celery heart

Here’s an easy summer salad that’s always a winner. There are many similar chopped salads served throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, but this version with halved sweet cherry tomatoes is especially attractive. Your own take can be a variation on this one: Feel free to use large tomatoes, chop the vegetables as small or large as you like (roughly chopped has its charms), add other herbs like basil, mint or dill, or swap the feta for mozzarella.

Chopped Cucumber and Tomato Salad

red onion

garlic

red wine vinegar

olive oil

roasted peppers, preferably orange or yellow, chopped

cherry tomatoes

chopped thin-skinned cucumber,

celery hearts, plus leaves

Kosher salt and black pepper

flat-leaf parsley

feta

Put onion, garlic, vinegar and olive oil in a large mixing bowl. Let macerate for 10 minutes.

Add roasted peppers, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and celery. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and toss well. Let macerate for at least 20 minutes, tossing several times with the dressing. You can also prepare the ingredients in advance, and assemble the salad up to 1 hour before serving.

To serve, toss once more and transfer to a deep platter or wide bowl. Sprinkle with parsley and feta.

This sandwich serves many dainty folks or fewer rugged types. Pre-order the bread from an Italian bakery or deli counter, and build first, season last. Success here is in achieving a perfect filling-to-bread ratio, a generousness with the seasonings, and the ability to close the sandwich around the filling without finding it woefully over- or under-stuffed when it’s time to slice. It’s a huge help to have on hand 8-inch wooden skewers, disposable gloves, a good serrated knife and an egg-slicer gadget. The assembly instructions here are meant to be helpful but not prescriptive, as I trust that everybody knows how to build a sandwich to their own liking.

Six-Foot Meatless Italian Hero

green bell peppers

lettuce

hothouse beefsteak tomatoes

celery hearts

parsley

artichoke hearts

garlic cloves,

salt and pepper

Extra-virgin olive oil (approximately 1 to 1 1/2 cups)

red onions, peeled

(6-foot) seeded Italian loaf (special order)

Red-wine vinegar

shy quart (not quite a full 4 cups) mayonnaise (preferably Hellmann’s)

provolone

black olives

hard-boiled,

jalapeños

(12-ounce) jars sliced cubanelle or banana peppers

oregano

Wash and dry bell peppers, iceberg, tomatoes, celery hearts and parsley.

Grind artichokes in a food processor with the peeled garlic and a pinch or 2 of salt, until largely puréed but still textural, like tapenade. If a little loosening is needed, blend in a glug of olive oil.

Using a sharp knife, shave celery crosswise. Transfer to a medium bowl, and add the artichoke purée. Season assertively with salt and pepper, plus a nice long drizzle of olive oil; toss well and then set aside.

Slice everything else that was washed and dried into the thinnest slices you can manage. Thinly slice the red onions into rings, then cut the rings in half to create half-moons. (Full rings of thinly sliced red onion have a tendency to become stringy as they wilt inside a sandwich, creating a bit of a choking hazard.)

When ready to assemble the sandwich (at least 1 hour before eating, though the assembled sandwich can sit up to 12 hours in a cool place), chop the parsley, and stir it into the artichoke-and-celery mixture. Taste that the mixture is highly seasoned to your liking.

Set up an efficient workstation with enough counter space for the bread, and have all your mise en place in neat containers in front of you. If possible, put the vinegar, oil and mayonnaise into squeeze bottles, just as they do at delis and salad bars. Wear gloves to make separating slices of cheese and onion and tomatoes while assembling more “grippy.”

Hinge the bread horizontally without slicing all the way through. Be assertive in butterflying the loaf open — like breaking the spine on an open book — in order for it to lie flat enough to receive all the fillings without your having to hold it open along the way.

Build by overlapping the ingredients, or “shingling” them, along the central channel of the hinged loaf in the following order: cheese, lettuce, tomato, bell pepper, artichoke-and-celery mixture, red onions, black olives, hard-boiled eggs, jalapeños and cubanelle peppers.

Generously salt and pepper the whole thing, then zigzag squiggles of mayonnaise, squirts of vinegar and olive oil. Finish with a light dusting of oregano.

Squeeze the sandwich closed, and insert 8-inch wooden skewers, driving them in diagonally to prevent the sandwich from springing back open. Trim a couple of inches off each end, then serve and slice to order.

This is the kind of substantial salad that’s nice to have on hand, no matter the occasion. If you have time, it’s best made with large dried white beans, such as cannellini, simmered at home. (It’s great to have a pot of cooked beans in the fridge all summer long, for deploying in salads and soups.) But using canned beans is absolutely OK. The recipe calls for roasting the cauliflower, but it could also be cooked on a grill to impart some pleasant smokiness.

White Bean Salad With Roasted Cauliflower

cauliflower,

Salt and black pepper

white beans

celery

scallions

shallot,

Dijon mustard

lemon juice

lemon zest

red wine vinegar,

fennel (optional)

extra-virgin olive oil,

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Put cauliflower on a rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Toss to coat. Roast on the top rack until nicely browned, 20 to 25 minutes. Set aside to cool.

Make the dressing: Put shallot in a small bowl with mustard, lemon juice, lemon zest, vinegar and ground fennel, if using. Stir well to combine, then whisk in olive oil. Season to taste.

Make the salad: Put beans in a low salad bowl. Add celery and cauliflower, pour the dressing over and toss well, taking care not to crush beans. Let salad rest for 30 minutes or so to meld flavors. Taste and adjust for salt, acid and oil. Add parsley and scallions, toss once more, then serve at room temperature.

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Top 3 celery heart recipes from across the web

The most viewed celery heart recipes by Recipe Cart users, saved from over 20,000 sites. Or, go to our Recipe Search Engineic_arrow_forward_48px

Top Tags

Chopped Cucumber and Tomato Salad

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The most viewed celery heart recipes by Recipe Cart users, saved from over 20,000 sites. Or, go to our Recipe Search Engine