Welcome to our summer salad series on Allison’s Cooking Diary. If you need a light and refreshing dish to serve this summer, Allison has you covered. We are making a Mediterranean Quinoa Salad, no lettuce required, and a Peach & Burrata Salad with a lemon & herb dressing. Enjoy and stay cool this summer!
[Music] welcome back to Allison’s cooking diary everyone we have a fun little series for you it’s summer folks are trying to get that beach body ready you know what I’m talking about so we’re going to do a summer salad series making two salads little bit different one of them there’s no lettuce involved the other a little bit of lettuce but really it’s all about the fruit so we are going to start by making my Mediterranean quinoa salad and then we’ll finish up with a peach and Bara salad you guys these are so good but we’re starting with the quinoa Mediterranean because I swear to you I make this every other week no lie it’s so good I love quinoa there’s a ton of fiber ton of protein in here it’s just great and it tastes awesome or as my dad would say quinoa meaning he’s not a big fan but I promise if you like quinoa you’re going to love this one so I did already make my quinoa uh what you do is you put quinoa water and then I like to do a little bit of seasoning so a little bit of garlic powder and oregano you bring that to a boil then you cover it turn it down to low 15 minutes and it’s perfect but for the Mediterranean flavors we’re going to start with some um of my favorite veggies cucumbers as well as uh these are cherry tomatoes the little pop it’s just so delicious so I have one pretty giant cucumber if you ask me hey it’s what they had at the store and I like to cut it this way I think it is the safest I’m not going to you know cut my finger off so we’re going to chop into little rounds and then I usually take about three at a time cut it in half twist quarters pop it in so that’s with the veggies now you know because it’s Mediterranean if you have some other flavors that you really like to add do it why not it’s kind of fun that you know this is a cold salad so I like to use veggies that I’m okay with not necessarily heating up you know cuz if you have the zucchini I like to have that warm so cucumber is just delicious and I know that a lot of folks have been growing it actually one of my workout classes uh one of the gal’s husbands has a garden and so she brought over some of the Cucumbers which was really great then to our shallot now you can add Red Onion in here totally fine but one shallot diced is the way to go now I absolutely love shallots any excuse for me to put it in a recipe I take let me tell you I just think yes it still has the sharp onion flavor but I really think that it’s it’s not quite as pungent as a red onion is you know if you’re biting into a red onion you’re like okay yep it’s in there so I’m kind of going to do the same thing just do a nice little very thinly sliced and then we’ll kind of just go through with a rough chop you know that’s the thing with one of these salads you throw it all in it’s okay if they’re not all perfectly sized because you know it’s all going to taste the same anyway so lay some of these on top and get to chopping okay it’s still an onion so it’s still tickling my eyes a little bit hopefully the Waterworks don’t come I don’t think I’ve cried yet because of onions on Alison’s cooking diary we’re not going to let today be the first I can’t promise you that but I’m going to try my best so a nice oh rough chop oh yeah there we go I’m going to step back for a sec tingling I wish I’m going to try to find a picture my mom got the onion glasses for me they’re pink and I look like a crazy person but you know that does work or I’ve heard putting a bread putting um a piece of bread either in your mouth or on The Cutting Board I don’t know honestly I haven’t tried either of those but maybe I need tooo okay there it is officially crying on Alison’s cooking battery okay let’s try to move on from that W I’m going to flip this cutting board over okay that actually helped basically immediately okay then we have our cherry tomatoes um you can have them or quarter them I’m going to half them because you can see how big the Cucumber slices are so try to have it be you know the same size and boy these are just so good so fresh especially when you go to the farmers market and oh that’s like I will always buy those at the farmers market just too too good so cherry tomatoes or grape tomatoes whatever you have honestly whatever you have on hand I just like these cuz they’re bite size and it’s not super messy to actually cook these sorry cook cut okay popping these in and you know the quinoa salad I just using quinoa as a base is just such a good vessel for lettuce salads because I’m sorry you’re going to a barbecue or you want to make this for uh meal prepping you don’t want soggy lettuce and this is just kind of the best way to have your salad but not have to worry about that and it travels really really well so I’m going to put