After a week of celebrating four family birthdays - culminating in a night of karaoke - salad is definitely on the menu. With too much cake and drinks, and not enough vegetables, all we want is salad. Perusing Martha's options we found this tasty sounding one: Roasted Fingerling and Tomato Salad with Green Beans and Arugula.
To make the salad you take five cloves of garlic and a ½ cup of olive oil and puree in a blender. We decided to pour the oil into a plastic food container so it would be easier to coat the 1 ½ pounds of fingerling potatoes split half-wise, along with a pint of cherry tomatoes and 4 stems of fresh thyme. Then we sealed the container and tossed the mixture until well coated. Spread the potatoes, tomatoes and thyme on a baking sheet and baked for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile we cooked some green beans in boiling water for a couple of minutes until they turned bright green and then transferred them to an ice-water bath. Also, prepare the dressing of red-wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, fresh thyme, minced shallot, and olive oil.
We mixed our salad dressing in the same container we had used to coat the vegetables so there was a hint of the pureed garlic in there as well.
When the potatoes and tomatoes were done, they were tossed together with arugula and green beans. Season with salt and pepper.
This salad was awesome. It was the perfect trifecta of easy to make, delicious tasting, and seemingly healthy. In fact I already want to eat it again. The roasted tomatoes get slightly caramelized and sweet; the fingerling potatoes have a buttery flavor that balances nicely with the mildly peppery taste of arugula.
Since it was dinnertime we served our salad with a small salmon filet on the side that we threw in the oven with butter and shallots while the potatoes were roasting. We figured we needed a little brain food boost after this week.
But this salad would make a great lunch all by itself and we are planning to do just that later in the week.
Sometimes Martha, sometimes, you really come through. This is one of those times.
