New Year’s Eve Salad with Sherry Vinaigrette

This salad makes me incredibly happy. There are really only 4 ingredients for the salad part. The sherry shallot vinaigrette isn’t very hard either. Sheri, my mother-in-law, loves this salad and first introduced it to me a few months ago. She got the idea at a restaurant in Mississippi. She didn’t get to actually try it, but she made a mental note of the delicious factor for later. And Voila! It has flavors that I would never think of pairing, and I think that’s why she originally tried it out (and that the vinaigrette has her name in it). =)

It can be made into a pretty fancy arrangement if you have guests.  I plan to make it for our New Year’s Eve dinner even though it will be just the two of us.

New Year’s Eve Salad

• red leaf lettuce
• orange supremes (pronounced suprems)
• whole pitted dates
• mascarpone cheese (cream cheese will work if you can’t find this)

Sherry Shallot Vinaigrette

• 1/2 cup EVOO
• 1/4 cup sherry vinegar
• 1/2 shallot, finely chopped
• 1/2 garlic clove, minced
• salt and pepper to taste
• a little squirt or two of honey to take the edge off the vinegar

Here’s what makes it cool:

1. Make this like you would any other salad, starting with your clean red leaf lettuce.
2. An orange “supreme” is just a peeled orange with no pulp. “How do I achieve this?” you may ask. Well, after you peel the whole orange, slice inside the pulp lines to remove the meat of the orange. And you have a sweet little orange wedge. Put 4-6 of these “supremes” on each salad, depending on how many folks you are serving.
3. Here comes the most time consuming, depending on how you want to do this next part. If you’re going super fancy, put the mascarpone cheese (Italian Cream Cheese used in Tiramisu) in an icing bag and pipe it into the middle of your pitted dates. If you don’t have cake icing supplies, slit the date vertically. Open it up, spoon in the cheese, and squish it back together again. Sheri usually gives 6 of these cheese-filled dates to each salad. If you don’t have the time or the patience for either of these options, dip each date into the cheese and just put it on the salad. Doing this is super fast, and the cheese kind of mixes with the vinaigrette to make a creamy combo. Very yum.
4. Top with Sherry Vinaigrette. To mix the vinaigrette, you can use one of those cruets that come with a packet of Italian Dressing in the the salad dressing aisle of your grocery. If you don’t have one of these bad boys, I recommend you get one or something like it. It is so much more economical and healthy to make your own dressings. If not, just whisk the above ingredients together in a bowl. No prob, Bob.

I hope your New Year’s is safe, happy, and fun.

Here’s to the start of the end of a decade (or the beginning of a new one, depending on how you look at it).