I don’t mean to sound like Ina here, but the quality of the ingredients is so important in a salad. Don’t bother with hard, white tomatoes. If you can’t find them, consider something else sweet and acidic like maybe strawberries or a red bell pepper? It is tough to find little gem lettuce at times, so think of something tender to go along with the kale. Varying texture and colors make a salad satisfying. I am also a fan of adding cooked grains to a green salad to fill it out, so any prepared rice or quinoa would help fill this out. Up for making a crouton? Even better.

You can skip the step of quick candying of the nuts and just toast them or buy them already candied. They sell candied pecans at most markets, and we like the spicy ones at Trader Joes. I do think they turn out better with the whipped egg white method we’ve done before, but I was trying to spare you the extra step. I’ll post a homemade zhoug recipe here in a couple weeks, but for now, heard good things about this one.

If you are a salad person, a mandolin is a key piece of equipment, especially if you like crunchy things in there like cukes, fennel, carrots, radish etc. The shaved texture is much nicer than large chunks.