Roasted Seasonal Vegetable Salad Recipe (North Italia Copycat) 

This Roasted Seasonal Vegetable Salad recipe is just like what you’ll find at a North Italia restaurant. The chopped kale and radicchio are mixed with roasted Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and butternut squash, fregola, pistachios, dates, tiny cubes of pecorino cheese and then tossed in a white balsamic vinaigrette.

North Italia's seasonal vegetable salad is one of my Top 5 Salads I’ve ever eaten from a restaurant. It is offered on their fall and winter menu. I order it almost every time we visit the restaurant.

I searched for this salad recipe online and found nothing. So, I figured that I would work on creating this salad at home. It helps that the restaurant provides a detailed description on their menu.

Yes, this recipe has quite a few ingredients and takes over an hour to prepare, but the prep work is simple.

Each step is broken down to make this restaurant-worthy salad achievable in your home kitchen. The beauty of this recipe is that you can prep components in advance – roast the vegetables over the weekend, make the vinaigrette ahead of time, and assemble everything just before serving.

Grab your chef's knife, sharpen it, and create something spectacular! This is an entire meal on its own or serve this with perfect pan-seared bone-in pork chops and easy homemade garlic bread.

Why You'll Love This Salad Recipe

• Save money- no more spending $16-$18 on restaurant salads!
• Makes enough for a crowd (or a week of prepped meals!).
• It’s still great the next day as leftovers.
• Perfect to bring to a potluck, picnic, holiday family meal, or a Galentine's Day party.
• You can prep it days ahead of time.

The Secrets To Restaurant-Quality Chopped Salads

1. Chop ingredients to bite size – Cut all your ingredients to a uniform size. Use a 1- inch or less measurement as your guideline when chopping your ingredients. We don't want a knife to help us eat a chopped salad.
2. Don't overcrowd the cookie sheet – The best-roasted vegetables for a salad need high heat and a bit of oil. You might be tempted to save time by cramming all of those veggies on one cookie sheet or roasting 2 cookie sheets at the same time risking steaming versus caramelizing. Check out these Crispy Oven-Roasted Brussels Sprouts for more details about roasting them.
3. Make homemade salad dressing – The easiest homemade salad dressing is a vinaigrette. Add 2-3 parts oil and 1 part vinegar/acid to a mason jar with a pinch of salt and pepper and shake until combined.
4. Don't be shy with the dressing – Chopped salads usually require a little more dressing than a classic salad.
5. Prep Ahead – The best thing about chopped salads with kale as an ingredient is they can be made and even dressed a little further ahead of time and stored in the fridge until you are ready for it.

Ingredients

• Whole Brussels Sprouts: Brussels sprouts need to be fresh, not frozen. They should be smaller than a golf ball with tight outer leaves and minimal browned edges. If you buy them already halved, make sure they are fresh rather than brown and dried out in their packaging.
• Cauliflower: A 12-ounce package of fresh cauliflower florets works for this recipe or a small, whole head that you will chop at home. If you buy it already in florets, some of them will be huge. Break those down into 1-inch sizes with your hands or a knife.
• Butternut Squash: I don't love peeling and finely dicing fresh butternut squash. If I can find it, I'll buy it already cubed. These stores offer fresh (not frozen) diced squash: Sprouts, Whole Foods, Costco, Walmart, and Target.
• High-Temperature Cooking Oil: This is for oven-roasting vegetables. My favorite is Ghee (clarified butter), but grapeseed, avocado, or canola oil will also work.
• Fregola: This is a small, chewy pasta that originated in Sardinia, Italy. It's toasted and nutty and similar in size to pearl couscous. Fregola can be hard to find in the stores, so I order this Rustichella dAbruzzo Fregola online.
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil: This is used with the fregola and the vinaigrette. Make sure you like the taste of the oil.
• Pistachios: Nuts add a little texture to this salad. I recommend the pistachios already shelled, roasted, and salted like the Wonderful Pistachio brand.
• Dates: Dates are dried fruit with a slight caramel flavor. They are harvested from a date palm tree in the tropics. A common variety is Medjool. Other uses for dates are sticky toffee pudding and homemade smoothies for additional sweetness.
• Pecorino Romano Cheese: This aged sheep's milk cheese brings a subtle saltiness and complex, slightly funky flavor that elevates a salad or a pasta dish. I buy this cheese at Costco.
• Kale: A superfood, kale is packed with health-promoting properties, including a range of antioxidants. Its former use was for decorating the Pizza Hut buffet. Curly, Toscano, and red kale varieties are common at the store. Check out a farmers market for different varieties. Kale is an easy seed to start and grow in your home garden.
• Radicchio: These wine-red small heads with white veining are a lover of the cooler weather. Their vibrant leaves are crunchy and bitter and full of antioxidants. Their bitterness can be strong, therefore, I only add half of a head. You can add the entire chopped head to this salad or saute the other half with olive oil for a vegetable side dish.
• Honey: A liquid, natural sweetener with floral notes that enhance the vinaigrette.
• White Balsamic Vinegar: A key ingredient to this tart and slightly sweet vinaigrette. For more details about making this vinaigrette, check out this White Balsamic Vinaigrette Recipe.

