If last winter was my self-proclaimed soup season, then I’ve spent the past few months thoroughly wedged into salad season - the fresh and crunchy, the creamy and the umami. I still have one more salad to add to this year’s pantheon, one more to eke out before the summer really is over for good.
You can take the girl out of Philly, but you can’t take Philly out of the girl – I call this a Italian Hoagie Chopped Salad. (Really, it is a salad with specific pedigree, coming from the lauded chef Nancy Silverton, who made it for her storied LA restaurant, Pizzeria Mozza.
It may come from California, but to me, this is a salad that recalls Italian delis and East Coast sandwich shops, old-school pizzerias with Tiffany-style glass lampshades and reusable red plastic cups. That’s thanks in part to its vinaigrette – made with a good glug of red vinegar and an almost decadent amount of dried oregano – plus its pickled peppers, crunchy onions and hearty chunks of aged pecorino and salami (though you can certainly leave out the latter to make it vegetarian). It’s a salad with real heft, a main-course (and main-character) salad that will leave you heartily full. And it’s an ideal choice to go with a season-straddling beer style: the Festbier.
I’ve been to Oktoberfest in Munich once, and while it was enjoyable, I’m thankful I don’t need to go back and brave those drunken crowds again – especially because I now have such a brilliant British festbier available to me. Anspach & Hobday’s Ansbacher Festbier is a textbook example of the style. It pours a brilliant gold and features a perfect balance between sweetly biscuity malt, fragrant noble hops, and lip-smacking bitterness.
It’s outrageously good – the only thing I want to drink right now. And with this salad on the side, which it perfectly balances and tempers, it’s a pairing I’ll return to again and again until the season is well and truly over.
Italian Hoagie Chopped Salad
Lightly adapted from Nancy Silverton via Food 52
Serves 4 as a main course
For the dressing:
1 ½ tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon dried oregano
Juice of ½ lemon
2 cloves garlic, minced
175ml extra-virgin olive oil
Flaky sea salt, such as Maldon, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For the salad:
1 small sweet or white onion
1 large head romaine lettuce
1 large head radicchio
200g aged pecorino
200g air-dried salami
1 700g jar chickpeas drained and rinsed
150g oil-packed sundried tomatoes, drained and roughly chopped
75g sweety drop peppers (or other preferred pickled pepper), drained
Flaky sea salt, to taste
Juice of ½ lemon
Dried oregano, to garnish
1. First, make the dressing. In a medium bowl, add the vinegar, oregano, lemon juice and garlic. Leave to infuse for five minutes before pouring in the olive oil in a steady stream, whisking as you go to emulsify. Season generously with flaky sea salt and pepper. Taste and adjust seasoning if needed; set aside.
2. Now, prep the salad ingredients. First, slice the onion very thinly and place the segments in a bowl with ice water, which will help keep them crisp and remove their heat.
3. Next, cut the stem off the romaine lettuce and slice the head in half lengthwise, through the core. Cut each half in half again, this time width-wise. Slice each of the four segments lengthwise, into very thin stripes. Prepare the radicchio in the same way; then, wash both well before spinning to dry.
4. Prepare the cheese and salami. Slice and discard the rind from the pecorino, then dice into small cubes. Remove and discard the casing from the air-dried salami before dicing finely.
5. Build the salad in a very large mixing bowl. Add the washed and dried romaine lettuce and radicchio along with the chickpeas, sundried tomatoes and sweety drop peppers; season with flaky sea salt to taste. Next, add in the cheese and salami cubes. Pour over the dressing and toss thoroughly, until everything is well-coated and combined.
6. Right before serving, squeeze over the lemon juice and sprinkle additional dried oregano to garnish. Divide between plates or pasta bowls and serve immediately.
Claire M Bullen is a professional food and travel writer, a beer hound and all-around lover of tasty things. You can follow her at @clairembullen. For more recipes like this, sign up to our HB&B All Killer No Filler beer subscription - you'll receive Claire's recipe and food pairings, plus expert tasting notes, with 10 world-class beers like this one every month.
