Grilled Salmon Salad with Avocado Dressing

This citrus marinated salmon served on a bed of wilted kale is the perfect winter salad. Crunchy moroccan chickpeas, sliced fresh radishes, beets, and cucumbers, crushed pistachios and a creamy basil mint avocado dressing are what make this grilled salmon salad so fine.

I am in love with this salad. The color and crunchy texture. The brilliant acid to fat ratio. Creating a salad that is truly balanced and bursting with flavor is an overlooked art. So much thought is necessary in creating a perfect salad. Is it any wonder that the salad section on restaurant menus are often underwhelming, usual suspects?

And maybe it’s just because people love cobb salads (I mean seriously, blue cheese, bacon, avocado…). While part of me wants to explore the idea here that salads are seen as “woman’s food” and therefore neglected, unimportant parts of a dinner menu, I have committed to efficiency in 2018. Which means less tangents. And more focus on giving you access to easy, healthy recipes.

Just walk away Stacy. Just walk away.

Grilled Salmon Salad: “woman’s food” deserving of women

I did walk away. In a giant circle.

Let’s say salads are “woman’s food”, which they’re not but are often stereotyped that way. The salad section is frequently the most thoughtless, over looked portion of a menu. Listen up world! “Woman’s food” deserves better. That means stop putting only female chefs in the garde manger (salad) section of the kitchen. It means putting the same time creating this section as the more “beefy” sections (because you charge the same price, bruh). It means listening to what women want. Which, clue in, is probably not salads and a man.

Woman want to be taken seriously and given respect. The same kind men receive in our culture. And that’s why this grilled salmon salad has a more deserving place on the “woman’s portion of a menu” than say, a cobb salad. Because it took a lot of thought, time, and creativity to come up with. The same as any other recipe I create here.

Men deserve this salad too. All of humanity deserve crispy, ras el hanout chickpeas and creamy avocado dressing. Because you are deserving. And this salad is boss.

A Quick Story About Women (Me) and Salads

Truth be told, I have always been more of a bacon cheeseburger diva than a salad queen. While that has changed as I’ve aged, I still have a hard time paying more for a grilled chicken breast with romaine as a juicy half pound burger with bacon and fries. Regardless of which one will make me feel my best, it logically doesn’t make sense to me. But circa 2005 I had been working as an apprentice chef in a crappy hotel kitchen in a small tourist town in Scotland. I was the only female chef, not to mention the only woman on the food service staff who spoke English. It was terrible and wonderful all at once.

After a couple months of getting my burger loving personality indulged by eating greasy bacon sandwiches, nights full of dark malty pints, and walks to the local take away fish and chip shop, my pants were starting to get a “wee” bit tight. So one night, at the end of a shift, I made myself a nice hardy salad. Not unlike this grilled salmon salad. The feeling I experienced when being mocked by my male colleagues for eating a salad, getting called a rabbit, is so vivid to me now. Not only was I isolated to making salads during service, while other, less talented and competent male chefs (and dishwashers) were given more opportunities, I was being mocked for the “femaleness” of eating a salad. It hurt.

So maybe that’s why I couldn’t let this one go. Because this is personal. Because I am certain I am not the only hard working, deserving woman to get offered underwhelming, usual suspects in life. That valuing the “female” things in our culture is valuing the females in our lives.

30 minutes to revolution

I am really done with the weird feminist twist I have put on this salad. It will not bring a revolution. Except on your taste buds!

This delicious salad will only take 30 minutes, if you do things in the right order. Here are steps to 30 minute, grilled salmon salad success.

Toss the chickpeas with spices and oil and stick them in the oven for 25 mintues. (3 min)
Squeeze citrus juices along with olive oil, and salt over the salmon and let it sit for 10 minutes. (3 min)
Chop up your veg (beets, watermelon radish if you can find it, cucumber, and kale). (5 min)
Blitz your avocado dressing in a blender. (5 min)
Throw the salmon on the grill (or stove because winter). (2 min ~ cook for 10-15 min)
Sauté your kale. (4 min)
Put everything together!

Enjoy! Bask in your deservedness. And share the grilled salmon salad love with the people you love.

Other hearty salads you will love!

SHAVED BRUSSELS SPROUTS, BUTTERNUT, AND DATE SALAD

ZUCCHINI PAD THAI WITH GRILLED CHICKEN OR TEMPEH

GRILLED POTATO CHICKPEA SALAD WITH BASIL GREEN GODDESS

When you make this grilled salmon salad, let me know! I absolutely love seeing your photos of POP KITCHEN recipes up on Instagram . Like POP KITCHEN on Facebook and follow along with all of my recipe inspiration on Pinterest ! Oh, and can you tell your friends about me? K, thanks, luh ew, bye!

Recipe

Grilled Salmon Salad with Avocado Dressing

Ingredients

1 15 oz can chickpeas (garbanzo beans), drained and patted dry
2 tsp oil (such as avocado oil, coconut oil, or pure olive)
2 tsp ras el hanout (1 tsp cumin, ½ tsp cinnamon, ½ tsp paprika if you don’t have it)
½ tsp sea salt
½ lb salmon, cut into 2 steaks
Juice of 1 orange (about ¼ cup, I used a cara cara but a navel is great too)
juice of ½ a lemon (2 Tbsp)
2 Tbsp same oil as above
1 tsp salt
1 ripe avocado
Juice of 1 lime
1¼ tsp maple syrup
½ tsp sea salt
1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp fresh mint
2 tsp fresh basil
4 cups kale, stems removed and roughly chopped
½ watermelon radish, cut in half and thinly sliced (or ¼ cup salad radishes)
½ large beet, peeled, cut in half, and thinly sliced
Seedless cucumber, peeled lengthwise with a vegetable peeler into long strips, about 4-6 stips
2 Tbsp pistachios, shelled, toasted, and roughly chopped

Instructions

Heat the oven to 400 F and heat your grill on high (if it’s too cold to grill you can also cook the salmon on the stove top). On a parchment paper or foil lined baking sheet, toss the chickpeas ingredients together and place in the oven. Bake for 25 minutes, giving the pan a good shake halfway through.
Place the salmon into a small container. Sprinkle the salmon with salt, squeeze the citrus juices over top, and drizzle with oil. Allow to sit at room temperature for 10 minutes and continue prepping the veggies and making the avocado dressing while it sits.
Place the salmon skin side down on the grill and cover. Allow to sit about 5 minutes or until the skin is nice and crispy. Flip the salmon and grill for 2-5 minutes (until there is a solid mark) and then turn the salmon 90 degrees and cook another 2-5 minutes or until the salmon is firm, is expelling some of the white fat, and just barely darker pink in the middle.
While the salmon marinates, chop your veggies and set aside. Keep the beets and radishes as thin as possible.
While the salmon is cooking, sauté and cover the chopped kale in a small amount of oil and salt over medium until wilted and a lighter shade of green.
In a blender, food processor or with a whisk, puree the avocado, lime juice, maple, salt, olive oil, and fresh herbs together until you have a creamy, green spread. Taste to see if it might need extra salt or lime juice.
Place everything lovingly on your plate, starting with the wilted kale and finishing with the salmon and avocado dressing. The dressing with keep for 2-3 days.