Rhubarb is a great way to add a tangy twist to every day salads. Ever since I discovered that rhubarb is actually a vegetable, an obvious but over looked fact. I’ve been looking for new ways to enjoy this wonderful vegetable. My first discovery was to replace celery in potato salad with finely chopped rhubarb, it was a delicious hit, (recipe to come soon). Why stop there I thought, why not add it to my vegan “mock chicken” salad sandwiches, and or add it to a nice spring salad for a tangy little twist. The color it adds to any dish is just an added bonus. So that’s today’s recipe a nice tangy spring salad fresh from the garden to your fork.
But before we get to the recipe I thought I would share a bit from the garden. This is how big the section of my garden dedicated to salad is and I go out and pick a few leaves here and there from each plant. Harvesting this way, I can have a continuous supply for about a month I’m guessing, at which time I will pull all these plants and switch to a raised bed on the north side of the house that I will harvest during the hot months of summer.
In addition to rhubarb, I also added garden sorrel and wood sorrel for a really tangy spring salad, and then to balance it all out I’m sharing a link to my naturally sweetened home-made Poppy-Seed Dressing recipe. Enjoy!
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the name wood sorrel I thought I would jog your memory, as it is probably something you have seen before but may have mistaken it for a member of the clover family.
Here in the foreground is garden sorrel growing happily together with rhubarb, these two perennials, along with strawberries and lavage grow in a raised bed dedicated to perennials in my kitchen garden. I just love things that come back year after year all by them selves, don’t you?
I would highly encourage you to try to grow your own tangy spring salad bed, it doesn’t take a lot of space and it’s always better from the garden to your fork!
Ingredients
- 1 c. red leaf lettuce
- 2 c. green leaf lettuce
- 1/2 c.baby kale
- 1/2 c. spinache
- 1/2 c. beet greens
- 1/4 c. garden sorrel
- a few sprigs of wood sorrel including the flowers
- 1 - 2 stalks (depending on the size of variety) of rhubarb finely chopped (for pretty red curls, peel one of the slices before chopping)
Instructions
- Wash and break lettuce, baby kale, beet greens and garden sorrel into bite sized peices. If the leaves are small enough I don't even bother breaking them up.
- Rinse the wood sorrel under running water, and break into little bite size clumps.
- Remove tops off rhubarb (as the leaves are poiseness) wash and chop finely.
- Place all the ingredients except wood sorrel in a bowl and toss. Top with your bite sized sprigs of wood sorrel.
- Drizzle with Poppy Seed Dressing or your favourite salad dressing, and enjoy!
Feel free to play around with this salad to include things you have in your garden. You could add dandelion leaves (the ones grown in the shade are less bitter, but I think the sweet and sour would compliment the dandelion nicely.
One thought on “Tangy Spring Salad”