A Salad at a Filipino Party?! Yes, it can happen!!

My FAABulous Panzanella Salad!!

Over the weekend, I was invited my boyfriend’s family party, which meant a couple of things: (1) lots of Filipino food, and (2) more Filipino food. More specifically, few (if any) fresh vegetables.

The lack of greens in the Filipino cuisine is great if you like comfort food and even better if you’re a cardiologist looking for extra business.

Find the salad!

Karl (the bitchy and oh-so-picky boyfriend) has recently been ordered by his physician to incorporate more veggies in his diet…… surprise!

So, knowing that fresh salads are almost unheard of at his family parties, I decided to toss one together in the hopes that he’d start his onslaught of the deep-fried/heavily salted with something tasty and healthy.

Enter my panzanella salad:

After studying several recipes, cooking videos and countless YouTube demonstrations, I came up with this concoction you see above.

The base consists of homemade parmesan encrusted croutons, bell peppers, peas, heads of asparagus spears and green onions tossed with a puree of asparagus and basil.

I then topped it with a blend of baby spinach, frisee and romaine lettuce lightly dressed with a lemon and honey vinaigerette. Parmesan was sprinkled on afterwards to …. well… make it more FABULOUS!!

Believe it or not, the entire salad was the first dish to go!! This is remarkable, considering the other items it had to compete with:

Not all Filipino cuisine sucks turd — ok, most of it. But, if you must indulge, try to start off with some fresh greens. Unless of course you want to keep your cardiologist busy.