Salad Days: A luxe salad of smoked salmon, artichokes, green olives and capers

Here’s a salad in which the brines from those containers become a part of the recipe, and even the sauce. You’ll find salmon in tomorrow’s recipe too — tinned salmon, in that case. Today, though, let’s buy some smoked salmon and put it to work in a bright spring salad.

The core ingredients other than that are brined globe artichokes, green olives stuffed with anchovies and capers, backed up by tomatoes, cucumber and red pepper for colour and crunch, as well as spring onion for a bit of bite. But no lettuce.

I was thrilled with the way this salad turned out. What I particularly liked is how the brine from the olives, the capers and even the jar of artichokes was put to work to dress the salad as well as add flavour to the yoghurt dressing at the centre of it all. The entire salad is permeated with the intriguing flavours of green olive, artichoke and capers.

That some of these ingredients come out of jars and tins makes this a rather pricy salad, so this is one to impress a small gathering with — or a larger group if you make two or three platters of it. This would go down well with some fine wines, so you could ask your friends each to bring a bottle of special white wine.

I say “platter” because this is the kind of salad in which everything needs to be shown off. I chose a large, round platter with a lip of about 1.5cm, enough to prevent the dressing and juices from spilling out. Then everything was arranged in an attractive way.

There’s no set rule for how you might want to lay out the ingredients, but one thing I’d be sure to do is to start with the rocket at the bottom, otherwise it would obscure the beauty beneath if it were scattered on top.

You won’t need all of the brine from the capers, artichokes and olives for the dressing and to flavour the yoghurt. One option would be to pour the remainder of all three into a single jar and refrigerate it. The three flavours complement one another beautifully, so there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be mixed.

Tony’s salad of smoked salmon, artichokes, green olives and capers.

Ingredients

(Serves 2 to 3 as a meal, more as part of a buffet)

200g smoked salmon

100g artichokes in brine

100g anchovy-stuffed green olives

30 or so capers

16 or so rocket leaves

20 or so baby roma tomatoes, halved

1 medium cucumber, unpeeled, sliced

1 red bell pepper, in rounds

3 spring onions, sliced

Salt to taste

Black pepper to taste

Dressing:

1 cup Greek yoghurt

Juice of ½ a lemon

1 Tbsp green olive brine

1 Tbsp artichoke brine

1 Tbsp caper brine

No salt (the brines should provide enough salt)

Method

Arrange the rocket leaves around the perimeter of the platter.

Slice the cucumber thinly (about 5mm thick) and arrange the rounds around the perimeter, overlapping the rocket and in between.

Halve the tomatoes and place them around the edge on, and in between, the cucumber.

Slice six rounds right through the red bell pepper, about 0.5cm in thickness. Cut away any pith around the edges and shake off any seeds. Place these around the bowl in a large circle, leaving the centre well empty.

Scoop the artichoke segments out of the jar and place them around in a circle as seen in the photo.

Spoon green olives out of their jar or tin and dot them around.

Now mix some of the brine juices out of the artichoke and olive containers and mix them in a small bowl such as a ramekin. Open the capers jar and pour a little of their brine in too, and stir. Spoon some of this all around everything that’s arranged in the bowl.

So at this point you’ve flavoured the entire salad with the tastes of everything in brine, and that’s what makes this a standout salad.

Season everything lightly with salt and pepper, but go slowly with the salt as the brines already have that to an extent.

Separate the pieces of smoked salmon and slice them in broad strips as best you can, though if there are some small bits you’ll need to be inventive. I rolled the pieces that were obviously going to roll up easily, and placed smaller ones in rows and rolled them up one after the other. It worked.

These are salmon “roses”: just place them on their edges around the “well” in the centre of the platter, and push them down slightly.

For the yoghurt dressing: add the yoghurt to a small bowl, then spoon in the three brines. Squeeze in some lemon juice, season with a little salt and pepper, and stir well. Spoon this into the middle of the salad.

Slice the spring onions and scatter them around. Do the same with the capers, including dropping some of the capers on top of the dressing in the middle. DM

Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the Year award, in 2021 and 2023.

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.

This dish is photographed on a platter by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.