No Lettuce Vegetable Ribbon Salad With Lemon Creole Dressing
While I love to spiralize many of my vegetables, I do also enjoy using my potato peeler to make long ribbons out of my squash, zucchini and carrots. While this is wonderful for you to make for yourself for lunch, it really is an elegant side to add to any meal and you don’t need to worry about getting any lettuce stuck in your teeth!
You will see I added grilled asparagus to this vegetable ribbon salad. If you were looking to make this more of a meal for those “Meatless Mondays”, I suggest grilling a couple of big portobello mushroom caps.
Add your vegetable ribbon salad in the center of your portobello mushroom and slice the other to place on the side of your salad. Now here you have it! Your perfect “Meatless Monday” meal! I like to make a big bowl of this to have for a few days.
Ingredients you will need to make your No Lettuce Vegetable Ribbon Salad:
- 5 large zucchini
- 3 large yellow squash
- 2 large carrots
- Large bunch of Asparagus (try to find the fattest ones if you can since you will be grilling these)
- 1 1/2 lemon
- 2 large tablespoons of Zatarain’s Creole Mustard
- 4 tablespoons of olive oil
- 4 tablespoons of fig balsamic glaze
- pinch of sea salt
- pinch of pepper
Lets make your Vegetable Ribbon Salad:
- Using your potato peeler, peel longways all around the sides of your zucchini and yellow squash. I generally lay them down on their sides so I have a good grip and am able to make the ribbons fairly wide depending on the size of your zucchini and yellow squash.
- Keep peeling till you get down to the seeds and then stop. You will be left with the centers of the zucchini and yellow squash, just like when you spiralize. The centers of both vegetables can make your ribbon salad watery.
- Next, peel the outer layer of your carrots and discard and then using your potato peeler, make long ribbons from your carrots.
- Add all of your ribbons of zucchini, yellow squash and carrots to a big salad bowl.
- Next, grill or roast your asparagus. Grilling is best. I have an indoor, stove top cast iron seasoned grill I like to use. Whether you grill your asparagus indoors or outdoors, season with a pinch of salt and pepper and grill on each side for about 3 minutes each till your asparagus turn a bright green color. When done, slice up your asparagus on a diagonal and toss in with your vegetable ribbons.
Now for the salad dressing….
In a small bowl or jar start adding the juice of one and 1/2 large lemon, 2 large tablespoons of Creole Mustard, 4 tablespoons of olive oil, 4 tablespoons of fig balsamic glaze. Taste your dressing… if a little too tart from the lemon for your taste, add a little more creole mustard. Mix or shake really well and pour your dressing over your salad right before serving. You should have a bit of dressing left over to put on the side.
Serve as pictured in the featured photo or serve as suggested above inside a grilled portobello mushroom cap. Another suggestion would be to serve this inside half of a grilled red bell pepper. However you choose to serve this, I promise your friends will be impressed!