We’re getting close to the first Leftover Tuesday event! So I’m going to post about my strategies for using leftover salad, which for a long time posed challenges for me.
For my basic stand-by spinach salad, I toss the spinach, nuts, cheese and any other extras I throw in with my balsamic vinaigrette. Tossing with the dressing helps get the whole salad nicely coated, but not overly so. The results are quite tasty—despite the range of things I can cook, I’m most often asked to contribute salad for potluck family dinners.
The problem is, once that dressing goes on the salad has a short shelf life. And some nights we seem to want to graze on a big bowl of salad. Other times we are content with a bit of it on the side, and are left with a good amount of leftovers. For awhile, I’d simply dump the leftover salad. But then I realized that the leftover spinach leaves were much to soggy for a encore performance in a salad, it has all kinds of good staff that can be a nice flavor and nutritional add in to other things.
Recently I found an especially nice use for leftover salad. Jodi had made a tasty Butternut Squash Bisque from the Soup Bible. Christine Cooks has a different version of the same titled soup if you’re looking for a recipe.
We wound up with ample leftovers of both soup & salad. These two items are often paired on menus as a light meal choice; why not bring them together, I thought? I dumped the leftover salad in with the soup, stirred and put away. The next night, I reheated them together, further wilting the spinach and melding the flavors together. The result was quite good. The green from the spinach lent a different color to the soup, and the nuts and cheese gave it a different consistency.
Two leftovers combined for another meal that tasted like something new. Now that’s a Leftover Makeover! Go here for Leftover Makeover 1.
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