Farmer’s Market Salad with Green Goddess Dressing
A Farmer’s Market Salad salad for Farmer’s Market Days! Made with butter lettuce, avocado, tomatoes, dates, corn, creamy goat cheese, cornbread croutons, and homemade Green Goddess dressing.
‘Tis the season for Farmer’s Market-inspired salads! Or really, anything that involves lots of fresh produce. I call this my Farmer’s Market salad because it’s everything I want to be eating right now– a big, fresh salad that’s packed with goodies and a nice mix of sweet, salty, crunchy and creamy.
If you love texture as much as I do in your salads, then you’ll love this one.
This one is inspired by Pronto, one of my favorite cafe’s in Sacramento, CA. We used to live mere blocks from it, and I would go there almost weekly to grab this salad. It was the first time I had ever had dates or cornbread croutons on a salad and the combination together is magical.
Combined with a fresh Green Goddess dressing — wow! See below for a few more details and tips for success, or scroll down to the bottom for the full recipe.
Ingredient Notes
As far as salads go, this one only has two complex ingredients– the cornbread croutons and the homemade dressing.
If you want to assemble this quickly, then grab packaged cornbread (Whole Food’s sells a great one in their bakery department, as do other stores) and bottled Green Goddess Dressing (I love Annie’s). For a different twist, a honey mustard dressing is also very, very good on this salad.
Otherwise, you can make your own cornbread (like my vegan cornbread recipe) and turn that into croutons. You’ll want to snack on them as you make it, I promise!
From there, this one is just assembly– butter lettuce is my preferred lettuce, but romaine will also work for more crunch.
I like dates in this one as it gives a really nice bite of sweetness that is balanced by the creamy goat cheese and the salty dressing and cornbread croutons. I don’t recommend skipping it and I think other dried fruit, like raisins or craisins, competes too much for flavor.
I don’t cook the corn– I just shuck it right off the cob and throw it in, though if you want you can use frozen corn that’s been thawed and cooked, canned corn, or you can saute the corn first if you’d like or use leftover cooked corn.
If you want more protein, then cooked tofu cubes or breaded tofu nuggets work great in this.
How to Make the Cornbread Croutons
The cornbread croutons totally make this salad! Make your cornbread first, then cube the bread into smaller crouton-size pieces.
Next, preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Place the cornbread in a single layer and toast for ~10 minutes until golden brown and crisp on the outside.
If you make this Farmer’s Market Salad, make sure to come back to leave a rating and a comment. Your feedback helps other readers, and seeing you make my recipes makes my day.
Farmer’s Market Salad with Green Goddess Dressing
Ingredients
Farmer's Market Salad
- 8 cups torn lettuce of choice, I like butter lettuce or little gem best
- 1 cup halved cherry tomatoes, or chopped tomatoes
- 1 large avocado, cubed
- 10 pitted dates, torn or chopped
- 1 cup grilled corn kernels*
- 1/4 cup crumbled goat cheese, or dairy-free creamy cheese crumbles
- 2 cups cubed cornbread
Green Goddess Dressing
- 1/4 cup finely chopped tarragon leaves
- 1/4 cup finely chopped parsley leaves
- 1/4 cup thinly sliced scallions, green parts only
- 1/2 cup plain full-fat Greek yogurt or vegan mayo
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 2-3 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1/2 teaspoon salt and pepper
Instructions
Make the cornbread croutons
- Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Place the cornbread in a single layer and toast for ~10 minutes until golden brown and crisp on the outside.
- Make the dressing. Whisk together all of the ingredients for the Green Goddess dressing. Taste, adding more salt and pepper, as desired. I usually start with 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and then add more if needed. Or, place all of the ingredients in a blender (affiliate) and puree.
- Make the salad. Add all of the ingredients to a large bowl and toss to combine. Drizzle with 1/3 cup of the dressing and toss, then divide into 4 bowls and drizzle with more dressing and freshly cracked black pepper.