salad | Jenna's Everything Blog

I have a propensity towards warm salads. Don’t ask me why, but they seem ever so much more interesting than cold salads. This recipe on Tasty Kitchen caught my eye–roasted potatoes + delicious and creamy mustard dressing? Yes, please! I made a few changes, choosing to roast everything together instead of roasting the potatoes alone and steaming the green beans, and tweaking the oven time and temperature. But credit must go to the fabulous creators of the original recipe. Let’s observe a moment of silence for their Awesome Contribution to My Dinner Table.

When my darling husband heard that dinner was going to be a salad, I watched his reaction closely. And though he was perfectly polite, methinks I detected a glimmer of concern in his eyes. I could almost see the gears and cogs in his mind turning “A salad? Is she serious? Is it going to fill me up? Is it going to be satisfying enough?”

Of course, that’s all speculation. But whatever may have been going on in his precious man-brain, he absolutely loved it. We devoured the entire thing between the two of us. “This might have been good with a steak alongside,” I said. “No!” he exclaimed. “This is great just like this!”

When I have his full and enthusiastic endorsement, I know that my kitchen endeavors have met their ultimate goal.

And indeed, the sweet roasted flavor of the beans and potatoes with the tang of the vinegar and mustard dressing is perfection.

Ingredients

(Serves 2 as a main dish, 4 as a side dish)

1 lb small or fingerling potatoes
2 TBS olive oil
Salt and pepper, to taste
2 cloves garlic
1 lb green beans
2 shallots

For the dressing

1/4 cups olive oil
3 TBS white wine vinegar
1 1/2 TBS Dijon mustard
1 clove garlic
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 425. Halve or quarter the potatoes . . .

. . . and set them aside. Wash and halve the green beans . . .

. . . mince the garlic, and quarter the shallots, separating out the lovely violet-colored layers with your fingers.

Put the potatoes, beans, garlic, and shallots on a large baking sheet.

Douse them with a generous amount of salt, pepper, and 2 TBS of olive oil.

Toss the veggies so that everything is coated evenly in the oil and seasoning, and then spread them into a single layer, like so.

Pop ’em in the oven, and bake them for 45 minutes, turning everything over at the halfway point.

In the meantime, put the dressing ingredients into a small bowl.

Whisk them together vigorously!

I tasted the dressing and wondered if it needed a little sugar, but trust me–it doesn’t. The roasting adds sweetness to the other ingredients, so once everything is combined, there will be a perfect balance of flavors.

Once the potatoes and green beans are finished, take ’em out of the oven and let them cool for a few minutes.

Dump everything in a large bowl, and pour the dressing over top.

Give it a good tossing to combine, and serve it warm!

So tasty. So filling.

I would eat this as a main dish any day. This salad doesn’t have to play second fiddle to anything else.

Do you need further evidence than this?

Click here for printer-friendly version: Warm Roasted Potato and Green Bean Salad

I don’t often make salads. When I do, the leftover ingredients usually go bad in this household of two. Then the guilt eats away at me. Then I vow never to let that happen again. So I steer clear from salads–it’s not that I don’t enjoy eating them, but who wants to be caught in a vicious cycle of wilty greens and guilt?

This salad, however, sunk me as soon as I saw its good-looking’ mug shot on Tasty Kitchen. And since it’s a warm salad, it can count as a main dish for a meal, and thus get consumed faster, before it goes bad and adds itself to my Register of Remorse. It satisfies the typical American man (meat, potatoes) and woman (leafy greens) so that everyone can be happy. It’s so good that we ate it two nights in a row, and then went and made it a third time the next night with a different kind of sausage.

Ingredients

(Serves 4)

1.5 lbs new potatoes or red potatoes
Salt and pepper to taste
15 oz chorizo sausage
1 TBS olive oil
16 oz mixed salad greens
1 lemon
4 poached or fried eggs (1 per person, optional)

Here are the ingredients:

And the eggs are optional, but they come highly recommended. By me.

Wash the potatoes and chop them into bite-sized cubes.

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil . . .

. . . and add the potatoes.

Cook them for 10-15 minutes, or until tender when pierced with a fork (but not falling apart!).

In the meantime, chop the sausage into small chunks.

I’ve never dealt with Mexcan chorizo before, and this step was messier than what I bargained for–next time I’ll just put the whole thing in the pan and break it apart as it cooks. The original recipe used Spanish chorizo, which is cured and hard (so it will retain its shape). My grocery store, however, only had this:

It’s delicious, but a completely different animal, and crumbles apart as you cook it. It’s up to you (and the availability of these products) to decide which kind you get.

Heat the olive oil in a cast iron skillet or other large pan over medium heat. When it’s hot, add the sausage . . .

. . . and cook for about 10 minutes, until it’s getting brown and starting to release oil of its own. This was the moment when my fantasy of having the sausage cook in chunks was decimated. Overturned. Debunked.

Oh well. Ground meat it is.

Once the potatoes are cooked, add them to the pan with the sausage and cook it all together for about 10-12 minutes, stirring frequently.

Add a good amount of salt and pepper to taste.

If you’re adding some eggs, this is the time to try or poach them. Sorry, no pictures of this part–just one shot of a lonely egg that was quickly poached in my leftover potato-boiling water.