Asparagus & Strawberry Salad with Marmalade Dressing

We all love strawberries and we all love asparagus, right? So why not put them together in a salad?! This summery salad is so fresh and so pretty you may even want to leave it undisturbed!

It’s packed with fresh strawberries, asparagus and baby spinach, also radish, snowpea sprouts, sliced almonds and you can even crumble some feta over if you like. Then it’s all brought together as one big happy, bright, salad family with a delicious marmalade and red wine vinegar dressing. 🙂

CHRISTMAS IS COMING!!

INGREDIENTS

Dressing
4 tablespoon marmalade
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons orange juice (from ½ medium-sized orange)
1/8 teaspoon salt

Salad
30 asparagus spears (approx)
500 g / 17 ½ oz fresh strawberries
2 small or 1 medium-sized radish
2 cups baby spinach (loosely packed)
20 g / ¾ oz snow pea sprouts
2 tablespoons sliced almonds

Optional – 60 g / 2 oz feta

Serves 8

Notes

You can replace the red wine vinegar with balsamic if you like…..however…..red wine vinegar is just beautiful with strawberries…..just saying.
It’s okay to omit the snow pea sprouts or the radish (or both) it will still be grand.
If you like you can switch the baby spinach to baby arugula lettuce (it’s the closest in appearance and texture to baby spinach) or use a blend of baby lettuce like mesclun.

STEP BY STEP

Dressing

Into a small bowl, place the marmalade, the red wine vinegar, the olive oil, the orange juice and the salt.

Whisk it all together until combined and then cover it and place in the fridge.

Salad

With the dressing done and dusted, fill a large saucepan with water (enough so that it’ll cover the asparagus) and place it on a high heat so it comes to a boil.

I often use a frying pan, just because of their length.

Whilst it’s coming to a boil, prepare the asparagus by washing it in cold water and then snapping off the stalk ends.

They should naturally snap off where the woody bit meets the more tender part. Mine snapped off around 4 cm / 1 ½ in from the ends.

When the water in the frying pan is rapidly boiling add the asparagus and blanch it until it’s just tender and a knife will just pierce them (mine took 5 minutes but if your asparagus is thicker it could take a minute longer, or thinner, a minute less).

Depending on how big your saucepan/pan is, if it seems overcrowded, do it in two lots.

When it’s done, quickly drain the asparagus into a colander and then spread it out on a board to help it cool down quicker (also to ensure it’s not still cooking).

I remove mine with tongs and use the water on my pot plants. I’m sure they love it!

Hull the strawberries (remove the calyx/leaves), slice the small ones in half and the larger ones into quarters and place them into a large bowl.

Also, remove the stalk and root ends from the radishes, cut them in half length ways, slice them into paper thin slices and add them to the bowl with the strawbs.

Cut the asparagus spears into 4 lengths each and add all but half of the tips to the bowl (the remaining tips will go on top of the salad later).

Next, wash and drain the spinach.

Then lay it out on a paper towel or clean tea towel…..

…..and pat it dry…..

Add it to the bowl too and gently mix it all together.

Place it in a salad bowl or onto a serving platter.

To finish, poke little groups of sprouts here and there into the salad (so it looks like they naturally sprouted from there) and scatter over the sliced almonds (also crumble over the feta if adding it…..Feta makes everything better!!).

Just before serving, pour the dressing over.

Serve with at least 1 large spoon as some dressing and strawberry juice settle together at the bottom and it’s yummy!

Keepin’ it fresh – The asparagus loses its colour after a day and the spinach will wilt overnight from the dressing (it all sounds so tragic doesn’t it!) so it’s a salad that’s best eaten on the day.