Panera Apple Fuji Salad

For this Salad Wednesday, I decided to do a copycat recipe from Panera. Salads there are always really good, and this one had a lot of good ingredients. I got the recipe from this copycat website. This salad was really easy, the hardest part was just gathering up all the ingredients. The original Panera salad has chicken or turkey on it as well, but I just left it out. It would be easy to add to the top though if you were making this for a non-vegetarian too.

Other Salad Wednesday recipes so far: Cucumber Salad, Deconstructed Wedge Salad, Edible Flower Salad and Buffalo Cauliflower Salad.

The ingredient list is kind of a guide from the original website, and makes 6 servings. I adjusted a bit based on what and how much of each thing I like on my salad.

Ingredients:

-8 oz. spring greens
-2 tomatoes, chopped (vine ripe is best)
-1 cup toasted pecan halves
-1 (2 1/2 oz.) bag apple chips (I couldn't find these, so I just cut slices of an apple)
-6 ounces feta cheese
-1/2 red onion, sliced into rings

Dressing
-1/2 cup dried cranberries
-2/3 cup olive oil
-2 tablespoons golden balsamic vinegar
-2 garlic cloves, finely diced
-2 small shallots, finely chopped
-3 teaspoons Dijon mustard
-3 tablespoons honey

Put all the ingredients for the dressing together in a bowl.

Mix.

Cut up the apples, onion and tomato.

Add the feta and pecans on top of the lettuce.

Put the rest of the ingredients on.

Top with dressing.

This recipe was good because it had enough in it to make a whole meal on its own. The balsamic vinegar had a bit of a strong flavor, so I would use a little less if you aren't a huge fan of the taste. I also don't think I've really had dried cranberries before, they were really good, really sweet, much more than raisins, which is what I would think they would be like. But the sweetness went really well in the salad.