This is my very first post. Once I work out the kinks, I should be posting at least weekly.
I found this salad on the back of Trader Joe’s Herb Salad bag. I usually try to find easy to prepare salads and didn’t think this one sounded too bad. It has the typical salad ingredients (fruit, nut, cheese, and green), but it took a lot longer to prepare than I thought. It involves zesting, squeezing, peeling, julienning, supreming….. I also made the unwise choice of hand shelling all the pistachios. The salad was delicious, so fortunately all the prep work was worth it.
I have never prepared jicama before and it is kind of tricky to get peeled. I had the best luck just grabbing an edge and peeling it off by hand after slicing off the top and bottom.
The potato peeler sort of worked, but jicama are oddly shaped and have a lot of grooves the peeler cannot reach. Using the end of the peeler to scrape pieces of peel off worked too. After julienning the jicama, if not eating the salad right away, store small aliquots in plastic wrap and then in an airtight container.
The original recipe had goat cheese added, but I’m not a huge fan of this so I left it out. I was going to add shaved parmesan, but in the end I did not have the time to do this, and it didn’t really need it anyway. The dressing will be a bright yellow/orange color from the zest.
Ingredients
makes 6 servings
- 2 5 oz. bags of Trader Joe’s Organic Herb Salad Mix
- 3 large oranges, supremed
- 4 medium jicama, peeled and cut julienne style
- 2 cups shelled, roasted pistachio nuts
Dressing:
- 6 T fresh lemon juice
- zest of 2 lemons
- zest of 2 oranges
- 2 large shallots, finely minced
- 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
- salt and pepper to taste
In a bowl, toss herb salad, orange segments, jicama, and pistachios. In a separate bowl, whisk together dressing ingredients. Lightly toss dressing with salad.
