How to create the perfect salad

I love a good salad as much as the next person – and by good salad I don’t mean one of the pre-packaged lettuce, tomato, cucumber and grated carrot variety.

A wonderful part of growing your own veg and eating with the seasons is that you can make a salad out of just about anything edible in the garden. For example, thanks to all the rain, my broccoli plants are super leafy monsters. These leaves are just as edible as the florets, so it seems almost criminal to waste them. There’s also chickweed wandering amongst the garlic, flowers galore on the borage, broccoli and Asian greens, and even a couple of dandelions worth picking. Growing wild beside the path are a couple of huge ancient carrots – way past eating but their ferny leaves aren’t.

For me, there are four elements to a seriously good salad:

Super fresh greens (or purples) – think lettuce, silverbeet, Asian greens, cabbage, purple cabbage, beetroot leaves, cucumber, parsley, celery, fennel or coriander

Protein and good fats – nuts, seeds, avocado, olive oil – this balances the “greener” flavours and the fat increases absorption of vitamin K from the greens

Sweetness – try carrot, capsicum, apple, pear, grapes, tomatoes, strawberries, goji berries or roasted pumpkin

Acidity –a good dressing or vinegarette – it’s dead easy to make your own by combining olive oil and apple cider vinegar, like I have in the recipe below.

A great salad is just a matter of balancing the strong with the mild, mixing up the flavours and textures. Making it pretty and colourful honestly makes it taste better because of the messages good looking food sends to the brain, and all that colour also ensures you’re getting a wide variety of nutrients.

Use just a small amount of the bitter herbs and vegies like the dandelion, and finely shred the more robust leaves like the silverbeet. Include a good handful of nuts and seeds, and diced or sliced fruit. Smooth out the flavours with a good fat like avocado or olive oil, and a good dose of a decent vinegar for acidity.

Chickweed with dandelion flowers, carrot tops, borage flowers, broccoli and silverbeet

The below ingredients are simply what I had available in my community garden plot and in the pantry – substitute whatever you have handy in your garden or can pick up at the shops or the local farmers markets. Vegies that are freshly picked and in season are always best. If you want to save money but buy organic, I find my local farmers markets sell organic fruit and veg at half the price of the supermarkets.

I'd love to hear from you - what's your perfect salad combination?

My perfect salad with Spring flowers

Silverbeet (rainbow chard)

Broccoli leaves, florets and flowers

Tatsoi leaves and flowers

Borage flowers

Pumpkin seeds (pepitas)

Chickweed

Leafy carrot tops

Goji berries

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoon apple cider vinegar.

Put the oil and vinegar in a small jar, screw the lid on and shake well to create a vinaigrette. Finely chop the greens, add the vinaigrette and toss to coat – feel free to massage in the dressing using your hands to help tenderise the greens. Add the nuts, seeds and fruit and toss again. Decorate with the flowers and serve immediately. Really easy, really good.