Need help with salad recipe

Windangel

Windangel

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Joined
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Location
Lancaster, CA
Hi all. I am trying to come up with a recipe for a red vampire salad but I can't find a recipe anywhere that pleases me. None of them quite have the ingredients I want. I could just throw the veggies together in a bowl and serve it, but I want to get the proportions right so I can recreate it -just so- and save it in my journal of favorite recipes (I am NOT writing one for sale). I would like the recipe to serve 4. I hope I am making sense.

I want the salad to come out beautiful like this, but I don't care for all the ingredients recipe this picture goes with:

img_1926.jpg

The vegetables I want in this are:

red leaf lettuce
radicchio
red cabbage
red bell peppers
tomatoes
dried cranberries
And what else?

What can be substituted for beets? The meal I was planning this for will have beets in another course, yet I would like to have two versions of this salad both with and without the beets.

This recipe also calls for red quinoa, but again, I am serving red quinoa pilaf as a side dish to this meal.

I don't want to be redundant.

As for the dressing, I was thinking of either raspberry, red wine or a pomegranate vinaigrette. And as I write this I am thinking that a raspberry-pomegranate-red wine vinaigrette sounds wonderful. But where would I find a recipe for THAT?

I have plenty of time to plan this. I am planning a Halloween Vampire dinner and it is several months away, so I have lots of time to test out recipes.

I appreciate all help and advice. Thanks in advance.

Angel
 
Your Vampire dinner sounds like a lot of fun. So the them is 'red'! A completely red dinner? I love that idea.

The salad ingredients listed above already sound a lot of things to put in one salad and I'm not sure I would use all of them. I need to have a bit of a think about this one.

I think a raspberry and pomegranate vinaigrette would be lovely. Did you mean using juice of fresh pomegranate or pomegranate vinegar?
 
Yes, the theme is red. I'm going for a creepy yet elegant sort of thing. I want to do either beef or lamb with an interesting red wine sauce that looks bloody.

Radishes and apples, definitely could work. Red onion looks good, and my guests will eat it, but I can't eat it raw. And they might go on the main course with the red sauce (well cooked). I haven't finalized any recipes- if I use pomegranate in the dressing on the salad, I probably won't use a pomegranate sauce on the meat. The fun part of this will be testing the recipes out and determining which taste best and in which combination.

Which is better for dressing, the juice or the vinegar? I've never made it. My homemade dressings have never tasted rich enough. I can't figure out what they put in the bottled stuff that gives it the richness.
 
Windangel said:
Which is better for dressing, the juice or the vinegar? I've never made it. My homemade dressings have never tasted rich enough. I can't figure out what they put in the bottled stuff that gives it the richness.
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I would use the juice of a fresh pomegranate (and sprinkle the seeds like jewels across the salad). There is an ingredient called xanthum gum which is sometimes used in commercial dressings to thicken it. I use it myself for some things - it comes in a powder and is easy to mix in.

A good rich vinaigrette is an emulsion and its usually the mustard used which forms the emulsion. Dijon mustard is particularly good for this. The only problem is that it may prevent the dressing from looking vivid red. You could experiment. You need some of @medtran49's Blackberry mustard (we are currently holding a recipe challenge for mustard)!

I've just made a raspberry puree for another purpose and it is a stunning vivid red. It might be good to use that in the dressing as it is quite thick and would give the dressing 'body' without needing mustard. If I have any left over I'll try it out and post the result here.
 
I love the idea of a red meal. That's fantastic!

They could be part of a salad, but I think just on their own they'd be welcome: a bowl of beet-colored hard-boiled eggs, and quails' eggs at that. So cute!

I do hope you post some pics of the dishes.
 
TastyReuben said:
a bowl of beet-colored hard-boiled eggs, and quails' eggs at that. So cute!
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I was also thinking that!

Second thought about red cabbage in this salad is that it would have to be extremely finely shredded and used sparingly. Its very crunchy and big bits would be quite unpleasant I think.
 
Yes, my blackberry mustard is a perfect color to use. I also made a blackberry vinaigrette recently for a salad. It stained the zucchini noodles/ribbons reddish pink. It's in a food magazine we have and I didn't find it with a quick Google search but if you are interested, will find it.

You could also use the small pearl red onions for something, maybe a side dish, particularly if you are serving beef.

Don't forget about black grapes either or plumped dried cherries. Both of them would go good in a salad or a dessert.

If you are interested at all in molecular gastronomy, you could make a "plasma soup" by making a clear tomato soup, maybe thickening it a bit with gelatin or something else, maybe even making some "red cells" by using the caviar making technique with some of the soup, a bit of balsamic and some red food color.
 
medtran49 said:
If you are interested at all in molecular gastronomy, you could make a "plasma soup" by making a clear tomato soup, maybe thickening it a bit with gelatin or something else, maybe even making some "red cells" by using the caviar making technique with some of the soup, a bit of balsamic and some red food color.
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Great idea.
 
What a fun idea!
Maybe rutabaga in the salad or as a side.
A raspberry sorbet as a palette cleanser.
Red Velvet cake or a red Cheese cake for dessert.
Please share your menu, recipes and photos
 
Thanks for the dressing info, @morning glory. I've heard of xanthan gum but never tried it.I would love to try the raspberry puree. I wonder if the red cabbage could be pickled first, maybe with the red pearl onions, so I can enjoy them. That could replace the beet in the recipe.

@medtran49- blackberry vinaigrette sounds delightful. Where can I find a recipe for that and the mustard? Black grapes and dried cherries sound good. I guess I'll have to buy a lot of veggies and experiment.

@Elizabeth8 - I've never used rutabagas, how are they handled? I have raspberry sorbet and red velvet cake on my list of potential desserts. I love cheesecake, too, though. I'll definitely be posting the final recipes with pictures once it's done.

@rascal- I am planning a beet soup. I found a few recipes I want to try out. They all make me hungry. But I might go for a red pepper soup instead and do a side of beets with blood orange sauce, which looks like something a vampire would eat- it really looks gory. I could probably do about 5 variations of this meal. It's so much fun.

I'm also haunting thrift shops for interesting dinnerware, since we only have white corelle in the house. So far, nothing. The day I found purple glasses, I didn't have the money on me to get the whole set. :(
 
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