When it comes to summer salads, I'm constantly pushing to explore different flavors and textures. This arugula salad happens to feature a favorite combination of mine: a romesco potato mix. The smoky sauce brings the party to this salad, both as a coating for the potatoes but also as a bit of dressing.
My favorite is to toss the salad together while the potatoes are slightly warm. The warm potatoes help to soften the goat cheese, creating an amazing coating for the arugula. Of course, if warm salads aren't your thing, you could always mix the potatoes in when cool.
Best of all, this salad showcases so many of the items I love from local farms: arugula (Jayleaf), potatoes (River Dog Farms- one of my favorites), walnuts (Full Belly- also amazing), goat cheese (Laura Chenel's), and olive oil (California Olive Ranch). What better way to showcase CA Grown.
Vegan: Drop the goat cheese (it's pretty simple!) If you do this, you might want to add a bit of lemon vinaigrette to the mix since the goat cheese would goat the salad a bit.
Grains: If you're lucky to find some California-grown grains, snap them up and add them to this salad. Curious who is growing grains? You can check out the California Grain Campaign.
Nuts: Swap out the walnuts for almonds and/or pistachios (pistachios are fun- the flavor stands out a bit more than the walnuts or almonds). I've yet to meet a romesco potato combination I didn't like!
Excited to try that sauce! Love using smoked paprika...adds such a depth of flavor 🙂
I love this salad so much! I've made it several times now (without goat cheese though) and I honestly can't get enough. I love using the romesco sauce as a dressing rather than just tossing the potatoes in it because it's that good.