Asian Chopped Salad - A Crowd Favorite

Confession: I have made the same salad three times this week for different guests and it's been a clear favorite every time! This Asian chopped salad recipe is from Pioneer Woman's "My Most Favorite Salad Ever," which she adapted from The Naked Chef's recipe. It is light, flavorful, and I think super healthy. The sesame oil and ginger dressing is light-tasting and goes well with the Asian vegetables. I omitted the garlic in the dressing and used maple-coated cashews from Whole Foods in the salad.

Enjoy!

Asian Chopped Salad

Serves four as an entree salad

1 to 2 bunches of soba noodles, cooked, cooled.

Salad vegetables:
1/2 head of finely sliced napa cabbage
1/2 cup finely sliced purple cabbage
half red bell pepper, thinly sliced
half yellow or orange bell pepper, thinly sliced
half English hot house cucumber, sliced, quartered
1 cup mung bean sprouts, cleaned
1 cup cilantro, chopped
1/2 cup cashews, maple coated or roasted
2 tablespoons sliced scallions

Dressing:
3 tablespoons finely minced ginger
8 tablespoons light olive oil
6 tablespoons soy sauce
A little less than 1/3 cup brown sugar
juice of 1 lime
1/2 hot serrano pepper, finely diced (remove seeds if you don't want it too spicy)

Combine vegetables, set aside. In a bowl, whisk together the dressing ingredients. The dressing makes quite a bit and can be kept for three days in the fridge.

Toss the vegetables with the dressing. Add the soba noodles if you want to make it a big salad. Or serve it this way, which I prefer:

Toss the salad vegetables with the dressing. Put some soba noodles on each plate. Spoon some salad over the soba noodles, drizzle with more dressing if necessary.

Enjoy!