Summer Salads

As I've explained before, I'm not comfortable with salads. Their apparent simplicity intimidates the daylights out of me. I just have no confidence that I can make it taste good -- ridiculous as that may seem. Which is why I was very surprised when I realised I had a craving for one a few days ago. But instead of simply throwing a bunch of greens together and drizzling it with a quick vinaigrette, I had to go and make a project out of it. Tsk. Just like me. I can't just eat something. I have to go and think about it. Higher education at work here, people.

Not that this is a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination. I probably should have more greens in my diet anyway, if USDA's new nutrition chart is anything to go by... Tangent: was anyone else completely dumbfounded that they didn't think to use a pie chart in the first place? And their recommendations are still difficult to interpret, since they evidently can't even center the design accurately. Moral of the story: if you need a statistics degree to figure out how to eat, USDA's doing it wrong.

Return from tangent: furthermore, that's the exact kind of meal that you would want to have during summer. Fresh, crisp greens with an acid tang; anything else would add to the lethargy you already experience from the heat. Now, personally, I don't think that a salad by itself it enough to constitute an entire meal. A potato salad or a chicken salad, sure. But just a salad? Isn't that kinda... limited?

A question to be explored at a later date. In order to satisfy my craving and food preferences, I uncovered these two recipes, which have temporarily turned the Salad to an accessible summer meal for me.

Chicken Cherry Salad
Obviously, the best way to make a salad more meaty is to add, well, meat. (Duh.) But this one goes a step further by also adding croutons and cherries. Vegetables, protein, starch, fruit -- boom! Full nutritional value in a single dish. I'm waiting for the government to pat me on the head like a good little drone.

Facetiousness aside, I did continue eating this for several days in a row, jealously hiding it from my roommates. It's not as crisp as I expected (maybe I didn't toast the bread fast enough?), but that didn't bother me. In fact, that would have distracted me from the soft texture of the cherries and chicken. The vinaigrette gives everything a pleasant bite (in nice contrast to the cherries' sweetness), especially if you let it all soak it in for a few minutes.

For the Chicken:

• 6 (2,1/4 lbs) skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs
• 1 Tbs vegetable oil
• Salt and pepper

For the Salad:

• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 3 tbs Dijon mustard
• 3 Tbs dill, chopped
• 2 Tbs honey
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• Salt and pepper
• 4 thick slices rustic bread, crusts removed, torn into 3/4-inch pieces
• 1 lb fresh cherries, stemmed, pitted, and lightly crushed
• 3 heads butter lettuce, cored and turned into pieces
• 4 radishes, thinly sliced
• 1 Tbs chopped chives

Preheat the oven to 475, and heat oil in a large cast-iron or heavy nonstick skillet over high heat until hot but not smoking. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Nestle chicken in skillet, skin side down, and cook 2 minutes. Reduce heat to medium-high; continue cooking skin side down, occasionally rearranging chicken thighs and rotating pan to evenly distribute heat, until fat renders and skin is golden brown, about 12min.

Transfer skillet to oven and cook 13min more. Flip chicken; continue cooking until skin crisps and meat is cooked through, about 5min longer. Transfer to a plate; reserve the fat.

Whisk together the lemon juice, Dijon mustard, dill, honey, and garlic together in a small bowl. Gradually whisk in oil. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Stir; set aside. Remove the crispy chicken skin and tear into pieces. Do the same with the chicken meat; discard the bones.

Heat the chicken fat over medium heat. Add bread to skillet and toast, turning frequently, until golden and crisp, about 2min. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Season with salt and pepper while still hot.

Place chicken meat in a large bowl. Add cherries, lettuce, radishes, and chives and drizzle with vinaigrette; toss to coat. Divide salad among plates and garnish with croutons and chicken skin.


Celery, Grape, and Mushroom Salad
Another good way to add meatiness to a dish (minus the meat)? Mushrooms! This is a doubly good recipe for summer because it calls for a grill -- not only for the mushrooms, mind you, but for the grapes as well. What an awesome way to add smokiness to an otherwise fresh and nutty dish! At least, so I imagine. I don't have a grill, so I rely on my broiler. It still tastes excellent, but I will definitely have to make it again when I have earned that essential step on the path to adulthood. NB: if you happen to have unlocked this life achievement already, please make this in its original form and tell me what it's like!

Also, if you want to prove yourself a dork, place the oyster mushrooms on your face and pretend that you're Cthulu.

(...yes, I do such things.)

• 2 Tbs white wine vinegar
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp celery seeds
• 1/4 tsp Dijon mustard
• 2 small garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 cup plus 1 Tbs olive oil (plus more for brushing)
• 1/4 cup almond oil
• Salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup parsley leaves
• 1/2 cup celery leaves
• 1/4 cup salted roasted almonds, chopped
• 1 lb king oyster mushrooms, sliced lengthwise 1/4 inch thick
• 2 cups (12oz) green grapes
• 2 heads butter lettuce, leaves separated
• 2 cups very thinly sliced celery

In a small bowl, whisk the vinegar with the lemon juice, celery seeds, mustard and half of the garlic. Gradually whisk in 1/4 cup of the olive oil and the almond oil until emulsified. Season the dressing with salt and pepper.

