Sweet, sweet salad

Salad with Figs Blueberries, Cranberries, Walnuts with Maytag Blue Cheese & Raspberry and Orange Vinaigrette

By Chef Bill Wavrin

Serves 6

Ingredients:

12 cups spring mix

24 fresh figs, quartered

1 tbs. walnut oil

2 onions, julienned

1 cup blueberries washed

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1 cup walnut halves

Raspberry and Orange Vinaigrette, recipe to follow

salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

4 tbs. blue cheese crumbled

For the vinaigrette:

Ingredients:

1 clove roasted garlic

1 roasted shallot

1 ounce Grand Mariner

2 tbs. orange rind

¼ cup citrus infused rice wine vinegar

¼ cup raspberries

¼ cup olive oil

½ tsp. truffle oil

Normally my salads are some sort of variation of the same ingredients: lettuce, tomato, cucumber, some sort of bean, maybe some grilled chicken and whatever dressing I have in the fridge. We’re not usually fruit-in-salad kind of people, but we were delightfully surprised at this recipe, which was not only super easy, but a nice and sweet change up from our normal salad routine!

First, get your lettuce in a large bowl and start adding your ingredients. I added fresh blueberries, sliced figs, blue cheese crumbles, shelled walnuts, craisins, a few onions, fresh black pepper, and some baby spinach because we both love spinach in any salad. Add all of these to suit your taste. There is no exact science when creating a salad, and that’s why we love making them.

Next step is to create your dressing. This proved a more difficult task since we didnt have the exact ingredients. First, we sauteed some onions and garlic until they were both nice and aromatic. Next, I added a 1/4 cup of rice wine vineger, a shot of OJ, a shot of white wine vineger, a heaping 1/4 cup of fresh raspberries, the orange zest, extra virgin olive oil, and my cooked onion and garlic. You will notice that the Grand Marnier is missing, so when blended together, it was way too tart and too much vinegar. So we added a little sugar, a bit more oil, and a few more berries to get the mixture just right, which did the trick. It should be a little sweet and very tangy, and a bright pink color!

The salad was so refreshing with the sweet dressing. What I loved about it was that it pulled in the flavors from the berries and figs, and was so fun to look at!