This is our family's favourite salad. Poppy eats loads of it! Ivy always says she doesn't like it but then also eats loads of it! The sweetness of the apple with the sharpness and saltiness of the parmesan is a perfect match. Balsamic vinegar also has a touch of sweetness to it. This is a very child-friendly type of salad because kids love apples and they love cheese!
I like to use a mix of leafy greens which I get from my local fruit & veggie shop. They have the best variety of leaves in their mix with a good combination of greens and also purples. I'm always telling my girls that the best coloured foods are purple and green so this is perfect for my purple & green speech! lol! There's also Bitte types of leaves in there which help digestion too. Use whatever leafy greens (and purples) that your like best or try something new. Rocket goes perfectly with this too.
I always serve this salad when we have a tomatoey type of pasta and also with pizza. We make 'pizza sandwiches' with it... A slice of pizza on the bottom, salad in the middle and a slice of pizza on the top. My god, it's delicious!
RECIPE
The amount of each ingredient will vary depending on your taste but what you will roughly need is this...
- a big bowlful of mixed leafy greens
- 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 small apple of 1/2 large apple
- Parmesan cheese
Method
- Add the greens to a salad bowl
- For the dressing... You can do this properly by adding the vinegar & olive oil to a little jar & shaking it around to combine them OR you can just drizzle them over the top of the salad. Whatever you prefer/have time for :)
- Mix up the salad so that everything is coated. It's best to do this before adding the apple & parmesan
- Then with a potato peeler, peel slices of the parmesan on top of the salad. Add as much or as little as you like. I tend to add quite a bit because it gets my kids eating more of it!
- Chop the apple into large pieces so that you can also peel it into thin slices on top of the salad as well. By peeling the apple this way you get much thinner pieces for that slight sweetness hit in each mouthful. Have a look at the photo and you can see what the slices should look like
- Roughly mix around the salad so that the apple & parmesan slices are mixed through
- Serve & enjoy!