my discards in the back and do not want to forget about feta oh boy I think feta and goat cheese are my favorites but look at that and you kind of get all the colors which is fun so we are done with the chopping so we’ll pop all that back here but I have garlic fresh garlic that is going to go into our salad dressing yes we’re going to make homemade salad dressing here so I have this garlic press wanted to make sure that it was in correctly just got this so instead of mincing your garlic and then your fingers smell like it garlic clove in Smash look at all that so I’ll just use my little whisk to get it off and then I have a second clove of garlic and that’s going in our next salad recipe so one clove of garlic in here and then we have 1/4 cup of olive oil and I’m actually using this measuring cup because guess what it says a/4 cup and we’re there so that’s kind of a little trick and I think it’s you know I probably watch cooking videos as much as the next person or more but I love when they do that it’s so satisfying to watch the oil go right up so we have fresh pepper [Music] probably about a teaspoon of salt and then I have three tablespoons red wine vinegar I have one teaspoon of dried oregano and then I have about a little over a half a teaspoon of Dijon mustard and let me just make sure I get all of that goodness it just gives it a little bite and it’s so good and my little whisk comes in handy cuz here we go so traditional Greek dressing they add in the feta and I think if you had an immersion blender you know or even put it in a blender that would be awesome but same difference is adding it into the salad itself okay so we’ll pop that in here and the moment we’ve all been waiting for oh yeah I’m sorry but you just have to with the fresh garlic how good is that and then now we’ll just mix her up and again the colors you eat with your eyes first let’s be real so you want to have all the colors Green from the Cucumber red from the tomatoes purple from the beautiful shallots and then you have the white from the fetta there so you just want to make sure it’s a big bowl but make sure everything is covered and like I mentioned this is a chilled salad so you just pop it in the fridge pull it out whenever you want it good for meal prepping or for any of your summer barbecues so Mediterranean quinoa salad check now let’s make our Peach and Bara salad let me just get cleaned up first so we are ready for part two of our summer salad series and it is a peach and barata salad this one does have lettuce by the way I guess you don’t have to have the lettuce but I think the greens really compliment some of the darker pinks and oranges that we’re going to have going on with this salad so yum and let’s get started we’re going to start with our peaches duh the Stars of the dish so slice around it’s not going to do it for me is it okay well you should be able to just kind of take the pit out but if not that’s okay we’ll figure it out so we will actually just take quarters and then there you go you can kind of peel the peach out guys my photographer’s laughing at me well that just means that this is not completely right but here we go there we go it just took a sec don’t worry that one will just be for us to eat after so it actually works out really nice and then the third one you just kind of Pop well guess what we’re going to cut our around this it doesn’t want to pop out but ding okay so beautiful I mean peaches are a so good and they look gorgeous so um it really depends on how chunky you want these peaches you can do them in slices you could Cube them it’s totally up to you I think I’m going to do kind of thin is slices and then you just lay them like that so cut in half half again oh yeah that’s beautiful so my platter will just be for Gib and I so we’ll cut up one peach I mean all already does it get any better than that okay I’m going to add some cherries now if you know or maybe you don’t I’m from Michigan and Michigan cherries are just the best oh they have a cherry Festival in Travers City it’s just awesome so these obviously have stems and pits in them which is great if you’re just snacking honestly I think it’s kind of fun but but not if you’re trying to put them in a recipe so what I did this is actually a beautiful example you see you can’t quite see through it but I took a straw and went and literally the pit just pops out the side so it doesn’t really cut it it just kind of takes the center out so let me tell you it makes it so much easier to cut because if you’ve tried to peel or sorry pit cherries uh definitely not the most fun thing to do in the world but hey that’s that’s my trick it’s a little messy but honestly it’s so worth it and I even just take some of the pitted cherries to work cuz you know that’s never fun having to spit out the pit so we will continue to chop up these oh beautiful and sweet cherries one more cuz why not lovely lovely and then we have some cherry tomatoes and I’ll just have these cuz there’s nothing better than you know the nice