Healthy Fruity Nutty California Chopped Salad

This salad recipe was inspired by our recent trip to California.  We visited Walnut Creek, home town of my daughter in law for her baby shower.  Her loving mom took us to this restaurant called True Food Kitchen, a health food restaurant. Food was of course healthy,  delicious, nutritious and with lot of vegan options. One of the items on the menu was Chopped salad which was yummy.  I quickly looked at ingredients and was determined to make it at home.

I admit, although this salad is all those things that I mentioned earlier is higher in calories count due to dates and all the nuts, fruits and cheeses.

Came back to my home town and when things settled down, I went to grocery store and bought all the ingredients. One of the ingredient was slivered almonds, however the grocery store I went to did not have these, so I bought the salad toppings with caramelized pecans, sweetened cranberries, and pepitas and also bought roasted salted shelled pistachios instead.

That is the good thing about this salad, it is very versatile,  you can add and omit any of the ingredients. I used crumbled feta cheese and pepper jack cheese cubes instead of aged cheddar cheese. 

I also added tomatoes, strawberries, blackberries and watermelon. 

Luckily I was able to find the Champagne vinaigrettes salad dressing which was the key tasty ingredient to this salad.

Ingredients:

• Greens like Baby Arugula, Queen leafy greens, and chopped Romain lettuce.
• Pitted dates sliced
• Farro, wheat bulgur or cracked wheat cooked
• Jicama peeled and chopped into cubes
• Organic apples of your choice chopped into cubes I used Envy apples
• Tomatoes, strawberries, blackberries and watermelon or any of these favorites
• Crumbled Feta cheeses 
• Small cubes of pepper jack cheese or aged cheddar cheese shredded or cubes.
• Slivered almonds or any nutty salad toppings
• Champagne vinaigrette dressing or California vinaigrette dressing.

Method: 

• Wash cracked wheat / bulgur or farro.
• Cook on stove with water and pinch of salt, when water comes to boil you can turn her heat to medium low. 
• Cook for 15 min or until tender but not mushy.
• Drain and set aside to cool.
• Slice the dates, peel and chop jicama and cut apple in to small pieces.
• Cut tomatoes, slice the strawberries, cube water melon, and cube or shred the cheddar cheese.
• Wash and drain all the green salad spinner.

 

Prepare the serving plates by laying down the greens, topped with chopped jicama, apples, blackberries,  strawberries,  followed by sliced dates, cooked farro, and feta cheese, and cubed pepper cheese and nutty salad topping and pistachios. 

Drizzle with desired salad dressing.

Enjoy !!

Photographs by Surekha.

Recipe adapted by Surekha from Chopped salad on menu of Health food restaurant "True food Kitchen"

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