Favorite. Salad. Ever.

One of Brad’s and my favorite restaurants in NEPA is the Summerhouse Grill, an amazing, farm-to-table restaurant in Montrose. The food is clean and fresh, it’s BYO, the space is cozy and adorable, and the 45 minute drive from Scranton is time well spent, especially for a date night. Last year, we went to a cooking class they hosted, and learned to make a salad that has been my go-to ever since.  The brightness of the lemon-coriander vinaigrette is balanced by the creaminess of the super-thinly sliced avocado and the peppery crunch of the paper-thin radishes. This was served as an accompaniment to Mexican food, but it really goes with anything. Have I mentioned how much I love avocados?  Because I really, really do.
MIXED GREEN SALAD WITH LEMON-CORIANDER VINAIGRETTE, AVOCADO, AND RADISHES
Ingredients:
Mixed Greens
1 Avocado
3-4 radishes
Dressing:
3 tablespoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil (I use California Olive Ranch olive oil, and only this brand, since reading this “hair-raising article on black market olive oil in the New Yorker that changed the mind-set of every cook who read it.” )
1 tablespoon Lemon Juice
1 teaspoon Coriander
Kosher salt/pepper to taste
1.  Wash the greens, and then (surprisingly), add a teeny pinch of kosher salt to them. Lettuce is technically a vegetable, and should be dressed like one.
2. In a small bowl, squeeze 1 tablespoon lemon juice (I usually find that this is half of a lemon. Roll it out on a hard surface before cutting it, to loosen the lemon juice) and add to that the coriander, kosher salt, and pepper. 

3. Once you’ve added the spices to the lemon juice (since the ingredients will absorb into the acid better than the oil), whisk in 3 tablespoons olive oil.

4. Verrrrrry thinly slice the radishes and the avocado. They should be paper thin – a microplaner will be able to accomplish this, but it usually just takes a couple practice runs and tossing out the thicker slices before you get it right.

5. Toss the greens with the salad, top with the radishes and the avocado. At the cooking class we went to, the folks at Summerhouse noted that the paper-thin slices “take this recipe from a salad to an event”, and I totally agree.