Start off your Valentine's Day dinner with a festive salad. The Valentine's Day Salad is topped with heart-shaped tomatoes, feta cheese, and Kalamata olives and is served with a homemade tomato vinaigrette.
Valentine's Day is traditionally an incredibly busy restaurant night, and there is nothing romantic about standing in an hour-long line to get a table if you have kids, getting a babysitter can be a real challenge too.
So, stay home and cook up a meal that your family will love and enjoy an evening at a restaurant another day.
Let's start with the salad course and make it festive by topping it with heart-shaped tomatoes.
For this Mediterranean-inspired salad, I've made a delicious tomato vinaigrette that boasts fresh tomato and garlic flavor. The dressing takes a bit of time to prepare, but it's worth the effort.
But, if you don't want to spend the time, just use your favorite bottled dressing. Annie's Naturals makes and amazing Roasted Red Pepper Vinaigrette that makes a wonderful compliment to the feta cheese, olives, tomatoes, and cucumbers in this salad. It has a slight reddish/orange hue, so it also works well with the theme.
If you are having a romantic dinner and don't want to eat garlic, you can simply leave it out of the recipe. The list of ingredients is simply a guideline per person, and you can adjust the amount of each ingredient based on your tastes.
Salad Ingredients:
Romain and Leaf lettuce
Grape Tomatoes (7 per person)
Kalamata Olives (3 per person)
Cucumbers (2 tbsp. diced per person)
Feta Cheese (1-2 tablespoons per person)
Tomato Vinaigrette Recipe:
(makes 5 tablespoons)
vine-ripened tomatoes (6 small or 3 large)
1 ½ tablespoons red wine vinegar
½ teaspoon oregano
½ teaspoon minced garlic
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
salt and black pepper
Salad Instructions:
Wash, dry, and tear your lettuce into bite-size pieces. Use your judgment on the amount of lettuce per person.
Remove the peel from the cucumber. Use a spoon to scrape out all of the seeds. Discard the seeds. Dice the cucumber into ½" pieces.
Cut Kalamata olives into thin slices.
Make heart-shaped tomatoes.
To make heart-shaped tomatoes:
1. Place grape tomato on the cutting board. Cut at a diagonal across the short side of the tomato.
2. Separate the two halves of the tomato.
3. Pick up one half of the cut tomato.
4. Rotate one-half of the tomato 180 degrees (turn it upside down.)
5. Press the two tomato halves together forming a heart.
6. Finished heart-shaped tomato.
Put a serving of lettuce on a salad plate. Top with cucumbers, kalamata olives, and feta cheese. Carefully pick up your heart-shaped tomatoes and artfully arrange them over the top of the salad. Serve your festive salads with homemade Tomato Vinaigrette or your favorite salad dressing. If you want to serve this as a dinner salad instead of a side salad, simply add some grilled chicken or shrimp.
Tomato Vinaigrette Instructions:
Cut vine-ripened tomatoes into quarters. Sprinkle them with a pinch of salt and put into the bowl of a food processor (the food processor pictured at left is a mini one.) Puree the tomatoes until just slightly chunky.
Pour tomato puree into a fine-mesh sieve set over a measuring cup. Allow the juice to drip down into the cup. Use a rubber spatula to press on the tomato solids to extract as much juice as possible.
Discard the seeds and tomato solids. You will need ½ cup of tomato juice for one recipe. Discard any extra juice.
Pour tomato juice into a small saucepan. Add red wine vinegar, oregano, and garlic. Heat over medium heat, simmering until liquid reduces to 3 tablespoons. Remove from heat and allow to cool.
I like to strain this liquid to remove the chunks of garlic, but you don't have to do this. The juice will be flavored with garlic but I prefer not to bite into bits of garlic in my salad.
Once cooled, slowly drizzle in the olive oil while continually whisking to create an emulsion (a good blending of a watery liquid with an oil.) Season with salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle over salad.