In a food processor, combine the remaining garlic with the parsley, celery leaves and almonds and pulse until finely chopped. Add another 1/4 cup of the olive oil and puree to a chunky paste. Season the pesto with salt and pepper.

Light a grill (or heat your broiler). Brush the mushrooms with oil and season with salt and pepper. Grill over high heat, turning once, until tender and browned, about 5min. In a bowl, toss the grapes with the remaining 1 Tbs of olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Grill over high heat until the skins begin to blacken in spots, about 3min; line the grill with perforated foil if the grapes will fall through. Transfer the grapes and mushrooms to a large bowl and toss with the pesto.

Arrange the lettuce leaves on a platter and drizzle with half of the dressing. Spoon the mushroom-and-grape salad onto the lettuce. Toss the celery with the remaining dressing, spoon it on top and serve.

Maple-Pear Salad: A Confession

I don't consider myself a foodie.

My roommates find this utterly preposterous, but it's true, I don't. I definitely love to prepare food, and the more extravagant the experimentation, the more fun it is. But I have no insight on how to make flavours fit another in innovative ways. My expertise lies in finding interesting recipes and following their instructions. I could never assemble anything from scratch. Originality is not my forte.

What am I getting to? Neen said it once, and I will repeat it: salads intimidate me.

I don't know why, but I suspect it's because I can't fall back on a reliable recipe to tell me what to do. I guess I could always toss a bunch of rabbit food together with a vinaigrette. But that's not particularly fun.

That's why I was so excited when my father started talking about this salad that he discovered in a holiday cooking issue of Cook's Illustrated. Well, to be perfectly honest, he was complaining about it. The basic idea was that you toss the pears in maple syrup before you roast them to get a sweet, slightly burnt exterior. The problem with that is that you're liable to smoke yourself out of the house. Even if you don't, you'll probably have to chip the burnt syrup off the baking sheet with a hammer and chisel.


We debated the best way to join roasted pears and maple syrup; ultimately, we decided to roast the pears first, and then apply a light coat of syrup to each slice with a pastry brush. I can't compare it to the original recipe, but I can speak to the goodness of this approach. You don't get a crusty exterior on the pears (which is just as well, really), but you can definitely taste the maple syrup on the pear. The blend of such sweetness with blue cheese and walnuts -- ah! Délicieux!

I'm fully aware that this isn't actually going to make me better at creating new foods. But it's certainly going into my répetoire of dishes. And next time I make a big dinner, I can present this funky, funky salad.

Maple-Pear Salad

• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
• 3 firm pears, preferably Anjou or Bartlett
• Salt and ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons cider vinegar
• 1 small shallot, minced
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 bunches watercress, thick stems removed (8 cups)
• 1 head Bibb lettuce, torn into bite-sized pieces (6 cups)
• 1 cup crumbled blue cheese

Line a baking sheet with aluminium foil and place it in the lower-middle of the oven. Heat the oven to 500 degrees.

Peel and quarter the pears lengthwise. Core the pears, then halve each quarter lengthwise. Whisk the syrup and ginger together in a bowl.

Original: Toss the pears with 3 Tbs of the syrup mixture and spread them on the baking sheet. Season with salt and pepper, and then roast until they are browned on the bottom (about 15min). Flip the slices and roast for an additional 5min, or until they are tender and deep golden brown.

-- OR --

Alternative: Arrange the slices on the baking sheet, season with salt and pepper, and roast for 15min. Remove from the oven, brush the syrup mixture over the slices, and return to the oven (having flipped the pear slices first). Roast for an addition 5min, and remove.

While the pears are cooling on a baking sheet, whisk together the vinegar, shallot, oil, salt, and pepper to taste into the remaining syrup mixture. Combine the watercress and lettuce in your serving bowl, tossing with the vinaigrette. Scatter the pears and blue cheese and serve.

This meal brought to you by Forward Momentum

I guess I was remiss when last when writing about the Great Tapas Dinner. I didn't even mention the amount of prep work that went into it. Don't worry, I won't wax poetical about the last minute stress of hosting a dinner party. I'm sure we've all been there before. The fact that this gathering involved me planning to single-handedly put together 21 different dishes, well... that just illustrates how I have way too much fun for my own good.

To quote a militaristic literary idol of mine, no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. Just so in this case. I plotted out the menu way in advance (which just means I didn't say: "Oh, this looks interesting; let's make this tonight!"). Having no real idea where to start, I simply paged through the The Book of Tapas, noting which recipes looked tasty or interesting (or just bizarre and intriguing). Unfortunately, this gave me a list with roughly 50 items on it. After several cuts, and one dessert addition from Rick Bayless' website, I had the expected 21.

