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Green Salad

Spinach, Cranberry, Pine Nut and Feta Salad

A simple spinach salad with toasted pine nuts, dried cranberries, and feta in a sharp red wine vinegar dressing, dressed at the last moment.

Prep
15 min
Cook
5 min
Total
20 min
Servings
4 (as a side, or two as a light lunch with bread)

For the dressing

  • 2 tbsp / 30ml red wine vinegar
  • 1 small shallot, finely minced
  • 1 tsp / 5g Dijon mustard
  • 0.33 cup / 40g dried cranberries
  • 4 tbsp / 60ml extra-virgin olive oil
  • a pinch fine salt
  • freshly ground, to taste black pepper

For the salad

  • 6 oz / 170g baby spinach, washed and dried, if the bag doesn't say it's pre-washed
  • 0.25 cup / 35g pine nuts
  • 3 oz / 85g feta, crumbled

Make the dressing

  1. In a large salad bowl, stir together the vinegar, shallot, mustard, the pinch of salt, and a few grinds of pepper. Add the cranberries and leave them for 10 minutes.
  2. Whisk in the olive oil.

Toast the pine nuts

  1. Put the pine nuts in a small, dry skillet in a single layer over medium-low heat. Stir or shake the pan often for 3 to 5 minutes, until they're golden and smell nutty. Stay at the stove, because pine nuts can go from pale to burnt in seconds.
  2. Tip them out onto a plate right away so they stop cooking in the hot pan.

Dress and serve

  1. Just before serving, put the spinach on top of the dressing in the bowl and toss gently with tongs until the leaves are coated and the cranberries and shallot are spread through.
  2. Add the feta and pine nuts and toss once more. Taste, and add salt or pepper if you need to. Serve right away.

Dried cranberries are already sweet, so the dressing for this salad shouldn't be. That is the one decision that matters here. Add honey or fruit juice on top of cranberries and feta and you get a salad that's sweet, then salty, then flat.

Keep the dressing sharp

The dressing is two parts oil to one part red wine vinegar, with Dijon and a minced shallot and nothing sweet in it. The cranberries sit in the vinegar for ten minutes before the oil goes in, which softens them and takes the edge off the vinegar. Go easy on the salt. Feta is salty, so season at the end after you've tasted.

Pine nuts

A small handful goes a long way. Toast them in a dry skillet over medium-low heat for three to five minutes, stirring often, until golden. They go from pale to burnt in seconds, so don't walk away from the pan, and tip them out onto a plate the moment they color. If they smell toasty, they're done.

Dress it last

Put the dressing in the bottom of the bowl and the spinach on top, and don't toss until you're about to serve. Baby spinach goes limp and dark once it's coated and left sitting, so this is a salad you dress at the table. Toss gently, then add the feta and nuts so the feta stays in crumbles. For another leafy salad that is dressed at the last minute, this one with a warm bacon dressing, see the Bibb and Radish Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing.

What to leave out

Added sweetener, for the reason above. Also extra fruit, candied nuts, and red onion on top of the shallot. Each one makes the sweet part louder and pushes the balance the wrong way. The shallot is enough onion.

What's essential, what's optional

The spinach, the vinegar dressing, and the feta are the salad. The pine nuts give the only crunch, so keep them unless you swap in toasted almonds. The cranberries are the sweet note. If you leave them out, the salad is sharper and saltier, and it needs a little less vinegar.