pack out meals from barbecued meats, fried haloumi or cheese, lentils and pulses and even a poached egg.”

She says it’s easy to turn a salad from boring into brilliant with a few simple rules. Adding crunch to every salad is the key — think toasted nuts or seeds or even oven-baked croutons.

“My second trick is to add a pickled vegetable. This sounds like a task but can take as little as 10 minutes,” she says.

Toss some red onion in vinegar — white wine or apple — with sugar and salt and set aside, that’s it.

“If you really want to get creative add a few dried currants to the pickling liquid to add extra sweetness.”

For those wanting to take their salad game to the next level this summer, Michelle suggests adding some edible flowers to your next creations (“not only do they look stunning but they give you a great new range of flavours”); edamame (“they are super easy to get in the supermarket now and are delicious podded into a salad”); or even fruit (“red grapes or grilled peaches work wonders with bitter leaves such as radicchio and watercress”).

“And it wouldn’t be an Aussie summer without prawns, and they make a great, easy addition to a salad!”