Chili Crisp Tricolore Salad with Spicy Tahini
Years ago, I worked front of house in a small Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side named Brio NYC (not affiliated with the chain restaurant Brio that can be found in the suburban North Eastern United States. This was a small spot right on the corner of 61st and Lexington avenue in Manhattan that was owned by a small family from Puglia in Southern Italy (Should out to Primitivo which is a type of wine that I often enjoy š)
I worked there on and off over a period of 5 or 6 years from the time I was going to college through a period where some of my best friends and I started building a small production company (but that’s another story). It was at Brio where I really started to learn a lot more about Italian food and also about cooking in general.
One dish that really stayed with me is the tricolore salad (and really any bitter green based salad for that matter). I love the bitter crunch of the greens contrasted by the bright acidity of lemon juice or red wine vinegar, accompanied by a smooth olive oil and some shaved parm for some nutty salty goodness.
Over the past year, Iāve been thinking of making a variation leaning into Chili Crisp. Itās certainly been done before, I had just never come across it so decided to give it a go.
For our dressing, weāre swapping out the olive oil for some chili oil (in this case Sichuan Gold Oil by flybyjing) and whisking it together with some tahini (for nutty flavor and body), toasted sesame oil (deeper nutty flavor) and a nice hit of lemon juice (to brighten it up). As always salt to taste with your dressings.
I decided to also whisk up a quick mixture of tahini, chili crisp (also using flybyjing) and lemon juice to use as a bed for the salad to give the dish a bit more body and help smooth out the flavors a bit.
Once plated we pour a heaping tbsp of Chili crisp over the top of the salad followed by some more lemon juice and flakey salt to help everything pop! Iām using Chengdu Crunch for this by flybyjing because of how chunky it is with all of the āfixingsā there are in the mixture but another chunkier chili crisp like laoganma would also work great!
Side note: Iām using several chili oil/crisp/crunch products for this recipe but you can definitely stick to just one so you donāt need to go out and by 3 jars of product for this š If you do, make sure to use a chunkier chili crisp so you have a nice variation of texture.
Cheers,
Youtube Video:
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Full Recipe:
Chili Crisp Tricolore Salad with Spicy Tahini
Ingredients
Method
- In a small bowl, whisk together your dressing mixture by combining tahini, sesame oil, chili oil and lemon juice. Salt to taste.
- In a large bowl mix together your greens and toss with 1 tsp of salt. Mix in the dressing.
- To make the tahini dip, whisk together tahini, chili crisp and lemon juice. Salt to taste.
- To plate, pour half of the tahini dip in the center of a plate and then, using the back of a spoon, spread the dip out towards the edges of the plate with circular movements. Top with salad followed by 1 tbsp of chili crisp, lemon juice and a touch of flakey salt for some extra pop!
