No longer seen as the meal choice of supermodels or what you’d feed to your rabbit, the humble salad has grown in leaps and bounds to proudly feature as a main dish on many a fine-dining menu worldwide. Boasting the freshest ingredients, unusual combinations, unique flavours and absolutely delicious dressings, today’s salads have moved far beyond being just a healthy option chosen by the ladies – more and more men and women alike are choosing salads as a fresh and filling choice when dining out. This month, you can look forward to a salad soirée at Catharina’s, with five new summer dishes taking pride of place on our menus.
The month of February will see Chef Garth Almazan introducing an exciting range of crunchy salads to our summer menus at Catharina’s. “A great summer salad should be healthy, refreshing and filling at the same time,” explains Chef Garth. “We are well known for great salads at Catharina’s and, with the hot month of February upon us, our guests want to eat lighter food, but still enjoy a substantial meal.”
Of course, there are salads and then there are salads. “To excite our guests and offer them something different from the norm, we’ll be taking advantage of the great variety of salad leaves available this season, whilst also focusing on delicious, fresh dressings, and thinking out of the box when it comes to combinations of flavours and textures. This season offers some of the most perfect salad ingredients, such as avocado, asparagus, fresh mozzarella and soft herbs, giving my team lots to work with. As far as dressings go, we like to keep it simple so as to not overpower the ingredients, but rather to complement them – expect to see the likes of balsamic and olive oil emulsions, chive vinaigrettes, and flavoured oils such as chive oil, fennel oil and basil oil, along with our signature house dressing of red wine vinegar, olive oil, chives, salt and pepper.”
“Our new salad line-up features Cured Salmon, with Prawn, Avocado and Rosa Tomato; Watermelon, with Fennel and Mozzarella with Parma Ham; Summer Berry, with Goat’s Cheese and Asparagus; a Classic Caesar Salad (with optional variations such as roast chicken or prawn); and Roast Beef, Red Onion and Crispy New Potato Salad – the latter of which we’re sure will be a big hit with our male guests!”