little crunch when you’re digging in oh just look how colorful that is I mean you have summer barbecues or you just want to switch up your salad game because I get it you get caught in your same old routine I do the same thing but I thought this would be a nice addition okay beautiful now we have the fruit now it’s on to the nuts so I have some pistachios here and this is just going to be a really good balance because you’re going to have the creaminess from the Bara so you need a little bit of crunch because the lettuce ain’t going to do it you know maybe from the cherry tomato but so just chop up these pistachios you know some holes some not if you want to Shell your own good for you actually that’s another kind of mindless eating thing I don’t know if you’ve ever tried the salt and pepper pistachios oh my gosh that’s called game over okay so we’re just going to sprinkle those right on on top and it’s just so colorful I love it oh yeah okay might as well get them all in Yum Yum Yum okay now we are going to add our Bara on top now these are just little slices of heaven so I won’t be cutting into them cuz you know they kind of like ooze is just the worst word in the world to use but that’s literally what it does and so I’m just going to set these on top and you can just see the coloring like I was mentioning it’s like perfect so next we are moving on to our dressing I have a lemon here and my handy dandy zester so I am going to zest one lemon it’s just you know not that we don’t have enough freshness already but I promise you this truly takes it over the edge and you’ll see a few similarities in my salad dressings just cuz I love red wine vinegar and I think it just does such a good job at just bringing up the flavor profile whoops almost cut that the wrong way okay so then we have our lemon so the juice and zest whoa the juice and zest of one lemon going right on in okay then we have our friend garlic here again with this garlic press there’s something so satisfying about that y’all the kitchen is smelling really good okay now we have 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar and then we have about a teaspoon maybe a little bit more of honey that’s just going to balance out cuz yes the fruit is super sweet but there’s just something about adding the honey then once again 1/4 cup of olive oil this time I don’t have a friend measurer so I’m just going to eyeball it I think that’s good once again add our freshly grounded Peppa m some salt and then because we don’t have enough freshness yet I’m going to add some fresh herbs okay let me clean up here Alison let’s there we go so we have some fresh mint M oh my gosh it’s so good so I don’t know if you are a um smoothie lover like I am but I actually do fresh mint in my smoothies and if you add some cacao chips or even a little bit of chocolate it’s literally like mint chocolate chip ice cream you know and add some spinach in um to make it green it’s so good so this something wa that I would like to start growing in my non-existent garden that will be hopefully coming existence soon okay so fresh mint in and then we have basil I don’t know if you guys can hear but Ryder is right down here dreaming so if you hear little noises don’t worry he’s all okay um and then I have fresh b Basel which is also just so good so fresh so we’re going to chop that up and what I like to do is actually roll them because look at how easy that was and then you just kind of flip them and do another nice little chop oh yeah baby okay whisker together oh my goodness you get everything you get the garlic you get the basil little bit of the mint the lemon oh yeah okay so I’m going to wait to pour this over until everything’s out of the way and then we’re going to get to trying now it’s time to pour the beautiful dressing on top of our Peach and barata salad okay so clear Bowl for the win look at that beautiful color oh yeah dump her right on top so good I love that you can see all of the fresh herbs in there and the garlic and then when you cut into the Bara oh my gosh love it okay cute little salad servers here got to get a little bit of everything we have the peach we have a little bit of Bara tomato even the cherries so let’s cut off a little bite oh my goodness there’s so much freshness in here little bite from the pistachio but the creaminess of the Bara oh yeah and the garlic that’s a winner and I didn’t even mention this before but my mom I swear to you makes a barata salad almost every day usually with tomato a little bit of that basil it’s so good okay one plate here we go we going to move our lettuce and we’re going to try our quinoa salad look at all that color M love it get the tomato feta M little bit of the shallot mhm M and that dressing you know it wasn’t a ton of Deon but boy was it so delicious you guys are going to adore these two summer salads and I hope that you guys get to try them share any pictures with me and let me know maybe what new series you would like to see next right here on Allison’s cooking diary