I am a true lover of all things vegetable. Really, I love them. I eat them raw, steamed, sauteed, braised, roasted… whichever way you prepare them, I will happily eat almost any vegetable. Unless, that is, it is overcooked, mushy and discolored. I believe that is how many children were/are raised eating vegetables, which is most certainly why there is a ‘veggie taboo’ in many homes. When cooked well and seasoned properly, vegetables can become a house favorite… but take one bite of a scorched broccoli floret, and well it can ruin you for life.

With that said, we do a lot of salads in our house for dinner and lunch. I most always have these items in stock:
• cheese
• nuts and seeds
• dried berries
• varietal lettuces
• beans or cooked meat
• miscellaneous raw or cooked veggies

My husband and I, at least once a week, eat salad for dinner accompanied by a local bakery baguette dipped in olive oil. My daughter has salad too (the crunchy kind!) supplemented with something else yummy like mac-n-cheese or pasta.

Recently my hubs and I went to the Purple Pig for a much needed night out. Very tasty and fun. Along with several pig-centered dishes, we ordered up an arugula salad with peas, asparagus… toasted hazelnuts, some sort of cheese, prosciutto … and I forget what else, but damn was it delicious. We practically licked the bowl clean!

So, in my typical post-dinner-out methodology, I tried to recreate this meal at home… and it turned out pretty well. Of course we didn’t have everything from the restaurant, but this is what we used:

Purple Pig Salad Redux
Ingredients

• Arugula
• Raddicchio
• Toasted almonds
• Blanched asparagus (blanch only to crisp tender)
• Frozen peas
• Grana Padano
• Olive oil
• Lemon juice
• Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

 Directions
Toss it all together until it tastes good. I think we were missing the ‘meat’ here, but it still tasted wonderful. Don’t you want to just swim in that photo?