While many salads are tossed to combine their ingredients, others — particularly main-course salads — are artfully assembled on serving plates.
In French cuisine, the latter type of salad is referred to as “salade composée,” or “composed salad” in English. When you’re “composing” a salad, you’re aiming to create a plate of food that not only tastes good but is pretty.
To make today’s recipe, Greek-style dinner salads, I filled dinner plates with crisp lettuce topped with the items one would use in a Greek salad — olives, wedges, cubes or slices of tomato, bell pepper, cucumber, onion and feta cheese — with a range of colours, tastes and textures.
For added protein, I topped my salads with fresh, bright pink, hand-peeled B.C. shrimp. You’ll find these small, fully cooked shrimp at local seafood stores and in the seafood department of some grocery stores.
Fresh hand-peeled shrimp are very perishable, so I prefer to buy them the day I’ll use them. But, if they’re very fresh and have a mild, sea-like aroma, you could store them up to a day in the coldest part of your refrigerator, removed from their store-packaging, set in a bowl and covered with plastic wrap.
If you’re not into shrimp, you can try another type of seafood on the salads, such as chunks of canned B.C. albacore tuna.
I made a lemon-olive oil dressing, called ladolemono in Greek cuisine, to drizzle on the salads at the dining table.
It’s easy to make in advance and keep refrigerated until needed. You could also plate the Greek-style dinner salads an hour or so before serving and refrigerate them until you’re ready.
My recipe serves four, but could be halved if you were only serving two. It could also be further expanded to feed a larger group.
Greek-style Dinner Salads with Shrimp
Colourful, vegetable rich, Greek-style salads, accented with B.C. shrimp that you could serve for lunch or dinner on a warm summer day with slices of good bread.
Preparation time: 40 minutes
Cooking time: None
Makes: four servings
8 to 12 cups chopped romaine or head lettuce, or baby mixed salad greens
2 medium, ripe, on-the-vine tomatoes, cut into wedges
24 slices English cucumber, or peeled, field cucumber
1 small to medium green bell pepper, cubed or cut into small wedges
150 grams feta cheese, sliced or cubed
1/2 medium red onion, thinly sliced (see Note)
24 to 32 kalamata olives
200 to 250 grams hand-peeled shrimp
• lemon olive oil dressing (see recipe below)
Divide and set the lettuce on four dinner plates. Separately, arrange the tomato, cucumber, bell pepper, feta cheese, onion, olives and shrimp on top of the lettuce. Salads can be made to this point an hour or so before serving; keep them refrigerated until ready to do so. When ready to serve the salads, set them on the dining table and let diners top their salad, to taste, with the lemon olive oil dressing.
Note: If your onion is overly strong tasting, you can mellow it’s flavour by placing the sliced onion in a small to medium bowl and tossing it with 3/4 tsp salt. Now pour in enough cold water to just cover the onions. Let the onions stand 15 minutes, stirring one or twice, and then drain well. Rinse the onions under cold water, drain well again, and they are ready to use for the salad.
Eric’s options: Instead of shrimp, try using chunks of canned, drained, B.C. Albacore tuna on the salads. B.C. albacore tuna is prepared at St. Jean’s Cannery in Nanaimo. It’s a premium, no-water-added product sold at some grocery stores and seafood stores under the St. Jean’s Cannery brand and others, such as Raincoast Trading.
Lemon Olive Oil Dressing
Lemony dressing, rich with olive oil and complementary seasonings you can spoon over the Greek-style dinner salads, other types of Mediterranean-style salads, and also grilled vegetables.
Preparation time: minutes
Cooking time: None
Makes: about one cup
1/4 cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1 medium garlic clove, minced
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp honey
• pinch red pepper flakes
• salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
3/4 cup olive oil
Put all ingredients in a jar, seal and shake to combine. Refrigerate dressing until needed. It will keep several days in the refrigerator. Shake the dressing again, just before using.
Eric Akis is the author of eight cookbooks. His columns appear in the Life section Wednesday and Sunday.
