hot girl salad

You are what you eat.

(That is, you are a no-massage kale salad—tossed with jammy eggs and tinned fish & well-dressed with creamy white beans.)

Time: 15 minutes

Servings: 1 very hungry hot girl or 2 snackish hot girls

Ingredients:

2 eggs

2 generous handfuls of kale (approx. half a bunch), julienned/chiffonade

1 small fennel (either shaved or slivered bulb OR chopped stems)

2 tbsp parsley, finely chopped

3-4 oz of tinned fish in EVOO

sumac, to taste (optional)

1 can white beans

1 tbsp parsley

2 cloves of garlic

juice from 1 medium-sized lemon (approx. 3 tbsp)

½ tsp salt

½ tsp black pepper

¼ cup EVOO

¼ cup water

crusty bread

Recipe:

1. In a small pot, boil water. Once water is boiling, slip eggs one at a time into water. Cook for 6.5 minutes.

In order to prevent eggs from cracking, quickly slip the eggs under the water using a spoon.
Why 6.5 minutes? 7 minutes gives a perfectly jammy egg, but setting a timer for 7 minutes equates for a 7.5-8 minute egg. It will take you at least 30 seconds to grab a spoon, turn off the heat, grab the BOTH eggs out of the pot, and transfer to the ice bath. This process might take a whole minute if you are a multi-tasking hot girl with attention-deficit traits (like me). 6.5 minutes also accounts for any cooking on residual heat before the egg cools completely in the ice water bath.
While eggs are boiling, prepare an ice water bath (water + several ice cubes).

2. Remove eggs from water, and immediately transfer to ice water bath. Chill eggs until the shell is cool to touch (~1-2 minutes). Peel immediately.

The ice water bath chills any residual heat and stops any further cooking (to ensure jammy/runny yolk).

3. Add all dressing ingredients, except water, to blender. Blend. Add water. Blend.

4. Gather cut kale, fennel, parsley into a large mixing bowl. (Yes, large.) Add ¼ cup of dressing. Toss.

5. Add both eggs and ⅔ of the fish. Using a fork, mash eggs and fish into the kale. Get hot and flustered here! Fish should remain flaky, and egg should be in bite-sized pieces.

Reserve the remaining filet to eat alongside salad. Mashing the fish and eggs into the kale also massages/tenderizes the kale.

6. Optional: Sprinkle sumac, crack black pepper, and garnish with fennel fronds.

7. Eat with crusty bread. Voila greens, eggs, fish, and beans!

Dressed salad will keep refrigerated for 24 hours. (In fact, it gets better with age as the kale further tenderizes and soaks up the dressing!)

The dressing will keep for 4-5 days. The recipe makes more dressing than you need. Eat hot girl salad again and again. Or use the dressing as a dip for baby carrots and celery sticks.

Non-negotiables:

Tinned fish in EVOO & jammy eggs & kale & white beans — These four ingredients are integral to a hot girl’s diet. Each of the ingredients is also integral for the complete flavor AND nutritional profile of this salad. Tinned fish provides flaky texture. Yolk thickens and rounds out the dressing. Egg whites provide a cushion pillow for the kale. The kale is a hearty base. Lastly, the white beans, once blended, make for a creamy (dairy-free!) dressing.
I don’t count calories or macros, but I do like to keep loosely track of my fiber and protein intake. I don’t track any numbers, but I just ask casually myself, “Have I had leafy greens today? Did I have a sustainable source of protein today? Did I have any iron-rich foods today?” The four ingredients make this meal an easy “Yes, Alex” answer to all these questions. If I eat this salad for brunch, I don’t have to worry about my nutritional intake for the rest of the day.
None of these ingredients are particularly hard to source—in fact, they are all pantry and refrigerated staples. Tinned fish though can quickly get expensive. But my favorite brands that at a good price ($3-4) point are Bela, Wild Planet (which always seem to be on sale?) and Matiz.
Crusty bread — Crusty bread is a vehicle for salad. If I am feeling genteel, I’ll use a fork to put a portion of salad onto my bread before each bite. If I am feeling hasty, I’ll trade off bites of salad and bread. If I am feeling hot girl handsy, I’ll use my bread to pinch and scoop my salad into my mouth.

Try experimenting with:

Type of tinned fish in evoo - While recipe testing, I tried mackerel (test #3 & test #4), sardines (test #6 & test #7), and tuna (test #5). Out of these four, here is my ranking: mackerel > sardines > tuna. I think yellowtail would be as tasty as mackerel.
Fennel bulb or stems - I only started cooking with and eating fennel in February, and since I’ve been putting it on my weekly produce list. I love the subtle anise when raw and sweetness when cooked. And nothing makes me feel more like a food waste warrior, then getting to use every piece of the plant--from bulb, stem, to fronds.

Recipes usually call for a specific part of the fennel, and so I often find myself left with one component of the vegetable. In this recipe, use whatever you have on hand leftover. But if you have the whole vegetable, I would choose the shaved bulb over the stems for texture and styling sake. (Nevertheless, if you’ll be eating this salad on-the-go (ok girlboss), just opt for the stems, which will make it easier to eat.)

If you are not fond of anise (although I have yet to learn of a person who is not), chopped or shaved celery would be an acceptable textural substitution for fennel.

Styling tips:

Heavily sprinkle sumac and crack black pepper over your salad for more textural variety. You eat with your eyes in food photography.
Take your picture after you mash the egg and fish into the greens BUT before you toss it all together.
Want to look like a hot girl with friends (not a sad girl eating dinner alone)? Plate a couple more small servings of the salad with the serving bowl in the middle, take you picture, and then eat all the plates.
Use the extra dressing in its storage container to fill out your composition. Plate the extra dressing in or aside the serving bowl.
Garnish with fennel fronds.
Smize with your salad! I want to see your best summer outfit.