See the recipe card below for ingredient measurements.

Substitutions & Variations

• Whole Brussels Sprouts: If you are having a hard time finding fresh Brussels sprouts, you can substitute broccoli florets.
• Butternut Squash: Sweet potatoes are a fine substitution. Make sure to peel them.
• Fregola: You can omit fregola pasta entirely or substitute pearl couscous or roasted chickpeas.
• Pistachios: You could replace this nut with toasted almonds, pecans, or walnuts. Make sure the nuts are crunchy and seasoned with salt.
• Dates: Any dried fruit would work as a substitute, however, I suggest prunes or dried apricots at the top of your options.
• Pecorino Romano Cheese: Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese chopped into cute and tiny cubes would be a great substitute.
• Radicchio: You can omit this entirely or substitute red cabbage to keep that crunchy profile.
• White Balsamic Vinegar: After tasting all my white vinegar varieties, white balsamic has the sweetest profile. The next best thing is a quality white wine vinegar. Rice vinegar would also be a fine substitute.

Timesaving Tips

• Buy butternut squash already peeled and cubed.
• While waiting for the oven to preheat and the water to boil, start preparing the vegetables that will be roasted.
• When roasting the vegetables, you can cook the fregola and continue chopping the rest of the ingredients.

How To Make North Italia’s Seasonal Vegetable Salad

Step 1: Confirm the oven rack is on the lowest level and place a pizza stone on the bottom rack. Preheat oven to 450℉.

Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil on the stove. Season the water with 2 tablespoons of kosher salt.

Step 2: Cut off the bottom core from the Brussels sprouts and cut each sprout in half.

On a cookie sheet, combine the Brussels sprout halves, 1 Tablespoon of ghee, ½ teaspoon of kosher salt, and 15 grinds of black pepper. Make sure the Brussels sprouts halves are face down.

Step 3: Roast the Brussels sprouts for 10 minutes until the bottoms are caramelized. Transfer the cooked sprouts to a parchment-lined metal cooling rack to cool. The cooling rack will reduce the chance of steaming the roasted vegetables.

Step 4: Using the same cookie sheet, repeat steps 2 and 3 with the 1-inch cauliflower florets. Roast them for 10 minutes.

Step 5: Transfer the cauliflower to cool.

Step 6: Repeat steps 2 and 3 with the cubed butternut squash. However, increase the roasting time to 18-19 minutes until caramelized, but not overcooked and soft. They should retain their shape.

Step 7: Allow the butternut squash to cool and set the roasted vegetables aside until ready to assemble.

Step 8: While roasting the vegetables, cook the fregola in the boiling water according to package directions for about 13 minutes. Drain the pasta and mix 2 tablespoons of the olive oil with the fregola while warm. Let cool.

Make Ahead Instructions

• Up to 7 days ahead:
  • Make the vinaigrette. Store in the fridge.
  • Chop the pistachios. Slice the dates. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.
  • Cube the Pecorino cheese. Store covered in the fridge.
• Up to 3 days ahead:
  • Roast the vegetables and store them together in the fridge in an airtight container.
  • Cook the fregola and dress it with olive oil. Cover it and store it in the fridge.
  • The kale and radicchio can be washed and chopped. Do not massage the kale with salt until just before assembling the salad. Store in the refrigerator in an airtight container.
• Wait to assemble everything until right before serving.

Storage Instructions

Room Temperature

You can roast the vegetables and assemble this salad up to 3 hours before serving. Wait to add the salad dressing until 30 minutes before serving. 

Refrigerator

If the vinaigrette is mixed in this salad, it holds up well when stored in the refrigerator for up to 2 days.

If you want to spread this into a week of mini-meals, assemble the salad and divide it into smaller containers. Add the vinaigrette just before serving.

Freezing is not recommended.

Frequently Asked Questions

What To Serve With This Recipe