I know, I know. Another salad recipe. Our CSA boxes lately have been full of beautiful greens, and life is crazy right now, so salads it is! In my most recent CSA box I received several of the ingredients to this salad: kale, apples, and edible mustard green flowers. I was tasked with bringing vegetable side dishes to our Mother’s Day lunch, so I came up with this dish to use those local ingredients, and put flowers in my food!
The dressing I used is the store-bought Trader Joe’s balsamic vinaigrette, but you could easily make your own. A vinaigrette or a honey dijon flavored dressing would be a perfect match.
I have a few staples and patterns with making a kale salad:
-Start with finely chopped kale
-Add something sweet (fruit), something salty (in this case, bacon & nuts), something tangy (dressing), something crunchy (nuts), and something creamy (goat cheese)
-Toss the kale in the dressing and let sit for a few minutes to slightly wilt the kale, then add the other ingredients.
Kale Salad with Bacon, Rosemary Nuts, Apples, Goat Cheese, and Edible Flowers
- 1 large bunch kale, finely chopped
- 1 apple, small dice
- 5 slices bacon, cooked and chopped small
- 1 c rosemary almonds and cashews, chopped small
- 2 oz goat cheese
- balsamic vinaigrette
- edible flowers (optional)
Toss the kale with the balsamic (not too much) 10 minutes before serving. Add 1/2 of the rest of the ingredients, besides the flowers, and toss. Layer the remaining 1/2 of the ingredients on top of the salad. Garnish with edible flowers. Serve and enjoy!
Wow! It really looks so flavorful, can’t wait to make it. But will omit apple and instead of the beacon will use chicken. Hope it turns out great. Thanks for sharing Lindsay.
Seema, those sound like wonderful substitutions. Instead of apple, you could try another fruit?
Yes! Actually, I did, when I was recollecting all the ingredients I found dried cranberries in the freezer so I tried using them and It came out awesome, You can try that once…