This Fresh Garden Herb Salad literally brings you close to the source and gives you a taste of the season. It’s brilliant in its simplicity. You cannot go wrong with it. Simply use fresh, local and seasonal produce or even better your homegrown herbs and salad leaves. I must admit that I bought some of my salad ingredients at our local organic shop but some it was grown right here in my home. We have been renovating our home and only recently finished our kitchen. The first thing I did when it was finished, is to go out and buy a huge variety of herbs and salad greens to grow at home. They are growing like crazy and almost cover our entire kitchen island.

It’s so lovely to handpick your own salad greens and herbs. In this salad, dark green and red colours are the heroes. I used store-bought small, red radishes and red daikon, which I had never seen before. I used red veined beet greens, a small red beet and home-grown red-veined sorrel, which looks like a smaller version of  the beet greens. I also used homegrown wild arugula. The herbs all came from my window garden. Feel free to use any you like. I used a mixture of fresh mint leaves, basil, chives and parsley. I used a very simple dressing, some olive oil, lemon juice and lemon zest, which brings out the purity of all the ingredients.  This salad literally brings you close to the source and gives you a taste of the season. It’s brilliant in its simplicity. This Fresh Garden Herb Salad does not need anything else. Sometimes less really is more.  

Ingredients

• 1 small red rettich, cut julliene
• 6 radish, quartered
• 2 stalks of fresh, raw onions, chopped
• 1 stalk of celery, cut into small hearts and the fresh leafy celery tops
• 1 small red beet, peeled and cut julliene
• 1 small carrot, cut julliene
• 1 cup of wild arugula
• 1 cup of (red veined) beet greens
• a few leaves of red veined sorrel
• fresh herbs from your herb garden (mint, basil, chives, parsley), roughly chopped

Dressing

• ½ lemon juice
• 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tbsp lemon zest
• freshly ground black pepper and sea salt to taste

Instructions

• Mix all salad ingredients for the Garden Herb Salad into a large salad bowl.
• Add the salad dressing and gently mix into the salad.
• Serve right away.