I can’t believe it’s been more than a year since I’ve shared a recipe here. True that I’ve been giving you some cooking tips over at Instagram but not a proper recipe. So here are two for the upcoming salad season. Seasoning salads can be tricky: it’s just as bad having an underdressed salad, with little to no flavor, as it is having an overdressed salad, where the light, crispy green leaves turn soggy and mushy.

I remember my grandmother seasoning the salad like this: she would pick the salad serving spoon, pour olive oil, white wine vinegar (“eyeballing” a 3 to 1 ratio) and fine salt, mix it with the salad serving fork, pouring it over the salad and thoroughly, but carefully, giving all the salad leaves a good stir. I’d say that this is one of most common green leaves salad dressing, the vinaigrette. There are, of course, some twists you can make to this classic concoction. You can add a touch of honey or a teaspoon of mustard, switch white wine vinegar for balsamic or lemon juice, grate a small clove of garlic or just crush and smear it on the inside of the salad bowl where you’ll be serving the green leaves, although the famous food writer Elizabeth David says in her book French Provincial Cooking that “(…) a cut clove of garlic rubbed round a salad bowl does not do anything very much (…)”. If you give it a try let me know what’s your verdict.

While salad dressings are at their core oily and liquid, I’ve been finding it interesting to complement them - if not even completely substitute them - with flavor packed condiments like the ones I’m sharing today: an Egyptian nuts, seeds and spices blend called dukkah and the Italian green sauce named gremolata.

Dukkah (addapted from The Rolling Home Journal)

35g hazelnuts
35g walnuts
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp pepper corns (I used a mix of pink and black)
1 tbsp coriander seeds
3 tbsp sesame seeds (I used black sesame)
1 tsp sweet paprika
2 tsp salt

Pre-heat the oven to 160ºC. Roast the hazelnuts and walnuts fro 20 minutes. Let them cool to room temperature. You can either chop the nuts in tiny bits or, as I normally do, put them in a coffee grinder and briefly ground them, being careful so that they don't turn into a nut butter. In a frying pan, toast the spices and seeds, except the paprika and salt, for about 1 minutes, or until fragrant and starting to pop. Again, you can either use a peste and mortar to finelly ground them or grind them in the coffee grinder. Mix the chopped or ground nuts with the grounded spices and seeds, the parika and salt. You can keep it stored in a small jar with a tight lid in the pantry or fridge. Use it within a month.

Gremolata
(I've omitted the garlic, an ingredient present in the traditional recipes, and added roasted pumpkin seeds for a crunchy texture)

1 cup finely chopped parsely (about 100g)
Juice and zest of one lemon
3 tbsp pumpkin seeds, lightly toasted
Salt and pepper

Mix all ingredients and store in a tight sealed jar. Keep in the fridge for up to 2 days.

It’s not just in salads that I’ve been using these two condiments: any plain vegetable, grain or legume will have its flavor boosted when sprinkled with any of these two seasonings!