Summer salads are always delicious. This one inspired by Caprial Pence’s cookbook, Cooking for Friends intrigued me. She uses spinach and radicchio, which is bitter and balances the sweetness of the pear. You can use any combo of tender greens that you want – I’ve thrown in some butter lettuce too. I’ve taken the liberty of adding some blue cheese crumbles as well!
Spinach Salad with Pear-Thyme Vinaigrette
Serves 4
Inspired by Cooking for Friends by Caprial Pence
Vinaigrette
1 medium pear, peeled, seeded and diced
¼ cup white wine, such as pinot gris or chardonnay
¼ cup rice vinegar
1 small shallot, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp. mustard, Dijon
½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. pepper, black ground
¾ cup olive, oil – use the good stuff
2 tsp. thyme, fresh chopped
4 cups spinach, baby
1 head butter lettuce, chopped
½ small radicchio, julienned
1 medium pear, cored and sliced thinly
1 cup blue cheese crumbles
1. In a small saucepan, combine the pear and wine and bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Cook until pears are soft – about 3 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool.
2. Add the pear mixture to the bowl of your food processor along with the vinegar, shallot, garlic, mustard, salt and pepper. Process for 30 seconds to puree the pear. With the machine running, slowly drizzle the olive oil and process until all the oil has been added. Add the thyme and pulse once to blend. Refrigerate for up to 2 weeks
3. To serve, place the greens and the pears in a large bowl. Add dressing to taste and toss well. Divide the greens evenly and garnish with the blue cheese crumbles.
Tools needed:
Measuring spoons and cups
Mixing bowls
Chef Knife
Cutting board
Food processor or blender
Happy August here from Nano Lodge. And as you can see, today is another from the cookbook episode. Uh we got Capriel Cooks for Friends. This time Capriel Pence is a chef that was uh born here in in Oregon, lived here, had a restaurant in the 90s, has had several restaurants. Uh she now works up in Seattle. Um so Pacific Northwest chef at heart. And today we’re going to be making a twist on her pear and spinach salad. In her recipe, she uses pears in two ways. One to make a pear and thyme vinegarette where she cooks down a pear um with some white wine and concentrates that flavor and that was really intriguing to me. So, I wanted to try that. And then mixes it with the usual vinegarette uh ingredients like vinegar and olive oil and mustard. Um, and then in the salad, it’s fresh pear and some greens. Um, and I’m going to actually add in some blue cheese crumbles, too, because I think it goes great with pear. Here are all the ingredients for the dressing and the salad. I am going to do a couple of different things here. Uh, in her recipe, she uses spinach and radikio. Rikio’s got a little bit of bite and bitterness to it, so that’s a great flavor balance for this. I’m also going to add in some butter lettuce. I love the crunch and the um mild sweetness it brings and it just adds a different shade of green. So, you get some really beautiful colors here as well. As I said, I’m putting some blue cheese crumbles on because I think blue cheese and pears goes really well together. Um I am going to cook the pear in the white wine as she suggests because I think that’s intriguing and I’ve never tried that before. So, we’ll do it together. Um the resting ingredients are, as I said, we’ve got a little rice vinegar, we’ve got olive oil, the good stuff because we’re not cooking so we want that really good extravirgin olive oil. A little salt and pepper, some shallot, some garlic, some fresh thyme, some Dijon vinegar or Dijon mustard. Prep work is ready. Uh we’ve got all the dressing ingredients here. Our three greens, the pear I’ll cut up uh for the salad just before I want to serve it because I don’t want it to get too brown and the blue cheese crumbles. So, we’ll go to the stove and we’ll cook the pear down and then everything goes in the food processor. Super simple. This will make more dressing than we need for these greens, but the dressing sounds fantastic and you can use it again and again. It’ll keep in your fridge for, you know, a couple of [Music] weeks. Been about 3 minutes and the pears are starting to soften up a little bit as they cook. I can cut through them pretty easily. So, I’m going to take this off the stove and let it cool. [Music] Here we go. We’ve got this beautiful pretty vinegarette. The thyme adds just some earthiness and some nice flex to it. It’s a beautiful golden yellow color from the pears and the dijon mustard and the olive oil. It’s got just a hint of sweetness from those pears that we cooked down a little bit. I’m going to toss the greens and the pears which I just thinly sliced all together and then top it with the blue cheese crumbles and we’ll have a great salad. makes a perfect summertime lunch. Thanks to Capriel Pence’s cookbook for the inspiration for this beautiful summer salad. Perfect for vegetarians in your life as well. And if you want to make it vegan, you can leave off the cheese, but it’s beautiful. It’s got a great balance of acidity, a little bit of bite from the radikio, the sweetness of the pears. I can’t wait to dig in. [Music]
Dining and Cooking