Italian Chopped Salad

This Italian chopped salad with salami, prosciutto, and Fontina cheese takes the flavors of a charcuterie platter and turns them into a hearty main dish salad.   

Serve this Italian chopped salad with radicchio and green leaf lettuce, topped with meats, cheese, olives, pepperoncini, and tossed with an easy vinaigrette of olive oil, sherry vinegar, oregano, and salt and pepper for lunch or a light dinner. 

Add crusty rolls, breadsticks, baguettes, or Italian bread for a complete meal. 

Ingredients in this Italian chopped salad:

Radicchio: It has crisp and fairly firm leaves and a slightly bitter flavor. You can usually fine it in two shapes, round or elongated. It holds up well to dressing and adds a pretty deep red color to your salad. 

Green leaf lettuce: Use the lower, crispier parts of the leaves and save the more tender parts in the crisper for tossed green salads. You can use escarole, romaine, or other medium to dark leafy green that has fairly sturdy stems. 

Pitted olives: You can use either green or black, or a combination of both. 

Prosciutto: Slice it into strips for adding to the salad. 

Salami: You can use any kind of thinly-slice salami you prefer. Cut it into quarters to make the pieces bite-sized. 

Fontina Cheese: Cut the cheese into 1/2 inch cubes. 

Pepperoncini: Cut them into thin slices before adding them to the salad. 

For the Dressing: The dressing is super easy. It's an easy and delicious combination of extra virgin olive oil, sherry or red wine vinegar, oregano, salt, and pepper. If you can find a good quality sherry vinegar, I highly recommend it. 

To assemble the salad:

Place the dressing ingredients in the bottom of a large bowl and whisk them all together until emulsified. Add the radicchio and the leafy greens and toss everything together. 

Divide the tossed ingredients among four plates and top each with the meats, olives, cheese, and pepperonchini. 

This recipe is easily customizable to whatever you have on hand. Add some grape tomatoes, garbanzo beans, or even some cooked pasta if you like. 

You can also substitute some provolone or fresh mozzarella pearls for the fontina cheese. 

If you have whole salami, you can cut it into small cubes rather than slices. 

Substitute some Italian baby kale for the leafy greens. 

Welcome to this week's Sunday Funday. We are all making Main Course Salads to start the new year off right. Check out everyone's salads!

• A Day in the Life on the Farm: Asian Chicken Ginger Salad.
• Sneha's Recipe: Chicken Pasta Caesar Salad
• Palatable Pastime: Crispy Shell Chicken Taco Salad 
• Karen's Kitchen Stories: Italian Chopped Salad
• Amy’s Cooking Adventures: Oriental Chicken Salad 
• Food Lust People Love: Roasted Tomato Vinaigrette Steak Salad
• Our Good Life: Spinach Salad with Creamy Hard Boiled Egg and Homemade Garlic Croutons
• Mayuri’s Jikoni: Veggie Pasta Salad

Recipe adapted from Salad of the Day, 365 Salads for Every Day of the Year from Williams-Sonoma. The book has an amazing collection of salads, one for every day of the year, and it's organized seasonally. You can literally make a new and different salad every single day. 

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