Green Salad with Peaches, Balsamic Vinegar and Parmigiano-Reggiano
“My favorite summer salad! This salad is delicious, beautiful and real quick to put together. It is is wonderful with grilled seafood, poultry, vegetables, and white meats. ”
Below you’ll find
VIDEO - RECIPE - ABOUT INGREDIENTS - NOTES ABOUT INGREDIENTS
Green Salad featuring Balsamic Vinegar & Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese
Ingredients
The success of this dish depends its ingredients, so don’t miss the “About Ingredients section” below to learn the details.
100g/3.5oz of aged Parmigiano -Reggiano cheese
1 ripe peach or nectarine (every 4 servings)
Butter or Boston Bibb lettuce
Balsamic vinegar from Modena. See my Notes below
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Salt & freshly grated pepper
That’s it! There's only 5 ingredients !
Method
Shave some curls from your piece of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese using a cheese slicer such as this
Put the clean lettuce in a wide pretty bowl and dress with a good drizzle of EVOO and good balsamic vinegar. Add salt and pepper. Toss salad carefully.
Taste a piece of lettuce to ensure that its properly dressed and adjust seasonings if necessary.
Right before serving, slice the peach into thin slices (1/4 cm or 1/8 in).
Slice the peach thinly - not paper thin but pretty closePlace peach slices in a pattern over the salad so that its pretty to look at.
Top each piece of fruit with a a thin shaving of parmigiano reggiano cheese.
Place a drop (or drizzle) of balsamic vinegar over each slice of cheese.
The salad is ready to serve as is, no further tossing should be done!
To serve, use your serving utensils to dig deep into the bowl and pick up some salad with fruit & cheese on top.
Enjoy! Buon Appetito!
About Ingredients
Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
For this dish, an older Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese is ideal, the older the better: Ideally between 30 and 36 months-old which has a nutty undertones vs caramel undertones of the mild 12 month-old Parmigiano.
Ripe peach or nectarine
A ripe fruit which is sweet with some tanginess is best for this dish.
Salad Greens
The ideal lettuce variety for this salad is a mild lettuce. Its mild flavor is important to help balance all these sweet, tangy and savoury flavours. So choose greens that are mild flavoured such as butter, round, red leaf, oak leaf and Boston Bibb lettuces.
Avoid greens that will compete with the flavours just mentioned. So a big NO goes to kale, arugula, cress, radicchio, iceberg, cabbage, spinach, as these lovely, but strong tasting, greens would mask the flavor of the Parmigiano & Balsamic vinegar.
Balsamic Vinegar from Modena
Not all Balsamic Vinegars are worthy of that name. There is PDO Balsamic Vinegar from Modena which is fabulous and then there is wild west of balsamic vinegars where you never know what you are buying until you taste it. Below you will find 2 links to some nice PDO Balsamic and some very decent but not expensive balsamic vinegar.
PDO Traditional Balsamic Vinegar from Modena aka the good stuff ! (link coming soon)
THIS is my everyday and awesome Balsamic vinegar. Its not made the traditional way but it tastes pretty close to the good stuff (link coming soon)
Remember that a good Balsamic vinegar should not taste like vinegar. A good Balsamic vinegar, is an aged, (and thus,) concentrated tangy grape syrup ; it should taste smooth, creamy with tangy and sweet notes.
Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO)
The best types of extra virgin olive oil for this salad is tasty yet not overbearing so it won’t mask the flavors of this particular salad. (link to my favorites coming soon)
Naturally, we also want to avoid using rancid olive oils, so before you pour it, TASTE it.
Notes
This is a salad that is best assembled right before serving; however, you can have all the ingredients ready and prepped with the following exceptions:
Do not slice the peach or nectarine ahead of time because it tends to oxidise (turn brown) although it is perfectly safe to eat.
Dress with condiments (oil & vinegar) seconds before serving.
