Soft green salad with dried cranberries, pistachios and spring onions

“…..no other vegetable tastes quite so much like the green shoots of hope.”
Bee Wilson, in The Financial Times
So this is a soft, floaty sort of light, summer salad, saved from blandness by; the nuts which give it crunch; the dried fruit which gives a bit of sweetness; the spring onions which give some zing; and the herbs which give a bit of flavour.
It goes well with roast chicken, with lamb, and with salmon, together with a Right Royal Cabbage in a creamy garlic and bacon sauce.
Recipe for soft green salad with dried cranberries, pistachios and spring onions
Serves 6
Ingredients
- 60g/2 oz bag soft salad leaves – lambs lettuce for example. Or 140g/5 oz bag of butterhead salad leaves – if you find this, you can omit the spinach.
- 60g/2 oz bag baby spinach
- a handful of coriander or parsley
- about six spring onions
- 40g/¼ cup dried cranberries, or raisins, or dried sour cherries…or dried goji berries
- 2 tbsp chopped pistachios
Ingredients for dressing
- 1 fat clove of garlic, crushed with 1 tsp smoked salt
- ½ teasp cumin seeds (dry fried and crushed in a pestle and mortar)
- 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- juice and zest of half a lime
- 4 tbsp olive oil
- freshly ground black pepper
Method
- Mix up the dressing.
- Empty the leaves into a large salad bowl.
- Snip over the herbs and the spring onions.
- Sprinkle over the berries and nuts.
- Dress, toss, and serve!