Lovin' Salads Part 1

Jamie has a great chapter in his book called "Lovin' Salads." How can anyone resist a good salad? So this past week I tackled a few of his yummy salad recipes and techniques. This chapter talks a lot about techniques and tricks and gives pointers on having a good salad whether its two ingredients or twenty. It has great pictures and I just love leafing (no pun intended) through to look at the pictures. This part of the book feels more like a "lesson" than a cookbook and its got some great advice. Jamie has a series of recipes in here called Evolution salads where he takes a simple 1 or 2 ingredient salad and builds upon it to give you four different versions. This week I made the Evolution Cucumber Salad (pg. 114). I did the simplest version mainly because those are the ingredients I had and that's what I knew the family would go for. It just calls for 2 cucumbers, peeled and with seeds scooped out, roughly chopped. Add sea salt and black pepper and then 6 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and mix well. That's it! Throw some chopped mint on top and its delicious. Its a simple and light salad and its great for a hot day. The next day I did version two which is just adding a heaping tablespoon of plain yogurt and it was great too. You can also add black olives and red chili for versions 3 and 4.
Recipes cooked: 22
Recipes left: 151
Days left: 305