- Tired of snoring through your salad?

Well shake up the same old, same old with easy recipes that stimulate all the senses.

Today's salads will wake you right up.

Spinach salad with roasted squash, pumpkin seeds, and roasted grapes.

Green salad, with chicken and buttermilk dressing.

Three ingredient pickled red onions.

Cauliflower tabbouleh.

That's all straight ahead right here on Ellie's Real Good Food.

(mellow music) - [Narrator] Funding for this series has been provided by.

(upbeat music) (soft music) - [Woman Narrator] Grapes from California.

Grown by families for families.

- [Narrator] And by Regal Springs Tilapia.

Ellie's Kitchen is provided by Clarke, New England's Sub-Zero & Wolf showroom and test kitchens.

- Hi, I'm Ellie Krieger, and welcome to Ellie's Real Good Food.

If the thought of another salad just makes you want to yawn, it's time to snap out of it because today I'm really gonna shake things up in that salad bowl.

And the first recipe is spinach salad with a roasted squash, pumpkin seeds, and roasted grapes.

Now I bet you never thought about roasting grapes before.

It's something that's a simple thing to do.

And it really just transforms this beautiful fruit into something different entirely in a way.

So I just have some butternut squash here, that I've cut into half inch cubes.

And you can break down a whole squash if you want, you can also buy the pre-cubed stuff.

And I'm just gonna season this a little bringing out the sweetness with a little maple syrup.

So a tablespoon of maple syrup, just a touch.

Tablespoon of oil, olive oil.

And an eight teaspoon of salt.

Just to give that a little seasoning, a little flare, and bring out the natural essences of the squash.

Just stirring that up.

So this squash takes about 40 minutes to roast, but I'm gonna put it in for just about 10, 15 minutes, then I'm gonna add the grapes right to the same tray.

Okay the squash has been in there for 15 minutes.

Starting to get some color and starting to soften.

And now, while I'm doing those we may as well roast some grapes.

And it just takes that little tiny step to really wake up a salad.

Just a half tablespoon of olive oil, just to coat those.

I'm doing it in the same bowl even.

So it's okay if a little bit of that maple syrup gets on there.

A little salt.

And you're thinking salt on grapes?

So it becomes this sweet savory thing happening that's just really incredible.

Okay, back in the over for 20 to 30 minutes.

Time depending on the size of grapes and how well done you want 'em.

Oh, those look so good.

It's just incredible how they transform.

And I'm basically just going to make a dressing for it, which is simply three tablespoons of olive oil, two tablespoons of cider vinegar, so it has a little sweetness to it.

A tablespoon of maple syrup.

A little salt and pepper.

And some mustard.

Make it kind of creamy.

One and a half teaspoons of mustard.

Just gonna whisk that up.

And one of the things I love about this salad is it kind of combines raw leaves and cooked elements.

So my dressing's ready.

One more element here is some fresh tarragon.

A little tarragon goes a long way.

I think this goes so well with the flavor of the grapes.

Of course chopped.

Okay, so I'm just gonna dress this.

Give it a little toss with the tarragon.

Coat all the leaves.

I like to kind of have this base of greens and then just toss the other ingredients on top.

The colorful flavors and textures.

This is now kind of cool.

So this can totally be room temperature.

So you can make this all ahead.

Just sprinkle that on top.

Got the tender sweet squash with a kind of earthiness to it.

The roasted grapes that are plump.

And the crunch of pumpkin seeds on top.

You can use any kind of seed really.

Sunflower seeds would be nice.

Get a bite.

Mh.

Spinach salad with roasted squash, pumpkin seeds, and roasted grapes.

(upbeat music) I'm sure my next salad is gonna make Jess really happy.

She is really looking to wake up her salad game.

- Hi there.

So I have this dilemma.

And I call it the boring salad syndrome.

Because no matter how many times I make a salad at home it always seems boring.

And there you have it a lettuce, cucumber, and carrot salad.

Guess it'll do for now.

However, when I go out and I order a salad, ah, amazing things happen.

The lettuce is crisp, the vegetables all work together, the salad dressing's amazing.

I can't even begin to tell you how much I love having a salad out.

How could I make my salads not so boring at home, and kind of have some restaurant quality pizazz on my plates.

- Jess, you're gonna love this green salad with chicken and buttermilk dressing.

And Jess, I totally feel your pain because I think salad with chicken is sort of like your basic thing that you always get, or always make, or always order when you're trying to eat healthy.

And it can just be so boring, like this again.

So it starts off here, I'm making something that kind of stands on its own as a wonderful treat.

And that's walnuts with a maple glaze.

So I just put some walnut pieces in a pan here, dry pan, and then added some maple syrup.

One and a half table spoons of maple syrup.

And I'm gonna put a pinch of salt.

'Cause that sweet salty thing always gets me.

And basically just over medium high heat, just kind of toast them until the maple syrup kind of coats the walnuts.

It's great on all kind of salads, or just to munch on.

Starting to turn that darker shade.

I'm gonna take them off the heat at this point, perfect.

So I'll just let those cool over there and make the dressing.

And this dressing is knock your socks off buttermilk herb dressing.

