Name: Italian Chopped Salad
Prep time: 25 min
Total time: 25 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 6 tbsp olive oil; 3 tbsp red wine vinegar; 1 tbsp Dijon mustard; 2 garlic cloves, finely grated; 1 ½ tsp dried oregano; ½ tsp chilli flakes; ¾ tsp fine sea salt; ¾ tsp coarsely ground black pepper; 1 x 400 g tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed; 150 g salami or soppressata, diced; 150 g provolone, diced; 200 g cherry tomatoes, quartered; 1 cucumber, deseeded and diced; ½ red onion, finely diced; 80 g pepperoncini or pickled peppers, sliced; 80 g pitted green olives, halved; 1 romaine lettuce, finely shredded; 20 g flat-leaf parsley, chopped; 30 g Parmigiano-Reggiano, finely grated

Italian Chopped Salad

Salami, provolone, chickpeas and pepperoncini chopped small under a red wine vinaigrette sharp enough to stand up to all of it. The deli counter as a salad.

25 min total Serves 6 servings Easy

Everything in this bowl is salty, fatty or both, so the dressing has to be aggressive — nearly one part vinegar to two of oil, where a normal vinaigrette is one to three. That ratio would be harsh on leaves and is exactly right against salami and cheese. Dressing the harder elements first and adding the lettuce last keeps it crisp: chickpeas and salami absorb, lettuce collapses, and there is no reason to make them share time in the bowl.

The Method for Italian Chopped Salad

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Whisk all the dressing ingredients together until emulsified. Taste it — it should make you wince slightly on its own.
Put the chickpeas, salami, provolone, tomatoes, cucumber, red onion, pepperoncini and olives in a large bowl.
Add two-thirds of the dressing and toss well. Leave 10 minutes so the chickpeas and salami take it up.
Chop everything to a similar size as you go — roughly 1 cm — so a forkful gets a bit of each.
Just before serving, add the shredded romaine, the parsley and the rest of the dressing, and toss again.
Finish with the grated Parmigiano and more black pepper.

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A Few Pointers

Lettuce last, always. Ten minutes in that dressing and it is soup.
The dressing should taste too sharp on a spoon. Against the salami it is exactly right.
Everything but the lettuce can be dressed and refrigerated a day ahead.

Changing the Recipe

An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
Fresh herbs work in place of the dried oregano at roughly three times the quantity — a teaspoon of dried is about a tablespoon of fresh, chopped.

Serve It With

Crusty bread · A glass of cold Lambrusco · A bowl of soup

Keeping and Reheating

Undressed components keep 3 days refrigerated. Once the lettuce is in, eat it within the hour.