Salty and sweet: chef Paula Lentz’s Bacon and Watermelon Salad
Spring and summer are great seasons for grilling, and salads are the ideal accompaniment to grilled foods. As spring turns to summer, fresh ingredients become more abundant and everyone begins to look for a break from winter’s heavy meals. Salads offer endless possibilities, and most importantly, are easy to prepare—allowing us to spend more time with family and friends, and less time in the kitchen.
There’s not much that goes better with a juicy steak than a fully loaded baked potato—especially in the form of a potato salad (See Loaded Baked Potato Salad, page 16). This take on a potato salad includes all the key ingredients of a loaded baked potato: bacon, cheese, mayonnaise and green onions. This salad does require some cooking, but when the weather warms up, it’s nice to keep the indoor cooking to a minimum—or at least to get the bulk of it done early in the day, before the temperature starts to rise. For this recipe, I bake the potatoes a couple of hours before dinner, let them cool in the fridge, then toss the salad together and let it chill further, to really give the salad’s flavours time to develop.
Another great side for grilled foods is a marinated vegetable salad. The vegetables can be grilled on the barbecue, right alongside the meats. Prepare a combination of pre-cut mushrooms, asparagus, peppers, zucchini, tomatoes and onions—any combination will work—then toss them all with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar and sea salt. Put everything in a zip lock bag, and allow them to marinate in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. When you’re ready to start cooking, place the vegetables in a grilling basket and position it at the back of the grill; turn the vegetables often, until they are slightly softened and nicely caramelized, or browned. Serve as-is or top with crumbled goat cheese or feta.
Fruit salads are cool and refreshing, and especially delicious with chicken or fish; the delicate flavours all work well together. Melons—honeydew, cantaloupe and watermelon—are all terrific in a salad. I also enjoy adding strawberries and blueberries to my salads.
If you want to keep things light, fruit salad marries well with a dressing made with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, but a yogurt-based dressing is also a natural pairing. Don’t skip the salt in fruit salads either—a touch of salt enhances the fruit’s natural flavours.
Other foods that are a source of calcium include beans (navy, white and soybeans), almonds, molasses, squash, broccoli, oranges, kale, fortified orange juice and fortified tofu. Look for labels that indicate that the food is an excellent source of calcium or is high in calcium, and go for foods with a % Daily Value of 10 per cent or higher.
You may be surprised to learn that fruit works well for grilling, too—especially pineapple; the natural sugars caramelize, adding a hint of smokiness to the sweet. Grilled pineapple is great on a green salad, or when added to the vegetables in a marinated salad.
Finally, when serving summer salads outdoors, it’s always best, in terms of food safety, to bring them out at the last minute—and to get any leftovers back into the fridge as soon as possible. I recommend plating in the kitchen so you can immediately return things to the fridge, or keeping the salads in an ice bath if they have to be left unrefrigerated for any length of time. Better safe than sorry!