This 5-Ingredient Summer season Salad Is as Easy as It Will get

May 19, 2025

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Why It Works

Younger, diminutive yellow squash sourced from a farmers market or high quality produce part has skinny skins and dense, tender flesh—good for slicing skinny and consuming uncooked in salads.
The goat cheese’s creamy, lactic tang resonates with the straightforward, citrusy dressing.
Fennel provides a refined pure sweetness and crisp texture.

I observe a number of cooks on social media, however a lot of the meals they publish footage of, whereas enjoyable to ogle, does not translate effectively for the house prepare dinner. Each from time to time, although, I see one thing that manages to be each fantastically easy and in addition inspiring. A latest instance: I used to be scrolling via my Instagram feed and got here throughout a photograph from the Portland, Oregon, chef Jenn Louis of a salad of thinly sliced uncooked yellow summer time squash and fennel, crumbled goat cheese, and dill. I could not shake the concept, so now, as a part of our Best Summer season Ever—a set of seasonal recipes utilizing not more than 4 essential components (not together with pantry staples)—I’ve determined to tear it off wholesale.

The one instrument I would advocate having readily available for a salad like it is a good mandoline or vegetable slicer, because it makes such straightforward work of getting these elegant slivers, with constantly good outcomes. You may try our favourite cheap ones right here.

Other than that, it is so simple as it sounds. First, get your palms on some very nice younger and tender summer time squash—you realize, the small ones, not the older, overgrown ones which have large spongy facilities and more durable pores and skin. A farmers market is usually your greatest guess for high quality summer time produce, however some grocers and supermarkets with good produce sections may be a helpful supply. Slice the squash actually thinly on the mandoline, then observe it with a fennel bulb on the identical thickness setting.

Critical Eats / Vicky Wasik

Add some chopped dill, extra-virgin olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper, and provides all of it a superb toss. Then crumble in some recent goat cheese and provides it yet one more very mild toss earlier than serving. (I attempt to decrease how a lot I toss the salad as soon as the goat cheese is added, since I choose that it keep in clumps and never flip right into a milky coating on all the things, which may occur for those who stir a number of moist components repeatedly.)

The completed salad is a mixture of tender, crisp, and creamy textures, and candy, aromatic, and tangy flavors—it could be easy, but it surely tastes subtle sufficient to look on any restaurant menu.

July 2015