Cooking with Chef Jo: Fresh Salad!

I watched and waited for this for months! It's time for for fresh salads from our garden! I was out early this morning harvesting assorted leaves from our red sail, oak leaf, radish leaf, other assorted other lettuces and greens, herbs, and flowers. All our organically garden.

For tonight's salad, I picked the outer leaves of assorted lettuce leaves, strawberry leaves, dandelion leaves, some of the English pea leaves, and plantains. For good measure I pick some small strawberries too. There are still some chicken planted strawberries outside the garden fence line. The berries are pea size.

I then went for the flowers and herbs. I grabbed a few pea blossoms, dandelions, nasturtiums, pansies, impatiens, rosemary, oregano, thyme, and a couple of roses.I peeled the petals off the dandelions, nasturtiums, clovers, pansies, and roses (the centers and green bits can taste a bit off). I do a double rinse on my harvest. Followed by a good spin in my salad spinner and placed them all in the refrigerator until supper time.

I mixed up some lemon vinaigrette about thirty minutes before dinner and poured it into the salad bowl. I thinly sliced an onion and put that with some grated carrots to marinate. Just before serving I'll add my herbs, lettuces, leaves, and flowers. I'll toss it very gently to lightly coat the greens, flowers, and herbs. I can't wait to add our other homegrown veggies to this in the next month or so.

Hey Jo, where's the recipe? Don't worry. Here it is...

Jo's Lemon Vinaigrette 
Makes 5 servings or 1 large (family size) salad

1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest (about 1/2 a lemon zested)
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice (about 1 whole lemon)
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon lemon thyme, minced
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt, or to taste
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

• In small bowl, add lemon zest, lemon juice, sugar, salt, and mustard. Whisk until sugar and salt are dissolved.
• Add pepper and lemon thyme.
• Drizzle in oil. Whisk until emulsified.
• Pour into air tight container and refrigerate for up to 3 days for optimum taste.

Enjoy!

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo