Healthy Italian Salad Recipes

This easy and beautiful vegetable salad recipe features favas, escarole and peas and is inspired by scafata, the healthy spring salad from Umbria, Italy.

The slightly sweet, nutty flavor of jicama--a round root vegetable with thin brown skin and white crunchy flesh--is delicious in this quick, Italian-style slaw recipe. Peel the jicama with a knife or vegetable peeler, making sure to remove both the papery skin and the layer of fibrous flesh just underneath.

Archaeologists say that humans have been eating mussels for over 20,000 years, but it's unlikely our prehistoric ancestors ever tried them with this tangy lemon-caper marinade. Garlic-Tomato Toasts and a bold Sauvignon Blanc are wonderful with this salad.

When it's too hot to cook, just step outside and gather tomatoes and basil from your garden, cut up some day-old country bread and make this flavorful, easy salad, our take on the classic Italian bread salad known as panzanella.

This ultra-simple preparation screams for ripe, juicy, in-season tomatoes. It's worth splurging on the best you can buy, or if you're lucky, pick them out of your own garden.

Grilled calamari, new potatoes, asparagus, red bell pepper, olives and basil come together in this delicious main-course salad.

Panzanella is a popular Tuscan summer salad made with bread soaked in a dressing. This version uses whole-grain bread, baby spinach and a reduced-calorie balsamic dressing for a healthier twist.

The distinctive and contrasting flavors of fennel and radicchio need only the lightest of dressings.

In Italy, this potato salad is known as Russian Salad. It has a thousand versions, most of them bound with plain or garlic mayonnaise. In this one, lightly steamed vegetables are splashed with vinegar while still hot, so they absorb the pungent aroma and flavor. A lemony vinaigrette binds the vegetables together. This salad looks especially pretty when made with red-skinned new potatoes and served in a cupped leaf of red radicchio. Butter lettuce or ruffled kale makes a nice presentation too.

Anchovies--you either love them or hate them. If you fall into the former camp you'll be fighting for the little fillets on this salad. If not, leave them off and you still get a lovely oregano-flecked sliced tomato salad--the essence of summer.

A simple vinaigrette of tea, balsamic vinegar and Dijon mustard is tasty paired with radicchio and pine nuts.

This recipe for jumbo shrimp wrapped in thin strips of prosciutto and served on a lemony bed of arugula is a practically effortless recipe for two. Wrap your shrimp and make the dressing ahead of time, and you'll have dinner on the table even faster. Serve with toasted whole-wheat baguette sprinkled with Parmesan cheese.

Don't throw out that stale bread! Instead make this quick, easy, and delicious Tuscan salad.

Venice was built on saltwater marshes in the 6th century, and many local crops like the city's Sant'Erasmo artichokes, have a delicate taste of the sea. For this healthy salad artichokes are sliced thin--a great use for a mandolin if you have one--and served raw. When paired with the sweet-salty shrimp the combo evokes the flavors of the lagoon. For tender and tasty results, buy the smallest, freshest artichokes you can find.

The Italians often enjoy fennel the way North Americans eat celery: raw in salads. This salad is aromatic and crisp with a fresh lemon dressing.

For a milder flavor, substitute escarole or Swiss chard for the mustard greens or kale (add them with the potatoes).

Here's a simple green side salad recipe that matches bitter greens like escarole and radicchio with a pungent anchovy dressing. You could also use frisée, arugula or even mesclun greens. It's great with pizza or as a light side salad.

Panzanella is a Tuscan chopped salad of bread and tomatoes. This upscale version features halloumi cheese and is super easy because most of the ingredients are grilled, including the cheese.

Traditional Caesar salad gets a nutrition and flavor boost with the addition of crisp asparagus and dark, leafy baby kale in this healthy recipe. Use arugula or mixed greens for the salad if baby kale isn't at your market.

Smoked mussels, broccoli, mushrooms, roasted red peppers and provolone come together in a quick and easy antipasto platter.

Serve this crisp salad as an antipasto before an Italian meal.

This is an ancient Ligurian salad in which all the ingredients were arranged in layers. Use whatever vegetables look best at the market.

Roasted red peppers, seared tuna and Parmesan cheese join together in this savory antipasto platter.

The bright, playful colors of this easy salad are reminiscent of Harlequin's costume.