Related Recipes
Be sure to check out all of my Valentine's Day Recipes.
Recipe
Salad greens topped with heart-shaped tomatoes, cucumbers, feta cheese, and Kalamata olives are drizzled with tomato & garlic vinaigrette.
- 4 cups Romain and Leaf lettuce
- 14 Grape Tomatoes
- 6 Kalamata Olives
- 4 tablespoons diced and seeded cucumber
- 2-4 tablespoons Feta Cheese
- 6 small (or 3 large) vine-ripened tomatoes
- 1 ½ tablespoons red wine vinegar
- ½ teaspoon oregano
- ½ teaspoon minced garlic
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- salt and black pepper
-
Wash, dry, and tear your lettuce into bite-size pieces.
-
Cut Kalamata olives into thin slices.
-
Put a serving of lettuce on a salad plate.
-
Top with cucumbers, kalamata olives, and feta cheese.
-
Place grape tomato on the cutting board. Cut at a diagonal across the short side of the tomato.
-
Separate the two halves of the tomato.
-
Pick up one half of the cut tomato.
-
Rotate one-half of the tomato 180 degrees (turn it upside down.)
-
Press the two tomato halves together forming a heart.
-
Carefully pick up your heart-shaped tomatoes and artfully arrange them over the top of the salad.
-
Serve your festive salads with homemade Tomato Vinaigrette or your favorite salad dressing.
-
Cut vine-ripened tomatoes into quarters.
-
Sprinkle them with a pinch of salt and put into the bowl of a food processor (the food processor pictured at left is a mini one.)
-
Puree the tomatoes until just slightly chunky.
-
Pour tomato puree into a fine-mesh sieve set over a measuring cup.
-
Allow the juice to drip down into the cup. Use a rubber spatula to press on the tomato solids to extract as much juice as possible.
-
Discard the seeds and tomato solids.
-
You will need ½ cup of tomato juice for one recipe. Discard any extra juice.
-
Pour tomato juice into a small saucepan.
-
Add red wine vinegar, oregano, and garlic.
-
Heat over medium heat, simmering until liquid reduces to 3 tablespoons.
-
Remove from heat and allow to cool.
-
Once cooled, slowly drizzle in the olive oil while continually whisking to create an emulsion (a good blending of a watery liquid with an oil.)
-
Season with salt and pepper to taste.
-
Drizzle over salad.
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Jenn at Creative Tradition says
Love this idea! I used it and your Valentine's Chicken Parmesan recipe for valentine's day this year. My husband loved them both... but he did ask that I just cook the full breasts... he wanted every scrap of meat 😉
I shared how our salad turned out on my blog and linked back to your recipes.
http://creativetradition.blogspot.com/2012/02/valentines-day-salad-full-of-heart.html
Beth Jackson Klosterboer says
I am so happy to hear that you and your husband enjoyed these recipes. I did bread and cook my chicken scraps because my husband felt the same way; he wanted to eat the whole breast. Your salad looks great. Do you mind if I copy the picture and add it and a link to your blog in my Reader's Gallery?
Mindie Hilton says
At first I thought they had grown some new special tomato, lol. Salad looks great.
Beth Jackson Klosterboer says
I wouldn't doubt that some day someone will grow shaped tomatoes. Somewhere I saw a cucumber that was shaped like a heart. They must have stuck it into some kind of mold while it was growing. I pinned the picture, because I was so amazed.
Brooke - in Oregon says
What a super cute idea, thanks!!
Beth Jackson Klosterboer says
Thanks for sharing Ginger. I'll have to pick up a Family Fun magazine and check out the hot dog hearts. I was hoping to find them on the Family Fun website, but they haven't posted pictures yet. Sounds like a great idea for a kid's lunch on Valentine's Day.
Ginger says
Cute!! This reminded me of the recipe i recently read in i think its called Family Fun(fun magazine) It had Hot Dog Hearts...Tomatoes can be perfect hearts too..love it:)