You can make this with whatever you happen to have in your fridge, within reason, but here's what I used:
- the last few leaves of a Little Gem lettuce, chopped
- six piccolini tomatoes, halved
- a quarter of a large red bell pepper, diced
- a stick of rather floppy celery, diced
- a single large closed cup mushroom, wiped and sliced
- a quarter of a medium-sized onion, finely diced
- half an avocado from a few days earlier, brown bits cut off, rest chopped into bite-sized pieces
- some pink and green grapes, picked off an old bunch that had been in the fridge a while - I picked off best ones and threw rest away as they were too manky (I hate throwing food out but these had been pushed to back of fridge by P and we'd forgotten they were there)
- half a can of mixed beans (not in tomato sauce!) left over from day before
- parmesan cheese, grated
- lemon zest, microplaned (optional)
- black pepper
- French dressing (bought)
All the effort goes into the prep. Make sure you wash and dry all the veg, and obviously don't use stuff that is definitely going off. However, many things that are past their best but not actually mouldy would work well in this type of salad. Rinse the beans in a sieve.
Mix everything together except parmesan and pepper. Cover liberally with dressing. Add parmesan and black pepper at the end.
It was delicious, much better than I expected. We ate it with a shop-bought quiche lorraine out of the freezer.
VARIATIONS: You could easily experiment with other raw veg and fruit - courgettes, cucumber, carrot, spring onions, raddishes, peaches, apples, pears, etc - and things like seeds and nuts. You could experiment with different dressings, and/or make your own. You might drizzle a little runny honey onto the salad and/or some lemon, lime, orange or grapefruit juice. You could try out different herbs and spices.
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