The Salad That Knows No Boundaries

Last we spoke, Seattlest was in Morocco guzzling as much mint tea as we could find. Now back home in our studio apartment--this time with several pots of freshly planted mint--we found ourselves craving a particular treat that we’d enjoyed abroad, something we liked to call the salad that knows no boundaries.

Until recently, the experience of craving a salad was unknown to us. We liked salads, but we placed them firmly in the “side dish” catagory. Delicious, but not a main event. That was of course, until we had one of Atika’s salads.

Atika, who you might recall as holding our hand through the mint tea initiation, continued to endear herself to us with her fabulous cooking; most notably her lush and irreverant salads. Atika paid no attention to silly categories like “fruits” or “vegetables” and she certainly didn’t let her salads sit demurely on the sidelines. Atika’s salads had everything: oranges, apples, avocados, cucumbers, bananas, red onion, tomato, strawberries, golden raisins, even hard-boiled eggs. Dressed lightly with lemon juice and olive oil, these salads were unprecedented: light and refreshing, yet wholly satisfying.

One bite of Atika’s salads was enough to tell us that we’d been living in a veritable staightjacket salad-wise. We had far too many rules and we were determined to break them.

Back home, we were forced to make a few adjustments to Atika’s formula, due to both regional differences in season and our deep-seated inability to leave well enough alone. We streamlined a bit, omitting the strawberries and tomatoes until a later date, and added a dusting of chili powder (excellent with oranges), mint and some crunchy almonds. The resulting salad was an enormous success. Eating it, we were able to forgot that we were back in Seattle with a real job and a real life, and for once, the sun cooperated too.

A recipe for the salad is after the break.

Photo by Rachael Coyle