An Autumn Chopped Salad with Chicories, Pear, Feta, and Pecans + the best things I cooked this week... Nov 2

A hearty autumn chopped salad with a lemon-oregano vinaigrette (great with steak or chickpeas!); crowd favorite turkey meatballs; and a shroomy 🍄‍ tweak on my skillet roasted chicken...

Autumn chopped chicory salad; corriander-lemon-garlic turkey meatballs; roast chicken with mushrooms

If you overindulged on Halloween candy (who me?)… I have a recipe for an autumn chopped salad that will get plenty of greens in you (and some surprise vegetables.) I made it 4 times in the last couple weeks it’s that good. I’ve made it vegetarian with feta and nuts, vegan with chickpeas and nuts, and last night we had it with steak (10/10!) Instead of a vinegar based dressing, I make a simple lemon-oregano-olive oil salad dressing that is so good I had to get a piece of bread to rub around the empty bowl to soak up what was left.

Three variations on this autumn chopped salad...

We had a bit of a week here with my 8 year old coming down with pneumonia. For anyone who’s followed my Instagram for awhile, you may remember when she was hospitalized for a week with acute multifocal pneumonia. That was terrifying. Now that I have 8 years of parenting behind me and understand pneumonia a little more it’s slightly less scary but I’m nevertheless worn out. Last night was her first good sleep and she’s thankfully turned the corner. For any of you out there with a sick child at home (or a grown one far away you worry about), sending you some love. Next week’s newsletter will do a deep dive into homemade chicken soup, which is simmering on the stove while I type. I’ll also have some Thanksgiving menu ideas coming your way soon…

xoxo Emily

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Menu 1

Now let’s talk about this chopped salad. We have OPTIONS. You know I love options! Because I’m a private chef, not a restaurant chef, I’m used to taking different tastes into account and making modifications for everyone…I actually enjoy doing it! I want you to make something that is inline with YOUR vision/taste. I took a poll on my Instagram stories and a whopping 85% of you LOVE romaine. I am all about it in a Caesar salad, but it can be a little one note so I like to use a few types of lettuce for my chopped salad. I think a mix of mild and bitter lettuce works best but you can go all mild (or all bitter!)

Chicories are a great addition to chopped salad. Chicories are also technically vegetables! Leafy vegetables, closely related to lettuce. Common varieties you’ll see at most grocery stores are Belgian endive, frisée/curly endive, escarole, and the tight headed, purple-red radicchio/chiogga. They’re sturdy, crunchy and have a bitter edge, which I love in a salad.

I couldn’t find an artist to credit for this beautiful rendering of chicories

If you can find Castelfranco or Lusia (often labled Castelfranco) they are my favorites for this salad. They’re usually only at farmer’s markets or specialty Italian grocers like Eataly. They are much milder than radicchio with a nice crunch. Also gloriously pretty:

Castelfranco is a mix between red chicory/radicchio and endive. The leaves are beautiful pale green to pink colored and have red-pink splashes on them

I’ve listed a bunch of options in the ingredient list but my favorite combination is Castelfranco, radicchio, endive and baby gem. Ideally you’ll have a mix of bitter and sweet lettuces, and a lot of crunchy ones.

• Good mild lettuces for a chop: Romaine, baby gem (baby Romaine), butter lettuce (aka Boston or Bibb lettuce), green and red leaf lettuce, iceberg, Castelfranco

• Good bitter lettuces/vegetables for a chop: radicchio, Treviso, endive, escarole

This is a sort of hybrid antipasto-mediterranean-fall salad. It works as a lunch or dinner if you’re the type who loves a hearty dinner salad (me for sure.) You can play with the add-ins. I really love it with pear, fennel, feta, olives, red onion, and bacon. If I was serving this as an elegant first course salad for a dinner party, I would go easy on the add ins and leave out the chickpeas. I listed ingredient amounts as a loose guide, but it’s really a choose your own adventure salad and the amount of ingredients you’ll want depends on how many people you’re serving. It’s easily a big salad for one, or a bowl for sharing.