Winter spinach salad

We change our wardrobes with the seasons, we should be changing our salad ingredients as well. Eating seasonally not only tastes better, but it requires a lot less energy to create.

In wintertime, instead of basing your salad on something light like a butter lettuce, consider something that weathers the cold climate, like endive, escarole or a more common spinach.

Once you’ve chosen your base leaf, move on to the add-ons. New York City-based chef Carlin Greenstein recommends building the salad around the green and in fall and winter, she likes to add a cooked element for those cold days.

Here is her recipe for a winter spinach salad complete with seasonal fruits (pomegranate, persimmon, and pear).

Winter Spinach Salad

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch of red spinach
• 1 persimmon
• 1 pomegranate
• 1 cup walnuts
• 1 Bosc pear
• Olive oil for sautéing
• A handful of thyme

Direction:

1. Spread walnuts on a tray and place them in the oven for a few minutes, until lightly browned.
2. Cut and de-seed pomegranate.
3. Slice persimmon.
4. Slice pear. She uses Bosc rather than Bartlett because it’s firmer and it stays firm when sauteed.
5. Heat saucepan with a coating of olive oil.
6. Once oil is hot, add thyme. The oils naturally occurring in the thyme come out in the hot oil.
7. After a couple minutes, add the pears to the pan. Turn the stove down to medium. You don’t want to darken these, you just want to get them a little bit caramelized which means the sugars in the fruit are coming out.

A pomegranate, molasses, lemon vinaigrette

Ingredients for vinaigrette:

• 1/2 squeezed lemon
• 2 teaspoons pomegranate molasses
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• Pepper
• Sea salt

Directions for vinaigrette:

1. Squeeze half lemon into your hand to catch seeds.
2. Add pomegranate molasses, olive oil, pepper and sea salt.
3. Whisk together.
4. Taste using a piece of spinach.

Directions for putting it all together:

1. Add the greens to the bowl and toss with the vinaigrette.
2. Then add the persimmon, pomegranate seeds and the pear.
3. Sprinkle the roasted walnuts on top.