Apple pecan salad with goat cheese
Tender greens, crisp apple, toasted pecans, tangy goat cheese and dried cranberries in a maple balsamic dressing, pretty enough for a holiday table.
- 20 min total
- 20 min hands-on
- Anyone can make this
- Serves 6
- About $2.37 a serving
- 250 calories
- Vegetarian
- Gluten-free
Dolly says: It’s ready in 20 minutes, start to finish.
Ingredients
For 6 servings.
- ½ cup pecans, halves
- 1 tbsp maple syrup
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- 10 oz spring mix
- 1 apple, crisp and red
- ⅓ cup dried cranberries
- 4 oz goat cheese
From your pantry
- 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- ¼ cup olive oil
- ½ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp black pepper
Each serving has about 250 calories, 5 g protein, 16 g carbs and 20 g fat, and costs about $2.37 at typical US grocery prices. Both are estimates from what the recipe uses.
Steps
Tap an underlined word for a quick explanation.
Toast the pecans in a dry large over medium heat, often, 4 to 5 minutes, until they smell nutty and look a shade darker.
Skillet. A skillet is a frying pan: wide and flat with low, sloped sides. The shape lets steam escape, so food browns instead of stewing.
How you’ll know: It’s the pan you’d fry an egg in, and a 10 or 12 inch one handles most recipes.
Stir. Stirring means moving food around with a spoon or spatula so it cooks evenly and doesn’t stick. Unless the recipe says constantly, every so often is plenty, and it gives food time to brown.
How you’ll know: When you drag the spoon across the bottom, nothing is sticking or scorching.
Medium heatTimer: 4 min 30 sec
Dolly’s tip: Nuts go from toasted to burnt in under a minute. Stay with the pan and tip them onto a plate the moment they’re done.Shake the balsamic, maple syrup, mustard, oil, salt and pepper in a jar with a lid for 15 seconds, until creamy.
the apple and it, leaving the peel on for color.
Core. Coring means cutting out the hard center of things like apples, peppers or cabbage. That center is tough and woody, so it’s the part you throw away.
How you’ll know: What’s left is all tender flesh, with no hard, pale center.
Thinly slice. Thinly slicing means cutting slices about an eighth of an inch thick, roughly two coins stacked. Thin slices cook in seconds and soften fast, which quick dishes need.
How you’ll know: A slice bends a little when you hold it by one edge, and slow, steady cuts beat fast ones.
Dolly’s tip: Toss the slices with a spoonful of dressing so they don’t turn brown while you finish.Put the greens in a big bowl, with half the dressing, and gently.
Drizzle. Drizzling means pouring a thin, slow stream over the top of something. A thin stream spreads a little flavor a long way.
How you’ll know: You see thin lines across the food, not a puddle collecting underneath.
Toss. Tossing means gently lifting and turning food so everything gets coated, like pasta in sauce or vegetables in oil. It coats every piece evenly without mashing anything.
How you’ll know: Every piece looks glossy or evenly coated, with no dry spots hiding underneath.
Scatter the apple, pecans and cranberries over the top and on the goat cheese.
Crumble. Crumbling means breaking food into small, rough bits with your fingers or a spoon, like feta or ground meat in the pan. Small bits spread through the dish, so there’s some in every bite.
How you’ll know: The pieces are small and uneven, about pea-size, with no big clumps left.
Serve with the rest of the dressing on the side.
Plan this in Dollop, and get the grocery list
When you host a dinner, Dollop builds the menu around your guests’ allergies, works out a cooking timeline back from when everyone sits down, and puts it all on one grocery list.