And it's a dressing you could really use in any salad.

It's one that you're definitely gonna wanna make a note of.

You can make a double batch and keep it in the fridge for, it would last about a week in the fridge.

So it's a half cup of buttermilk.

Three tablespoons of mayo.

A teaspoon of Dijon mustard.

And let's make it really lemony with some lemon zest.

Really the zest of this whole lemon.

So I'll just get that in there.

And the juice of a lemon.

So it's gonna be creamy, it's gonna be tangy.

'Bout two tablespoons of lemon juice.

That looks about right.

Some salt and peeper.

Half a teaspoon of salt, fresh ground pepper.

And now a scallion.

Just thinly sliced.

Both the white and the green part.

And you can put onion or a little shallot instead of the scallion.

But I like that fresh kind of summery flavor of the scallion.

And some dill, two tablespoons of dill.

And here also you can play with this.

You can use parsley, cilantro, any tender herb might work well.

Chop that a bit.

And also as another substitute, if you don't have buttermilk you can also use some yogurt and just thin that out with a little milk to make it the same texture as buttermilk and then you'll get that tanginess there too.

Okay, so that's the dressing, I'm just gonna whisk that all up.

And you see it comes together so beautifully creamy.

So now I just need to chop up a few other ingredients.

So now we're talking crunchy fresh vegetables just cut all into bite sized pieces.

Alright so everything in there.

Grab some green beans.

Just gonna cut these, these have been blanched.

So it's one of those ways you can even use leftover green beans from the night before.

Or if you had another vegetable.

Maybe it's some broccoli that's been steamed, that would go well.

Put that in.

Little bit of apple.

And some fresh fruit and also some dried fruit.

And dried cherries.

Just chop those a little.

I guess you could almost call this the kitchen sink salad.

How did I pull it together for you, but it's so worth it.

And then chicken.

So instead of a boring diced chicken.

Grilled chicken, okay it's fine right.

But I just take the chicken from a rotisserie chicken, so this is half a rotisserie chicken and I shred it, I kind of pull it off the bone.

And it's just more tender, kind of that different texture, sometimes is all you need.

I'm actually gonna get in with my hands here, just give it all a toss together first.

Look at all those different elements, so great.

And the dressing goes on top.

Got that dill and scallion, the creaminess from the buttermilk.

Give that a toss to coat the leaves.

This is not your ordinary salad with chicken.

I don't know about you but my mouth is totally watering right now.

I didn't even get the walnuts on there yet.

Okay, I'm serving some up.

And last but not least, a few of these maple walnuts.

So it's fresh and light and healthy and exciting.

And it taste amazing.

Green salad with chicken and buttermilk dressing.

One of the great ways to make a beautiful salad is to take advantage of the colorful palette of greens that are now available.

And so many are at the market locally and year round, thanks to new ways of farming, even right in the heart of the city.

Check this out.

Well you wouldn't know it to look at it, but this old building has been recycled into an innovative new farm that grows all kind of greens year round.

Supplying them locally and sustainably.

David thank you so much for having me here, it's an amazing place.

Tell me the inspiration behind it.

- The inspiration for me started with water.

60% of the world's fresh water goes to agriculture.

About 60% of the world's fresh water contamination comes from agriculture.

So if one wants to solve the world's water problems, solve agriculture.

So we've developed a way to grow plants using 95% less water.

- That's just amazing.

- [David] At AeroFarms we grow without pesticides, herbicides, fungicides.

So there's-- - Zero pesticides.

Zero?

- Right.

- Wow.

- And what that also means is there is no washing part of the process.

Typically when you see triple washed, people don't think of what it means, but we're washing off the pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, we're able to eliminate that whole process because there's nothing to wash off.

- [Ellie] And you're saving water?

- [David] And we're saving water, we're also not damaging the plant.

- So how does this all work?

We're at the start here right, this is where it begins.

- Yeah, this is a way we are able to grow indoors all year round.

So this is actually sunless soil-less agriculture.

And how do we do it?

We actually are able to optimize the right environment.

So it's start with our growing medium.

So instead of soil we actually grow on cloth, and it's actually made out of recycled plastic.

So we're actually taking 24 water bottles out of the waste chain for each yard.

So each one of these growing plats is over 100 water bottles that we've turned into something green and productive.

What we're excited about, here at AeroFarms, is that we can get 130 times more productivity per square foot than the field farm.

And it's driven by a number of different factors.

These are growing towers.

They have seven levels of growing.

We have farms that have 12, even 14 levels.

At any point in time we have 10 to 15 different varieties of big leafy greens growing.

- [Ellie] And it doesn't have to be shipped very far.

- And we always thing, the idea, by growing locally, there's a connection with your food, but we also bypass the transportation food miles.

- So what's going on over here with the red lights?

- Yeah, blue and red lights.

It turns out what type of spectrum the plants need we understand.

And so we can actually have more effective photosynthesis.

And so this is really game changing, when you think about how we can really address the food challenges we have today.

And the challenge we have with growing outdoors.

- [Ellie] This is the last stop on the train basically.

- This is the last stop.

