Garden Gem Salad

peaches and snap peas and basil oh my!

This salad was not something I planned in advance, not some grand idea I had, nothing like that. Kris was making lunch and I asked if he wanted a salad to go with his sandwich and we ended up here.

I pulled out all the produce we had on hand so I could visualize my options and then added things one by one. The sweetness of the peaches and corn, the crunch of the baby gem, pistachios, and snap peas, the tartness of the pickled red onion, and the savoriness of the basil dressing and stilton cheese all come together so beautifully.

It is truly a GEM!

Ingredients

• 2 heads of baby gem lettuce

• 1 peach

• 1 cup snap peas

• 1/4 cup pistachios

• 2 ears of corn

• 1/3 cup apricot stilton cheese

• 2-3 tablespoons basil aioli

• pickled red onion

Instructions

1. Prep your produce:

   1. Pull off and discard any dirty outer leaves of lettuce. Then cut off the butt of your lettuce and start separating the leaves. I usually discard the core where the leaves get tiny and bitter. Rinse and gently dry.

   2. Carefully pinch the ends of your snap peas and pull off the thread that runs along the center seam. Then thinly slice each snap pea at a slight angle.

   3. Slice your peach around the pit and pull apart (like an avocado) then remove the pit and thinly slice each half of the peach.

   4. Cut your corn off of the cob, I like to do this by laying the corn down on its side and just slicing from top to bottom then rotating until all sides have been cut off.

2. Use a sharp knife to roughly chop the pistachio nuts (shells off!!!!) into small pieces.

3. Add all ingredients (except pickled red onion) into a salad bowl and gently toss until combined. Plate it however you wish and then top with pickled red onion.

I didn’t think too much about this salad when I started making it, didn’t think to film the process at all. But once everything was in the bowl, I knew I was on to something great. I filmed the final step of plating it and adding pickled red onion on top then proceeded to demolish the whole thing (jk I shared some of it with Kris).