Spring Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette

A crunchy spring salad with flavourful vegetables and add-ins such as green beans, arugula, peas, radishes and eggs, drizzled with a maple lemon vinaigrette.

I recently watched a short Jamie Oliver Youtube video about how to make incredibly tasty salads. The video inspired me to come up with a spring themed salad recipe…well that and all the Easter cookies I have eaten in the past few days. It also persuaded me to finally buy that salad spinner I had always planned to buy but never did because my kitchen is already full of kitchen tools. I mean like seriously full. I have a whole cabinet dedicated to baking utensils, it’s insane. (I use most of the things though, so don’t judge me ;)) Getting back to that salad spinner though. In the video Jamie demonstrated just how much water is still on the salad leaves if you skip the salad spinner. Let me tell you, it was A LOT. When I saw how much water you get rid of my using this handy-dandy tool I immediately felt the need to purchase one. I give full credit to Jamie for being such a sneaky advertiser. However, when I finally bought my long-awaited salad spinner (at Ikea, of course) I was utterly disappointed when I used it for the first time and there was hardly any water in the bowl after spinning. Either I am too good at washing salads or Jamie Oliver is a sucky salad washer. Or he is just an amazing salesperson and got a dollar for every salad spinner people bought after watching that video.

While buying a salad spinner turned out to be an utter waste of time, I did learn a few things about making awesome salads. Like how you always want contrasting elements in your salad and how one part vinegar to three parts oil is the perfect amount. So needless to say I haven’t written off Jamie Oliver entirely. 😉 Taking into account what I learned, I came up with this crunchy, sweet and tangy seasonal salad right here. The contrasting elements are the creamy eggs next to the crunchy green beans, the sweet and sour vinaigrette with lemon and maple syrup and the spicy arugula on par the sweet peas. This salad really screams SPRING! I’d like to claim that the radishes are already the ones from our garden but since ours are barely poking out of the ground so far, I opted for store-bought. Did you know that you should buy the smaller sized radishes (about the size of a cherry, not more)? The larger they get the more spicy they become as well as sort of woody. 

But enough ‘salad theory’, I’m going to shut up now so you can go make this beautiful dish. Bon appétit! 

Spring Salad

a crunchy salad with a sweet and tangy vinaigrette

• Total Time: 10

Ingredients

Salad

• 1 small salad head
• 1 bunch of arugula
• a handful of green beans, blanched
• 1/2 cup of peas, blanched
• 6 radishes
• 2 hardboiled eggs
• a small handful of sunflower seeds
• chives

Vinaigrette

• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 tablespoon maple syrup
• juice of 1 lemon
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Wash and chop your salad and arugula (use a salad spinner if you please). Cut the eggs into halves or quarters.
2. Top the lettuce with green beans, peas, radishes and eggs. Sprinkle with sunflower seeds and chives.
3. For the vinaigrette, mix all ingredients together and drizzle over the salad.

Notes

• If making ahead of time, store the vinaigrette and salad in airtight containers in the fridge separately. Drizzle shortly before serving.

Nutrition

• Serving Size: 4

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