A refreshing summer salad of ripe tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs, chickpeas, and handfuls of salad burnet leaves. Inspired by simple antipasti salads and French composed salads, there's many ways to vary the recipe and make it your own. Read on and I'll walk you through the process, which takes all of five minutes.
Salad burnet (Sanguisorba minor) is a useful plant to keep in the garden, but how I use it is different from what many resources will tell you to do with the plant. I use salad burnet leaves as a parsley substitute, and that's really all there is to it.
The simple composed salad in this post is just one of unnumerable ways you can use the plant. Here the flavor of the burnet leaves will fade into the background and become a supporting element. If you want the burnet flavor in the foreground, try using it in tabouleh instead of parsley (see below).
How To Make It
It's easy and quick to make. First you'll want to harvest and prepare the burnet leaves. Very young, first year plants may be quite small, but after a year or two they'll essentially turn into a bush that will produce plenty of greens throughout the year.
Harvest a few handfuls of stems, making sure they're clean, dry and fresh.
Next, strip the leaves from the stems just like you would thyme. A few tiny stems isn't an issue, but I look over what I pick for remnants of the top portion of the stem.
Once the leaves are removed from the stem all you need to do is give them a nice chop as you would parsley.
Grasp the leaves in your hand and finely slice them, then rotate 90 degrees and slice again. A rough chop is fine and there's no need to chop them into mulch. You'll also slice a small handful of basil, mint, or both.
Once the burnet's chopped all you need to do is assemble the dish and season it to taste.
First, grate a small garlic clove in a bowl with some lemon juice. This "cooks" the garlic and prevents it from fermenting in the fridge if it will be held for a day or two before serving.
After a few minutes, add sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, and chickpeas. While it's optional, I also added a good handful of black nightshade berries from my garden, which are similar to groundcherries.
Next add the burnet leaves, basil and mint, olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. In hindsight, it's better to add the oil and salt to the garlic first, but I can't be perfect all the time.
Mix everything together, double check the seasoning for salt, pepper and herbs and it's ready to serve. It can also be held in the fridge for a day or two and travels well.
The salad's fine all by itself, but if I have some edible flowers and colorful garnishes (which I usually do) I'll add some to liven things up. Below I used borage flowers, scarlet runner bean flowers, and a few extra whole burnet leaves to drive home the theme.
Variations and Additions
This is a simple composed salad, known as salade composée, which basically means "chunky salad without lettuce". The vegetables I've used here are a good summer blend, but I'll add all kinds of things to dishes like this.
Some of my favorite ways to vary the dance partners here is to push it towards an antipasti salad. Here's some other ingredients I may add:
- Diced feta or mozzarella cheese
- Finely cubed salami or ham
- Olives, especially kalamata or castelvetrano
- Cubes of stale bread, like a panzanella
- Sauteed mushrooms
- Blanched zucchini or cauliflower
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Summer Vegetable Salad with Burnet Leaves
Equipment
- 1 Medium mixing bowl
- 1 Chef knife
- 1 microplate grater for the garlic
Ingredients
- 1 cup canned chickpeas drained
- 6 oz cherry tomatoes halved
- 4 oz cucumber peeled, seeded, quartered and sliced ¼ inch
- 1 small clove garlic
- 1 oz (2 tbsp) fresh lemon juice plus more to taste
- ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt plus more to taste
- Fresh ground black pepper to taste
- Small handful of fresh basil and or mint leaves sliced
- 1 oz salad burnet leaves 1 loosely packed cup of chopped leaves
Instructions
- Grate the garlic into a mixing bowl, add the lemon juice, salt, and oil and allow to rest for 5 minutes. If you don't have a Microplane grater, you can crush the garlic with the back of a knife and mince it.
- Finely chop the burnet leaves, but don't go overboard-they shouldn't be mulch.
- Add the remaining ingredients, mix, taste and correct the seasoning for salt, lemon and herbs, then serve or store for up to two days in the refrigerator.
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