RECIPE: Storm Pantry Salad

With storm season here, it’s the perfect time to be more conscious of having non-perishable items in our pantry for emergency readiness.  It is also a good time to “weed” out the pantry of some of those items that haven’t seen the light of day in a very long time.  During recent storm readiness activities, jars of marinated artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers, olives and capers were found lurking in the back of the pantry.  Combining these ingredients with fresh parsley, green onions and basil and then tossing with a lemon vinaigrette makes for a delicious Mediterranean style salad.

The salad could work great as a side dish with barbecued fish or meat or even on its own with slices of crusty bread to soak up the tangy, garlicky, dressing! Canned or fresh tuna, and/or white beans (cannellini) could also easily be added to the dish for a complete dinner or lunch dish. In this recipe, fresh red, yellow and orange sweet peppers from the farmers market were swapped out for the ones in the jar, the jar ones got tucked back into pantry for a future storm meal.

Ingredients:

Salad:

4 cups marinated artichoke hearts, drained

1/4 pound mushrooms, quartered

2 medium bell peppers, red, orange or yellow, julienned (or canned roasted peppers)

1 bunch of green onions, minced

1/4 cup chopped fresh basil leaves

6 tablespoons capers, drained

1/2 cup minced red onion

1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley leaves

1 cup grape tomatoes, sliced in half, optional

olives, optional

Vinaigrette:

3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 clove garlic, minced

2 pinches hot red pepper flakes

1/2 cup olive oil

salt and pepper

Directions:

1. In a salad bowl, combine all the salad ingredients.
2. Make the vinaigrette by mixing the lemon juice, Dijon, red pepper flakes and garlic together and whisking in the olive oil to emulsify the dressing.
3. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve at room temperature.

This post has been a contribution by Kristin Frost Albrecht on behalf of The Food Basket, Hawai’i Island’s Food Bank.