We posted on Instagram last week about going to Stephanie Izard’s restaurant Cabra for dinner in downtown Chicago. We had such great food and couldn’t wait to go back to our kitchens and use those flavors as inspiration for our next recipe. One of the dishes that we had was called Solterito, which is a Peruvian chopped salad. The version at Cabra was filled with a mix of savory and sweet ingredients, crunchy quinoa and an herby vinaigrette. With that dish as our inspiration, we set out to our local grocery store to find seasonal ingredients that we could incorporate in a similar manner. This salad was a big hit when we had some friends and family over for dinner this past weekend. We chose to serve this salad as a side dish with grilled chicken but could easily serve this as a main course for a weekday lunch.
Cabra Inspired Solterito - Summer Salad
Ingredients for the Salad
- 1 cup of uncooked quinoa
- 1/2 lb green beans
- 1 pint cherry tomatoes
- 1 mango
- 1/2 pint strawberries
- 2 ears of fresh corn
- 1 tbs canola oli
- 16 oz halloumi cheese, cut into bite sized pieces
Ingredients for the Dressing
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1 cup fresh basil
- 1/2 cup fresh savory
- 1 lime, juiced
- salt and pepper to taste
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
- Cook the quinoa according to package instructions.
- While the quinoa is cooking, prepare the salad ingredients. Chop the green beans, cherry tomatoes, mango and strawberries into bite sized pieces. Remove the corn from the husk and combine into a large bowl the other salad ingredients.
- Make the dressing. Combine all of the dressing ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. Set aside.
- When the quinoa has finished cooking, place is on a sheet pan in an even, single layer. Bake the quinoa in the oven for 10-15 minutes checking every 5 minutes. You want the quinoa to get crunchy and crispy but not burn. Once cooked, removed from the oven and set aside to cool.
- In a medium skillet, add the canola oil and wait a minute or two so that it is very hot. Add the halloumi cheese and cook until all sides are browned (about 10 minutes).
- Combine the salad ingredients, halloumi, quinoa and salad dressing into a large bowl. Toss the salad so that that dressing evenly coats the salad. Serve at room temperature.
TUCK & TATE 
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