We can get hung up on the idea that a salad has to start with a base layer of lettuce. I’m a big fan of all kinds of leafy greens, but this bright and crunchy celery salad is a refreshing alternative. Especially in winter when the farmer’s market is a distant memory and you’re at the mercy of the grocery store produce aisle.
Celery rarely gets to take center stage. I always have it in the crisper drawer, but that’s mostly for dicing and adding to onions and carrots as the beginnings of soup. Occasionally I’ll cut it into sticks for dipping into hummus. (Or peanut butter, one of my mother’s tricks for getting me to eat vegetables when I was a kid.)
So I was intrigued when I saw this salad in Bon Appetit magazine a few years ago. If you know me and my Salad Matrix, you know I grade a salad on the basis of its contrasts. No one-note salads for me, I want the yin and yang of crunchy against creamy, salty with sweet. Bonus points for hitting as many of those notes in as few ingredients as possible, with nothing extraneous or distracting.
With just four ingredients (not counting the dressing), this salad has it all. Celery and almonds: crunchy. Parmesan: creamy and salty (and the almonds hit the salty category, too). The surprisingly spot-on ingredient is the dates: sweet, creamy – and genius.
The dressing is nothing more than lemon juice and olive oil, perked up with a pinch of hot pepper flakes – clean, bright and citrusy. Go easy on the pepper flakes; with the zingy-ness of the lemon in the dressing, you don’t need a lot of heat.
I adapted this recipe just slightly from Celery Salad with Dates, Almonds and Parmesan, from Bon Appetit September 2013. I’ve cut the quantities down to serve 4 instead of 6 (making it easy to cut in half to serve 2, which is what I usually do.) The original recipe called for raw almonds and required toasting and cooling them, then adding them to the salad along with salt; I use roasted, salted almonds, which I almost always have on hand – a no-brainer time-saver.
To see this salad as part of an Italian-themed menu, complete with a game plan with timing for all steps, read the post for Saturday January 9, 2021.
Celery Salad with Dates, Almonds and Parmesan
Shave the Parmesan with a vegetable peeler.
Ingredients
- 6 firm, juicy celery stalks with leaves, stalks thinly sliced on the diagonal and leaves separated
- 4 dates, pitted and coarsely chopped
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- Kosher salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
- Crushed red pepper flakes
- ¼ cup roasted, salted almonds, coarsely chopped
- 2 ounces shaved Parmesan cheese
Directions
- Step 1 Toss the celery slices and leaves, chopped dates, lemon juice and olive oil together in a large bowl. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and crushed red pepper flakes.
- Step 2 Transfer the salad to a serving platter or four individual plates. Scatter the chopped almonds and Parmesan cheese shavings over the top of the salad.
