Fall and a Salad

September 23, the very first full day of Fall this year, was not particularly cool, and the leaves hadn’t quite turned, and the way that it smelled wasn’t exactly like the smell of a high school football game. If you think, though, that any of that stopped me from incorporating pumpkin into three meals that day, you underestimate how much I love Fall and the most delicious and comforting foodstuffs it brings. If there’s one day of the year you can fully justify living off of Pumpkin Spice Latte alone, it’s the first day of Fall.

Greg and I are on the invitation list for this underground supperclub, Prelude to Staplehouse, run by a husband and wife who put on dinners at their home in anticipation of opening their own restaurant, “Staplehouse.” They send out menus in advance, and in a first-come, first-served manner, choose ten or so diners to come over, eat, drink, and generally be merry. We haven’t made it to a dinner yet, but we have been completely inspired by the advance menus, most recently by this: salad of baby spinach, pumpkin seeds, dried cherries, roasted butternut squash, goat cheese and cinnamon vinaigrette. And so we did just that, as seen here, substituting only arugula for baby spinach.

Salads like this are one of my favorite things to do, because it’s so improvisational. To me, good salads are all a variation of the same theme: green (your lettuce element) + something substantial (the squash, here, or apple, or pear, or asparagus, or green beans) + nut or seed (toasted, always) + cheese (when in doubt: goat) + your vinaigrette, which is also always a variation of the same recipe. I thought a cinnamon vinaigrette was unexpected and so smart. That’s why the Staplehouse folks are in the restaurant business, and I’m in the copycat business.

Recipe follows . . .