Pomegranate and Cranberry Salad with Spiced Orange Vinaigrette

It’s light and feisty with spicy greens, mandarins, pomegranate, cranberries, and pecans. The salad is perfect to pair with a rich holiday meal or to use leftover Thanksgiving ingredients to create a filling salad.

The beauty of this salad is almost anything goes and the point is to have a delicious dish while cleaning out your fridge. I usually put substitutions in a note section below the recipe, but this is “use what you have” so I’m ranking it higher than the recipe. For those of you who like more direction, you can follow the recipe.

Greens: You can use some mild greens like spinach, butter lettuce, or a spring mix. The vinaigrette pairs especially well with spicy and bitter greens such as baby mustard (if you use mature mustard make sure you massage it first), kale, cress, arugula, pea shoots, sunflower sprouts, radish sprouts, etc. If you don’t have spicy greens, you can use mild greens with some shredded radishes. No radishes, just skip it.

Dried cranberries: If you don’t have any you can omit it or add some chopped dried dates or dried figs.

Pomegranates: You can chop fresh cranberries and mix it with a little sugar.

Pecans: For this salad, just about any nut or sunflower seeds will work.

Cheese: I like the contrast of sharp cheeses paired with the other ingredients but something creamy like a ricotta or goat cheese would also work wonders. You can also omit it altogether.

Protein: It has some cheese and seeds, but not enough for a complete meal. You can easily pair it with room temperature fish or chicken.

In salad I like to have a base (greens), something sweeter (bell peppers, carrots, fruit), and something salty (cheeses, nuts). This salad has multiple ingredients in each category so a cinch to omit things without leaving a void.

Spiced Orange Vinaigrette Ingredients
2 tsp orange zest
⅓ c orange juice
⅓ c lemon juice
⅔ c avocado oil
1 Tbl mustard
2 Tbl cane syrup
¼ tsp nutmeg
¼ tsp cinnamon 
¼ tsp ginger
¼ tsp all spice
⅛ tsp cardamom
pinch cloves
¼ tsp salt

Spiced Orange Vinaigrette Directions
Add all of the ingredients into a jar with a tight fitting lid. Shake. Taste. It should be acidic. If you think it’s too sour, dip a piece of lettuce in it and taste. If it’s still too acidic, add more oil. Add more salt if needed.

Pomegranate and Cranberry Salad Ingredients
1 dinner salad or 2 side salads

1 c spring mix greens
1 c cress
½ c pea shoots
½ c baby arugula
½ c spicy bold greens sprouts
3 Tbl Spiced Orange Vinaigrette
¾ c chopped mandarin (about 3 small mandarins)
3 Tbl dried cranberries
5 Tbl pomegranate seeds
3 Tbl of shredded Parmesan, Romano, and Asiago mix
¼ c roasted chopped pecans

Pomegranate and Cranberry Salad Directions
Add 1 c spring mix greens, 1 c cress, ½ c pea shoots, ½ c baby arugula, and ½ c spicy bold greens sprouts. Gently toss them so they’re evenly distributed. Drizzle 3 Tbl Spiced Orange Vinaigrette on the greens and toss until all of the leaves are coated.

Sprinkle ¾ c chopped mandarins on top of the greens. Scatter 3 Tbl dried cranberries and 5 Tbl pomegranate seeds. Top it with 3 Tbl shredded cheese, and ¼ c chopped pecans.