Our 20 best salad recipes to spend the summer

Summer has many charms: the sun is late and vegetables and fruits are so good that they don't take much effort to turn into delicious and satisfying dishes. Luckily, the price of fresh produce hasn't risen as much as other ingredients this year, and it's especially tasty now.

We've given you free formulas for 20 of our favorite combinations. Buy what looks and smells the most appealing (and costs the least), then play around with the suggestions below, using the amounts that make the most sense for you and your taste.

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The following covers all the salad bases: crisp, fresh leafy tufts; robust blends that can sit for a few hours or be made the day before; hearty pastas, grains, and beans that can bulk up - or make - a meal; sweet and savory fruit combinations.

Go ahead and create your own. Replace bitter lettuces with sweeter lettuces, use a variety of fruits instead of just one type, go wild with herbs or banish them (hey, cilantro!). Season to taste - salt enhances flavors, tames bitterness and balances sweetness and tartness, while pepper adds a floral touch. Whatever you do, don't worry. It's summer, and cooking should be easy.

Leafy SaladRecommendedCrunchy Greens with Carrot-Ginger Dressing

This recipe is inspired by the sunny orange flavor of green salads with carrot-ginger dressing at restaurants Japanese Americans. The luscious, aromatic dressing may be the star, but a salad is only as good as its lettuce. After washing and thoroughly spinning the greens in a salad spinner (you can also pat them dry in a clean kitchen towel), one way to maximize their crunch before adding the dressing is to refrigerate them, covered, for at least 30 minutes. . . Little Gem has a sweet, juicy firmness, but regular packed mixed greens, baby spinach and chopped romaine hearts also work.

By: Eric Kim

Serves 2 to 4

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Total time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

1 small carrot, peeled and coarsely chopped

1 piece (2½ cm) fresh ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped

60 ml extra virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons rice vinegar

1½ teaspoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon caster sugar

1 teaspoon onion powder

Salt< /p>

2-4 heads Little Gem lettuce, leaves separated, or 1 heart of romaine, chopped

60g fresh mint leaves< /em>

Method:

1. Make the vinaigrette: in a food processor, puree the carrot, ginger, olive oil, rice vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, onion powder, a pinch of salt and 1 tbsp. cold water until as smooth as possible, 1-2 minutes.< /p>

2. Dress the salad: place the lettuce leaves in a large serving bowl. Add a few tablespoons of dressing and toss, then add more as needed to evenly coat. The salad should be lightly dressed, not drowned; don't use every drop of bandage if you don't need it. Taste for seasoning, adjust with more salt if desired. Garnish salad with mint leaves and serve immediately.

Arugula with parmesan

In this salad, consider oil and acid as a seasoning for the vegetable

(Getty/iStock)

Emulsifying a dressing is not essential for a sublime salad: think of oil and acid as a seasoning instead for a vegetable. For this recipe, it's spicy arugula, seasoned with olive oil, lemon, and slivers of Parmesan cheese to create a classic salad in many Italian restaurants and homes. But if olive oil or lemon should come first, like all seemingly simple questions, it's complicated. James Beard, Marcella Hazan, Deborah Madison and Judy Rodgers all agreed: For a brighter-tasting salad, start with olive oil, which sticks better to liquids and doesn't cloud the lemon. Be sure to use flavored greens, then taste the prepared leaves and adjust seasonings until the arugula tastes like its green...