Angry Trout Salad

With all the less than healthy food that we post on this site, I figured that it would be good to post one of our favorite salads to prove that we do sometimes just crave a really good, healthy salad to bring balance to our diet. We decided to make this salad after a weekend spent with two very close friends of ours who are moving to San Francisco soon. Among their other wonderful qualities, they are very good eating companions and we said our goodbyes to their New York years (part 1?) by eating at our favorite brunch spot - Clinton Street Bakery. I don't know what goes into the pancakes there, but they induce plate clearing every time I order them. The egg sandwich with homemade sausage, cheese and tomatillo sauce served open faced on a big, warm, buttery biscuit kept me full for the rest of the day. Salad would be the menu for Sunday night.

The inspiration for this salad comes from the Angry Trout in Grand Marais, MN. I grew up going to this restaurant each summer while on vacation on the north shore of Lake Superior. When we went here for our honeymoon this past August, I was so happy to be able to introduce my better half to this great place. The Angry Trout was the first restaurant that I was aware of that served locally grown, seasonal food, long before it was a trend for restaurants. Their location right next to a fish and smoke house on Lake Superior certainly makes it easy for them to serve fresh and smoked fish, and they also do a great job serving locally grown fruits and vegetables. I could go on and on about this place but I will leave it at this: If you ever find yourself in Minnesota, driving on Highway 61 on the north shore of Lake Superior, stop at this restaurant (and get a donut at the World's Best Donuts afterward).

So for our salad, we used the Angry Trout's smoked trout salad and tomato basil dressing. The focal point of the salad is the smoked trout, but there is a lot of room for improvisation for the rest of the ingredients. When walking through the fruit and veggie aisle we focused on getting ingredients with different textures and colors. This time around we picked sugar snap peas, carrots, raspberries and pear. We had some left over proscuitto and cheese from pizza night that we also included.The dressing consists of chopped tomato, olive oil, red wine vinegar, fresh basil and a pinch of salt.


The salad was so refreshing and with so many elements in the salad, each bite was a little different. Even the color of the salad brightened my mood in the middle of this cold, grey winter.