Spanish Chopped Salad

There's some rumor I've heard that chopped salad was expressly developed as a way to charge naive customers into paying egregious amounts for the scraps of meat, cheese, and vegetables left over in a restaurant kitchen. There might be some truth in that story, but I still love a great chopped salad, more fool me.

Sara Forte developed a brilliant take on the traditional chopped salad by translating the flavors from her experience in Spanish tapas bars onto the concept of a chopped salad. In the Sprouted Kitchen Bowl & Spoon, she presents a similar idea of greens, meats, and cheeses, but with a much perkier salad dressing, better cheese, and a larger variety of healthy produce and legumes.

I quite liked this salad; it was really easy to make. While the premise of chopped salad is combining a bunch of leftovers into scrumptious bite-sized morsels on a bed of greenery, this salad is still fast starting from scratch. If you need to hard-boil some eggs and cook lentils (or in my case, quinoa) in preparation for the salad, you can get those started then simply blitz together the dressing, chop the vegetables, shave the cheese, and everything will be basically ready to eat. It shouldn't take more than 30 minutes start to finish. 

You should feel free to play around with the produce and legumes in the salad - the flavor combinations work quite well, but whatever cooked bits of grains, eggs, meat, and produce can all happily co-mingle in this salad bowl (assuming nothing was marinated in a hefty marinade).

My one note of caution is the dressing goes from fresh and flavorful to dull pretty quickly. It's definitely best the same day, and it shouldn't go longer than a couple days, otherwise it won't be very interesting anymore.

Spanish Chopped Salad

Sara's twist on classic chopped salad is a bright play on Spanish flavors. It makes a lovely light lunch on its own, is a great "salad in a jar" option, or it goes well with grilled meats or fish for a heartier meal. A zesty paprika-based vinaigrette livens up her chopped salad, but beware that the dressing does lose its punchy flavor as time goes on - this is not a "make once for the week" kind of salad dressing.

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Course: Salad

Cuisine: Spanish

Prep Time: 25 minutes minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes minutes

Total Time: 25 minutes minutes

Servings: 4

Ingredients

Walnut Paprika Vinaigrette

• 3 tablespoons (about 40 g) walnut pieces toasted
• 1 clove garlic
• 3 tablespoons red wine or sherry vinegar
• ½ teaspoon smoked paprika
• 2 teaspoons honey
• 2 tablespoons parsley chopped
• ¼-1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• ½ teaspoon sea salt
• several twists freshly ground black pepper

Chopped Salad

• 1 head romaine lettuce washed, dried thoroughly, and chopped
• 2 cups baby spinach
• ¼ small red onion minced
• ⅓ cup walnut pieces toasted
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes halved*
• 1 small tart apple finely diced
• 1 cup cucumber finely diced
• 2 large eggs hard-boiled, then chopped
• ½ cup lentils cooked
• 1 cup (4 ounces) Manchego cheese shaved

Instructions

Walnut Paprika Vinaigrette

• Toast the walnut pieces you will need for both the vinaigrette and the salad itself in a small pan over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until fragrant - about 8-10 minutes. Set aside to cool slightly.
  
• In a food processor or blender, combine the 3 tablespoons toasted walnut pieces, the garlic clove, red wine vinegar, smoked paprika, honey, chopped parsley, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Blend for about 30 seconds, until smooth. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed. Refrigerate until ready to use (can be made no more than 3 days in advance).
  

Spanish Chopped Salad

• Wash then thoroughly dry (or spin) the romaine lettuce. Chop it into small, bite-size pieces. Add it to a large salad bowl together with the baby spinach, thinly sliced red onion, toasted walnut pieces, halved cherry tomatoes, diced apple and cucumber, chopped eggs, and cooked lentils. Dress with the walnut paprika vinaigrette (the recipe above should make just enough). Toss to coat the salad in the vinaigrette, then add the shaved manchego cheese, toss once more to combine, and serve.
  

Notes

*The best trick I know for halving cherry tomatoes easily is to put them on a small plate, cover them with another small plate (placed face down), then simply hold the top of the face-down plate while you pass a serrated knife through the cherry tomatoes, using your hand to rotate the plate as you work.