With A Bit Of Creativity, Salads Can Work As Main Course Meals

Salads make for colorful side dishes or main meal openers. But author, chef and food blogger Jeanne Kelley believes that with a little bit of protein and some creativity, these second-string dishes can become stars of the dinner hour.

To make a filling green dish, start with a salad’s defining ingredient: greens. Kelley said she’s a big fan of arugula, which she plants at home and always has on hand. Another favorite is baby spinach, and she said she turns to romaine if she’s looking for some crunch.

But it’s going to take a bit more to turn that salad into a main course. The trick here is to think about protein, and her Roasted Balsamic Chicken and Green Bean Salad with Goat Cheese, included in her book, “Salad for Dinner: Complete Meals for All Seasons,” has plenty of heartiness.

Green beans, arugula, cherry tomatoes and goat cheese combine with marinated chicken to create the dish that Kelley said will convince skeptics that salads can indeed be served for dinner.

Meet that protein requirement by adding chickpeas, also a vegetarian option. Cannellini beans are another great option as a plump, protein source with a creamy texture.

Nuts, too, can be an important source of protein and they add texture to the salad, such as toasted almonds, walnuts and sunflower seeds. Grains can be added for bulk, flavor, texture or nutrition, as in Kelley’s Brown Rice Grape Leaf Salad.

To make sure she’s got grains on hand during the week, she cooks up a batch of farro, or wheat berries to keep in the fridge to grab as needed. She’ll cook these in salted water and vinegar, drain, and toss with olive oil.

“It adds that fortification and makes it bulkier,” she said of farro in salads.

To ensure your salad tastes fresh and full-bodied, Kelley said try to source your greens from your own garden, a farmer’s market or even grocery store bulk bins. Those options tend to have a more intense flavor than greens from bags.

“I know the bags are so convenient,” she said. “But I think it’s worth the extra effort of really sourcing better salad greens.”

In the winter, it’s possible to find cold-weather greens, such as radicchio, Swiss chard, collard greens, cabbage and broccoli.

“If you take the stems of broccoli, take all the rough edges off and finely slice that inside, that’s a lovely crunchy green too,” she said.

If you’re looking for more crunchy ingredients, Kelley said raw fennel (also called sweet anise) is an option that will add a hint of licorice flavor to the dish.

“You just have to expand what you think of as salad greens, because even a shaved zucchini can be used as a salad green,” she said.