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About Salsa Stop

The Five-Star Cherry and Candied Almond Salad

Out of Season do this Salad with Candied Almonds and Mandarin Oranges

Finished bowl of candied almonds alongside he finished bowl of cherry salad

Just as certain kinds of foreign recipes will mix ingredients in a counterintuitive manner this salad [which is mostly a tossed green salad] is in many ways like that. Here you have candied almonds and fruit in a green salad with a vinaigrette type dressing which ends up being a sweet tasting salad overall. The result is something like what you might expect to turn up at some fine restaurant at a fancy resort. The mandarin orange version is always a hit at Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner and the Cherry version is a spectacular side dish at a backyard BBQ!. This is truly a five-star salad!

Many years ago James discovered the mandarin orange version of this salad at a house party. He relentlessly hounded the person who created this for roughly 2 months before he finally the recipe. James invented the cherry version on the fly out of hurried desperation on his wedding day. He had all the food for his reception farmed out to others except for the mandarin orange salad which he had planned to do himself. Although he thought he had everything it turned out he was missing the mandarin oranges. That was a problem because time was running out and the mandarin oranges were a critical missing ingredient. Well, there happened to be a large bag of bing cherries in the fridge. So he opted to use those. The rest was history. A lot of people at that reception were so blown away that they asked for the recipe. The cherry version is now the preferred version when cherries are in season.

The step by–step pictorial recipe below will vary from the original printed mandarin orange version here. We wanted you to see the original recipe that James received years ago so you can decide what variant you would prefer. Here’s what we did in the pictorial demonstration that was different from te original written recipe:

We used Rainier Cherries instead of Mandarin oranges
We used romaine lettuce instead of red leaf romaine lettuce. In fact you can interchange any combination of iceberg, red leaf romaine and regular romaine lettuce. For looks it’s nice to include the red leaf romaine lettuce.
We used the seeded 1/3 portion of a jalapeño, diced fine, instead of cayenne powder in the dressing [to spike the “accent”].
We opted for Mexican onions instead of green onions
We used red wine vinegar as our vinegar of choice
You can also opt for regular olive oil if you prefer.

This is the kind of recipe that once you make it you may want to alter the proportions to suit your taste on a subsequent batch. For example we prefer to go a little heavier on the candied almonds.

Original Mandarin Orange Salad Ingredients List:

Multiply by 4 to match the volume of ingredients that you see in this pictorial step by step recipe

¼ Cup Sliced Almonds - Melt into sugar in cast iron pan (1 tbs. + 1 tsp. sugar)
¼ head of lettuce
¼ bunch Romaine lettuce (red loose)
2 stalks celery
2 green onions with tops
1 11oz. can drained mandarin oranges (marinate all greens with oranges for an hour).

Animated photo showing the process of melting sugar and adding slivered almonds to the melted sugar

Salad Dressing:

½ tsp.salt + dash coarse ground pepper
½ cup extra virgin olive oil + a dash of cayenne powder
2 tbs. sugar
2 tbs. vinegar
1- 2 tbs. Parsley chopped fine

The first thing to be done after washing the cherries is to cut them in half and remove the pits. Then in a cast iron pan with the heat set to medium high melt the sugar. Sugar melts at 367°F [by comparison water boils at 212ºF at sea level] so we strongly recommend that you use a cast iron skillet since some other cookware may not be able to handle such a high temperature. You can see in the animated photo that we are using a "10" Lodge^® cast iron skillet here.

During the melting process use a spatula to continue to move the sugar back and forth. You're going to need to stay focused because the sugar will begin to caramelize when the melting process is nearing compleion. At this point it's helpful to have a dinner knife handy to chip off the caramelized sugar that has frozen onto the spatula. Once melted it's a very short ime before the caramelized sugar may begin to burn so you'll need to dump the almonds in and quickly stir them in so that they get uniformly coated. That process of stirring the almonds in helps to keep the melted sugar from getting any hotter. Quickly scrape off the almond-sugar clumps onto a cookie sheet. Try to spread it all out as much as possible because it'll make it easier to break into smaller pieces after it coools down. Animated photo showing dicing and assembling salad ingredients into an 8 quart stainless steel bowl

Set the cast iron skillet aside to allow it to COOL DOWN NATURALLY. Here's metallurgy 101: Metals expand with heat and contract when cooled down. So we are talking about a cooldown of at least 300ºF if not more. We have seen even the best cast iron pans split from an uneven cool-down with a sudden dip into cold water so keep that in mind.

Next slice up all the lettuce and green onions and put into a bowl as shown in the animated photo [we used an 8 quart stainless steel bowl here]. Mix and allow to cool in the fridge. This is particularly important if you are using mandarin orange slices since the time in the fridge will allow it to marinate. Animated photo showing Cut parsley, diced jalapeño and the final cup of dressing

For the Salad dressing cut off the stem portion of the parsley and dice to a size that you prefer. Then cut off the top 1/3 of a jalapeño pepper and dice fine as shown in the animated photo. Put the diced parsley and jalapeño into a cup and add in the olive oiland other dressing ingredients and mix.

Keep the salad dressing separate and mix in onl when the salad ready to serve. After serving sprinkle the candied almond slivers over the top of each serving to taste. Finished bowl of candied almonds alongside he finished bowl of cherry salad

Tip: The sweeter the cherries the better the results. Rainier cherries that have more red on them are sweeter than the Rainier cherries that are predominately yellow.