So this is 14 days into the growing process for this particular one.

This is baby arugula.

And here it's hand harvested.

We also have automated harvesters as well.

So we can see what a healthy root system looks like.

All the misting of the nutrients is happening underneath here.

Nothing ever touches the plant.

So it's clean, residue free, ready to eat.

- And two weeks from seed to serving.

And how long would a typical arugula take?

- This would probably out in the field take about 35 days.

So we're talking about half the time.

And what's exciting is, not only can we do leafy greens, we've grown hundreds of leafy greens, we can do other crops.

- We've grown over 250 different varieties.

of greens here at the farm.

This is a spicy spring mix.

So this is all of our supper peppery greens put together.

- There's that arugula.

- [Alina] There you go that arugula.

Then you also have some of the Ruby Streaks mustard greens, right.

- Delicious.

- Mhm, there you go some watercress and baby bok choy all together.

- And there's so many different flavors.

- Mhm.

- So each green has a different nuance, a different flavor, and you're getting it to people's tables sooner, so that's going to prevent nutrient degradation.

- Absolutely.

- And so on.

So you're gonna get more that way.

- Yeah, and they taste better.

So when something tastes better you're gonna eat it, you're not gonna waste it, you're gonna enjoy it and actually get those nutrients.

- Right.

And it's not healthy until you eat it, right?

- Absolutely.

- So.

(laughing) (upbeat music) Here's an easy way to wake up your salads.

Three ingredient pickled red onions.

Three ingredients are onions, red wine vinegar, and honey.

And all you do is you slice up your onion, and all you do is steep these onions in the mixture of red wine vinegar.

Two thirds of a cup of that.

And one and a half tablespoons of honey.

So it's kind of a sweet tart thing going on here.

And just give that a little stir to combine.

And throw in the onions.

And kind of just let 'em marinate in here.

And while they marinate, the cell of the onion, the cell structure, kind of softens.

See how much we can get in there.

But after 20 minutes, it winds up kind of softening to this stage.

And what you wind up with is this incredibly tasty onion that doesn't have that uncomfortable onion-y bite, but just has this lovely sweet tart essence and the softness to it.

And it's perfect for dressing up just about any salad.

Just gonna put it on a simple salad here.

Cucumber and tomato.

And it just changes it completely to something exciting.

Three ingredient pickled red onions, you gotta make it.

Cauliflower tabbouleh, I just adore this salad.

And it starts off with making cauliflower rice.

You bass just grate cauliflower heads on a regular box grater or you could do it in the food processor with the grater attachment.

And this is how easy it is.

And you get this beautiful kind of grain like texture.

But typical in a tabbouleh salad is bulgur as one of the base ingredients.

And I love bulgur, so don't get me wrong, I think bulgur is amazing, health, and delicious, but I use this kind of idea of a tabbouleh to make an all vegetable salad that is definitely not boring.

So that's good.

And to this I'm gonna add a lot of parsley.

So two cups of parsley, chopped.

And to me this is really a quintessential aspect of a tabbouleh salad.

It should be really really basically a parsley salad.

And speaking of that, another herb I'm gonna put in here is mint.

I think often times we get stuck thinking about mint in sweets as a finish for deserts, but it's so fabulous in salads.

And it's nice to serve with kabobs.

Some tomatoes.

Some grape tomatoes.

Red onion, all goes in.

And some cucumber.

And I use english cucumber, so I can keep the skins on.

'Cause the skins are nice and thin and there's a lot of nutrition in the skin.

And I've seeded the cucumber as well.

Let's give that a stir.

And just dress it.

And the dressing, classic kind of Mediterranean, eastern Mediterranean middle eastern flavors.

Olive oil.

Using a quarter cup of olive oil.

Just gonna coat everything.

Some lemon zest.

The zest of one lemon will do it.

Okay.

Throw that out.

And two tablespoons of lemon juice.

I don't know where I would be in this world without fresh lemon.

Use it in so many things.

And some cumin.

So right now we have that olive oil and the brightness from the lemon.

And the cumin just gives it this earthy depth.

And salt and pepper, quarter teaspoon of each.

Just give that a stir to combine it all.

And you can eat it right away, which I'm gonna have some, I know that.

But it also is nice to sit for a little while and the flavors melt.

Beautiful.

Cauliflower tabbouleh.

Now that's how you do unboring salads.

In the sweet spot where delicious and healthy meet.

Well you wouldn't know it to look at it, but this old building has been recycled into an innovative new farm that grows all kinds of greens year round, supplying them locally and sustainably.

Check it out.

(laughing) - [Production Member] One more time.

- Yeah, I screwed up.

I screwed up.

I screwed up.

(laughing) Screwed up once again.

- [Narrator] For these recipes and much more, go to elliesrealgoodfood.com.

Also, connect with Ellie on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Funding for this series has been provided by.

(upbeat music) And by.

(soft music) - [Woman Narrator] Grapes from California.

Grown by families for families.

- [Narrator] And by Regal Springs Tilapia.

Ellie's Kitchen is provided by Clarke, New England's Sub-Zero & Wolf showroom and test kitchens.