Escarole Salad

This escarole salad is satisfying and flavorful. It is chock full of flavors and textures like crunchy almonds, buttery avocados, "bacon" flavor chickpeas, pineapple, dried apricots and zesty lemon. I love how the sweet and salty ingredients compliment the bitter greens. This flavor combination came to me when I was sick with a cold. This salad is perfect for a vitamin and flavor infusion!

If you have never tried escarole, you must! It is a hardier lettuce than most and has a mild bitterness that compliments sweet dressings or fruits. It holds up well to tossing, so it is more of a tosser than a drizzler. I love it dressed simply with lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper but it also tastes amazing in a basic vinaigrette.

Often salads containing escarole contain bacon because the sweet, savory smokiness of bacon compliments the bitter green. In my Escarole Salad, I choose chickpeas instead. I bake the chickpeas in "bacony" flavors like smoked paprika, maple syrup and soy sauce. They come out of the oven meaty, flavorful and crave worthy.

I added some fruits to this escarole salad for more sweetness. I love pineapple for its flavor profile and also for it's health benefits. Pineapple is wonderful when you have a cold for the extra vitamin C and to thin your mucous. Dried apricots are also also tasty and medicinal. They are great for your digestion and other unmentionable things. Adding sweet fruits to salads makes adding sweeteners to the dressing unecessary which is great if you are avoiding added sugars.

For healthy fats, I added buttery avocado, olive oil and slivered almonds to this Escarole Salad. They bump up the nutrition and also add texture. With all the plant based protein and healthy fat, this salad eats like a meal. It is filling without being heavy. This is the perfect fall or winter salad to help you eat some more roughage. In those months salads are often overlooked and it is important for your health to keep eating raw food and not just cozy comfort food.