Cook With Us Week#20- My Knife Cut Salad with Oven Baked Fries

Lately the weather has been super hot, so I have been eating lots of salads. For this week's @cookwithus challenge, I I thought I could show some knife cuts in my salad. I like to make giant salads that have a variety of textures and flavors so each bite will be different. To serve along with my salad I also made some oven baked fries.

Ingredients:

serves 2 as a main

• 1 bunch carrots
• 1 crown broccoli, steamed and cut into florets
• 3 small beets
• 1 head Boston lettuce
• 3-4 basil leaves
• roasted chickpeas
• croutons
• 1 plum

Let's start with the fries.

I'm not a big fan of eating thin fries. I prefer my potato to be at least 1/2 inch thick. The bayonet cut is 1/2" x 1/2" x 2 1/2 to 3" which is the perfect French fry cut for me. Once the potatoes are cut, place some olive oil into a hot frying pan and add the potatoes. Brown each side of the potatoes.
Tip: this will give you the golden brown look as if the potatoes were deep fried.

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Once the potatoes are browned on each side, place the potatoes onto a sheet pan and place in a 400 degreeF oven and bake until the potatoes are tender. Season with salt to taste. Time to start on the salad.

At first, I was going to leave the carrot halves raw in the salad but after one taste, I had to change plans. They were so tasteless I decided to coat them with pastrami spices and roast them in the oven. You can find the recipe for pastrami spice here.

Place some olive oil into a hot frying pan and add in the carrots. Cook until the carrots are nice and brown and transfer into a bowl. Add a generous amount of pastrami spice and salt to taste. Place the carrots onto a sheet pan and place in a preheated 375 degrees F oven. Bake until the carrots are tender; set aside.

I like to cook my beets in a pressure cooker because it is fast. It takes about 15 minutes to cook small beets. Once the beets are cooked and cooled I cut them into roughly 1/4 x 1/4 x 1/4 cubes. It's easiest to cut them into 1/4" slices, stack the slices, then into 1/4" strips and lastly into cubes.

For the basil leaves, I wanted to cut them into long thin strips which is called chiffonade. The basil adds a pop of brightness to the salad. You can chiffonade any leafy herbs or greens and use them as garnishes or accents for any dish.

To finish this salad, I added some roasted chickpeas, multi grain croutons and sliced plums. I had the roasted chickpeas and croutons leftover from another meal. You can always skip them and add some toasted nuts or seeds for some crunch. I made a honey mustard vinaigrette to accompany the salad and fries.

Thank you @offoodandart, @pandamama, and @chefsteve for another incredible theme. I had so much fun reading about all the different knife cuts and applying some to this week's dish. Now it's time to eat!