Kumquat Salad
Today I wanted to share with you a salad that I created “on the fly” to go with last night’s dinner. It was zesty and fresh tasting, I loved it! I used things that I had on hand and created a citrusy salad that was a great accompaniment to our meal and used several different items from my CSA box!
The star of the recipe is the kumquat, a small relative of the orange that grows on a shrub and is packed with vitamin C. Kumquats can be eaten as is, they can be used as a cocktail garnish, a flavor addition for green or black tea, or sliced into salads (which I did with this recipe here).
Also from our fabulous Sage Mountain Farm CSA box I used the gourmet salad mix and green garlic. I really like Sage Mountain Farm’s gourmet salad mix. It is my favorite of our salad mixes. The flavor is mild; it is a neutral background for many flavor profiles. The best part of the gourmet salad mix is the texture, smooth and buttery, almost velvety in your mouth. Can you tell I eat a lot of salad? It is not, as one of my favorite comics Jim Gaffigan says, just a “bag of yard work”. Salad can be a stand-alone meal or a complementary starter or side dish. It is a great way to eat your greens!
Kumquat Salad
1 bag organic gourmet salad mix (or any lettuce, for that matter)
1 green garlic, thinly sliced from the white end up to the light green
½ C sliced kumquats
½ C dried cranberries
2 T of a citrus vinegar (I used Trader Joe’s Orange Muscat Champagne Vinegar)
Shavings of fresh parmesan or other hard cheese (optional)
Instructions:
Chop the salad mix roughly, most of the lettuces included in the gourmet mix could be eaten without chopping but some are larger that would be polite to put up to your mouth in a single bite (at least, on front of other people anyway!). Next, slice the green garlic and the kumquats. Place these into a small bowl with the dried cranberries and mix together. Sprinkle this yummy trifecta all over top of the chopped salad and then get out your cheese (if you are choosing to add it). Shave the cheese over the salad bowl until you reach your desired amount. In this salad I would say that the cheese should be an occasional taste, here and there, to give a salty-savory balance to this sweet-tart salad, so a little should be enough. Finally, add to the salad the citrus vinegar. “Taste it as you make it” applies here too, you know what your taste preferences are. Trust yourself! Gently incorporate all of the ingredients and distribute the dressing. Try to lift from the bottom, so that all of the goodies don’t get left under the greens.
I hope that you enjoy this salad, let me know in the comments below!