Summer Salad with Honey Vinaigrette
In this recipe, Melanie Kirby (Tortugas Pueblo) and her son use homegrown ingredients to fashion a zesty summer salad. Melanie operates Zia Queenbees, which has apiaries established throughout northern New Mexico. Her home base is nestled at the kiss of the forests, where the Pecos, Santa Fe, and Carson National Forests meet in the Sangre de Cristo mountain range of the southern Rockies.
Ingredient Spotlight
Microgreens
Microgreens add a boost of nutrients and pleasant spiciness to this salad. Microgreens are perhaps the easiest home crop as they require minimal space and equipment, very little skill, and can be grown indoors year round. The basic recipe for microgreens is simple: purchase seeds of the greens you want to grow (popular choices include kale, broccoli, chard, or cauliflower), soak the seeds, keep them damp and warm for a couple days, and then give the seedlings a bit of light for up to a week, at which point they are ready to harvest. Microgreens can be grown in mason jars fitted with a mesh lid, or in a tray with a fiber grow mat. The results are some of the healthiest veggies you can find, as microgreens contain up to 40 times the minerals and nutrients of their mature counterparts. With low commitment and great results, it’s worth trying to grow your own microgreens.
Honey
Raising honeybees is a very old practice, and one worth exploring for the curious, as a single hive can produce 100 pounds of honey in a year under the right conditions. Bees harvest nectar from flowering plants, which is converted into honey and stored in honeycombs to sustain them through winter. An apiarist (another word for beekeeper) will harvest honey towards the end of the growing season, taking only as much as the bees can spare. If preparing this recipe, consider purchasing your honey from a local beekeeping company. Zia Queenbees and others do important work keeping honeybee populations robust and resilient.
Recipe
Serves Two
For salad:
2 Carrots, grated to desired thickness
1 Cucumber, thinly sliced
3 turnips, thinly sliced
4 cups microgreens (including kale, broccoli, swiss chard, cauliflower)
½ head of romaine lettuce, shredded
½ head of butter lettuce, shredded
1 cup Strawberries, sliced
1 cup Sweet peas, diced
4 Radishes, sliced thinly
For vinaigrette:
1 tbsp Olive oil
1 tbsp Honey wine vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste
Lemon pepper, to taste
Herbs to taste (oregano and white sage recommended, ~1 tsp each)
Instructions
Slice, grate, dice, or shred salad ingredients as described.
Combine in large bowl
Combine honey, honey wine vinegar, and olive oil, lemon pepper, salt and pepper, and herbs in jar.
Shake vigorously to mix.
Pour salad dressing into bowl with salad ingredients.
Toss well, until dressing evenly coats all ingredients.
Serve and enjoy.