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Demo: Waldorf Salad with Brown Rice

This colorful and tasty salad is just right for this no longer summer but not yet fall weather.  It features local apples which are arriving daily, celery, raisins, walnuts, lemon-yogurt dressing as well as a nice enhancement of brown jasmine or basmati rice.  It is easy to prepare; just start the rice, chop the vegetables and apples, soak the raisins if they are on the dry side, prepare the dressing and toss it all together once the rice is cooked and cooled to room temperature.  Be sure to squeeze lemon juice over the apples to keep them from browning. Today’s salad made use of  Gala apples from Champlain Orchards with their pretty red skin and juicy, ivory interior. Greek 0% yogurt works fine but it was suggested that using 2% Greek yogurt might eliminate the need for the vegetable oil called for in the recipe. I

included the zest of the lemon as well as the juice to give the salad a bit more zing. Use sweetener to taste, but if your apples are super sweet, it may not be necessary to use any sweetener at all. It is easy to experiment with this recipe, just tasting and adjusting sweet, sour and salty as you like it, tossing well after any additions. You could also use currants rather than raisins, pecans rather than walnuts, include pear chunks, or a different variety of apple.

Including rice with a Waldorf Salad is a popular idea, you will find recipes on the internet as well as cookbooks with variations. One I particularly enjoyed was one that a friend made last weekend which included pretty and tasty shreds of radicchio, served on a bed of baby arugula. We kept the dressing separate for picnicking, adding as much as we liked to our salad plates and tossing it together well. What a fantastic lunch!

As we get further into fall and winter squash, pumpkins, and root vegetables start to fill our produce shelves we will be featuring more soups, stews and other recipes to warm up on a chilly fall day.

Happy Cooking!                                                                                                                                                                                                       Gerda, Demo Coordinator