It can be rather challenging to prepare interesting and tasty vegetable dish. I’ve said many times before that we do lots of stir-fry, especially for vegetables at home. That’s just part of what I grew up with and pretty much all I knew to do with vegetables. I hardly made salads, if ever. Most of my vegetable recipes here are cooked dishes, with probably less than 5 salads ? lol! Oh well, all I’m saying is that, I really need to venture out and really try out different stuff and that includes salad. I love the California sprout salads we made the other day and this broccoli salad is another keeper. It hits all the right spots like Jamie Oliver said.
BROCCOLI SALAD
Ingredients
- 2 large heads of broccoli
- 8 slices of smoked bacon , cut into small pieces
- Olive oil
- 3 firm red tomatoes , halved, seeded, and thinly sliced
- A small bunch of fresh chives , finely chopped (if you get some with flowers, keep them for garnish)
Dressing:
- ½ clove garlic , peeled and finely grated
- 2 tsp Dijon mustard
- â…“ cup extra virgin olive oil
- 2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar or regular vinegar
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
- Use a small knife to remove the broccoli florets and cut them up into smaller ones. Basically, this is your chance to make the broccoli really delicate and more salady-looking, so spend a bit of time doing this. You'll be left with the stalk, so discard the thick, dry base, then cut the remaining stalk in half length ways and thinly slice
- Blanch the broccoli florets and sliced stalks really quickly in boiling salted water for 60 seconds. Drain it in a colander, then spread it around a clean dish towel to steam dry (this is important because it will help the dressing cling to the broccoli). Once completely dry, transfer to a serving dish
- Fry the bacon on a medium heat with a small splash of olive oil, until crisp and golden, then spoon most of the bacon bits over your broccoli. Any left over fat in the pan can be used in your salad dressing. pour it into a mixing salad bowl with all the other dressing ingredients and whisk
- Add the sliced tomatoes and chopped chives to your broccoli and bacon bits. Dress it all really well, and check the seasoning. If it needs tweaking, add a splash more vinegar. If you've got any chives flowers, sprinkle those over the top and serve right away
Notes
You can also add diced feta cheese or chopped fresh chilis through this salad. Different-colored cherry or grape tomatoes are really nice too
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