Recipe Development:

Test #1 – After staying with friends in SE Portland for a few days, I stayed alone at a tiny house in Alberta Arts District, located in NE Portland. After eating out for several days, I was eager to take myself to a local grocery store, New Seasons, and cook for myself—return to a sense of normalcy. Personally, a normal meal for one (for me) is some type of kale salad. Nothing makes my gut more at ease. And nothing is hotter than a girl with a happy stomach.

What I did right – I like to shop for groceries, leisurely perusing the shelves for inspiration. (And I will admit that I am very privileged with food security to do so.) As I put together a meal in my head, I have an entire grocery store as my pantry. Shopping without a list is a main character experience. Who know what you’ll find? Who knows what (or whom ;) ) you’ll walk out with? But shopping with no list (just vibes) often means that I forget an ingredient or two. This time, once I arrived home in my tiny kitchen, I realized I forgot a lemon (or any type of acid) to be used for a dressing. I did buy white bean spread (which listed vinegar as an ingredient) though! I diluted the white bean spread into dressing. This dressing was creamy without the dairy (hot girl shit!). It also evenly coated the kale and shaved fennel. I used a fresh crusty loaf of olive ciabatta.
Needs Improvement – I roasted mini eggplants coins in an eggwash, garlic, and herbs. I bought the eggplants from my first leg of my trip in SF and hauled them with me to Portland. I hoped the eggplant coins would be a meaty addition, making the salad more substantial, but they didn’t add the certain toughness and heartiness I was looking for.

Test #2 – I packed the leftover salad for a road trip to Cannon Beach the next day. I was optimistic for a beach picnic; however, the PNW has other plans. It was misty and rainy all day. I ended up eating the salad (as well as feeding it to my friend) in car ride back.

What I did right – I added few jammy eggs this time. Runny yolk is hot girl shit! The egg whites provided a hearty source of protein. The jammy yolks mixed into the dressing, rounding out the profile with more fattiness. I also really enjoyed the texture of the kale after it sat in the dressing for 24 hours. I absolutely hate the extra step of massaging kale, so I never do it. But letting the acid in the dressing do the work (read: manual labor) tenderized the kale with no sweat. Think smarter! Not harder!
Needs Improvement – I could have stopped here, but the salad was still missing a note. Perhaps some more salt?

Test #3 – I only started eating tinned sardines in April, but ever since, I’ve been eating 2-3 cans of tinned fish every week. So, what’s something I didn’t forget on my New Seasons grocery store trip? Tinned fish—or what we have come together to identify as the ultimate hot girl food. I added the half a tin of mackerel to my salad, mashing it into the greens. I used leftover fennel stems this time because I used the entire bulb for test #1 and test #2. The chopped fennel stems provided a texture similar to celery in tuna fish salad but with a more mature flavor.

What I did right – The tinned fish hit the saltiness mark. I liked the textural integrity of the mackerel too. I find that a lot of tinned sardines that I eat lose their shape quite easily. As I try to get them out of the tin onto my toast, they fall apart or get smushed together—so that the sardine is no longer flaky. Mackerel though is not as malleable, so it evenly dispersed throughout the salad while maintaining its bite.
Needs improvement – If using mackerel again, a less fishy seafood, I would add the whole tin though. I also wanted to make the white bean dressing from scratch, rather than just diluting grocery-store white bean spread with water. While this method was quick and easy, it would not be replicable—as white bean spread is not widely available at all grocery stores and even if so, it would vary greatly from brand to brand. As I didn’t massage the kale this time and I ate the salad promptly, the kale did not get to tenderize. I want to find a technique that massages kale without the egregious effort. Lastly, I had this salad with leftover (read: soft) olive ciabatta….the ciabatta was better crusty on the first day.

Test #4 – I ate the leftovers from test #3 at my gate at PDX, waiting to fly home. Similar to test #2, the kale was less rough and more chewable. I added some roasted golden beets too: the beets were deliciously sweet but not entirely necessary to the salad. Feel free to add them if you want!

What I did right – This test really emphasized how much better this salad is with tender kale leaves.
Needs Improvement – I really need to figure out a way to tenderize the kale without getting my hands and forearms all up in it or waiting overnight.

Test #5 – My first lunch back home? Hot girl salad (with tinned smoked sardines and homemade white bean dressing. I also started measuring the ingredients at this point.

What I did right – I was able to recreate the white bean dressing from scratch--but a little less vinegary than the modified grocery store version that I had been using in Portland. I used tinned smoked sardines this time because I wanted to try the salad also with a fishier fish than mackerel. I find smoked sardines to be the fishiest of tinned fish (behind anchovies), so I only aded ⅔ of the tin. I introduced a technique--mashing the fish and eggs into the dressed kale--to tenderize kale without having to massage it or let it sit overnight. This method worked really well.
Needs improvement -- I didn’t have time to go to the market, so I didn’t have any fennel.

Test #6 – This test was a learning experience at WHAT NOT TO DO. It was still a tasty salad, but it was not as complete as the last test. I ran out of tinned fish in evoo, so I used tinned tuna in water. I still didn’t have any fennel. I didn’t have any toast to use as a vehicle for my salad.

What I did right – The no-massage worked again.
Needs improvement – There was a lot of flavor and texture missing in this test: the oily softened fish, the crunch and anise from the fennel, the residual fishy evoo in the dressing, the crusty bread...