You would think that would be sufficient planning. But no! Then I had to figure out if it was even possible to make those dishes: many called for seasonal ingredients that aren't always easy to find in a Midwestern Autumn. Which brings me to the first great obstacle: grocery shopping. (Here I must apologize, because I said I wouldn't wax poetical. The shopping deserves an exception.) My memory is hazy (stress-induced delirium?), but I believe I had to make four distinct trips to the store. The first was to determine if all the ingredients could be had, and if not, what I could use instead. That was a success.

The second and third trips, as the actual 'buy stuff' excursions, were not. You see, I don't have a vehicle -- which is usually fine, because I live within walking distance of two grocery stores. However there is a limit to how much a person can carry in one trip. This was made even more difficult because two of my roommates promise to help carry bags... and then both flaked out on me. I must have been quite a comical sight, carrying all that stuff back by myself. Ok, rant over. Those were trips 2 and 3. Trip 4 was the last minute shoot-where-is-the-x-oh-damn-quick-go-get-it-now trip.

And that was all before the day of the event. During the week preceding the dinner, I pretty much spent every night reviewing the recipes (to ensure I'd be able to construct them with a minimum of difficulty), sometimes almost falling asleep on the cookbook. It was actually pretty funny. By the end of the week, I was virtually dreaming of tapas. I was definitely reverting to Spanish whenever I started talking to anyone. Aaawkward.

And by the end of it, I didn't even get to serve everything! While actually in the kitchen, I had to spontaneously remove 4-5 courses from the meal. The cuts were bourne of a realisation that there was no way my guests were going to be able to eat so much. Hey! In my defense, tapas are supposed to be small!

Anyway, that's enough blabber and ranting from me. Let's get to the interesting stuff: the food! These two dishes fall under the 'curiosities' category. Definitely not something you would serve every day, but an intriguing combination regardless. On the whole, this is the type of food on whose taste you might reflect, but it won't cause any cravings. They fit in well in a large complicated meal, and might work better as a small Amuse-Bouche.

Orange, Fennel, and Onion Salad (Ensalada con Naranja, Hinojo y Cebolla)

• 1lb 5oz fennel, peeled and cut in half lengthwise
• 3 large oranges
• 5 Tbs olive oil
• 2 Tbs lemon juice
• 1 small onion, thinly sliced
• handful of black olives, pitted and sliced
• mint leaves, to garnish (optional)
• salt and pepper

Bring a pan of salted water to a boil. Add the fennel, being back to a boil and cook for 2 minutes, then drain. Peel the oranges, removing any traces of white pith, and thinly slice crosswise, reserving any juices. when the fennel is cool enough to handle, thickly slice it and set aside. To make the dressing, beat the olive oil, lemmon juice and reserved orange juice together in a large bowl with a fork. Season with salt and pepper.

Combine the fennel, oranges, onion and olives in the bowl, gently tossing together. Pour the dressing over the salad and toss gently just before serving. The salad can be garnished with mint leaves, if desired


Hard-boiled Eggs with Smoked Salmon (Huevos duros al Salmón)

• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1 generous slice smoked salmon
• salt
• 3,1/2 Tbs bottled salmon row, drained, to garnish

To hard boil the eggs, pour enough water to cover them into a large pan, add 1 tablespoon salt and bring to a boil. Add the eggs carefully and stir gently with a wooden spoon to that then they set the yolks will be in the center. Cook medium-size eggs for 12 minutes. (Add 1 minute for bigger eggs and subtrract 1 minute for smaller eggs.) Drain off the hot water, fill the pan with cold water and leave the eggs until required. When the eggs are cool enough to handle, shell and halve the eggs lengthwise. Cut a thin slice off the base of each egg white half so it stays upright.

Put the mayonnaise and smoked salmon in a blender and blend until well mixed. Season with salt, if necessary, as the salmon might be already salted. To improve the presentation of the eggs, use a pastry bag to pipe the salmon and mayonnaise mixture onto the halved eggs. Garnish with the salmon roe and serve. If no serving immediately, store in the refrigerator until required.

Craving Greens: Chinese Chicken Salad

As Spuds has already described, the 2009 December holidays were fantastic culinary experiences. The family classics were phenomenal, and the younger generation did its best to translate "until it looks good" into as many written recipes as possible. It was also a real coming-of-age experience to surprise parents and grandparents with the quality of the recipes that we had in our back pockets. The greatest validation came when my Prussian grandmother asked for a copy of my mint pea soup recipe and Do for the soy sauce-wine reduction he'd used over sashimi for a Christmas Eve appetizer. We do okay in the cooking department.

But it sure was hard to put together menus without our recipe notes! Since our blogging had lapsed, we found ourselves straining to remember the details of our 2009 culinary successes. "What was the secret behind that amazing kimchi soup?... oh well, we'll have to scratch that idea." Not to mention that, without the blog, it became a lot more difficult to share recipes with our family.

So here's a recipe y'all should know about: Chinese Chicken Salad. It's pseudo-Asian creation from the November 2009 Food & Wine magazine, designed to satisfy cravings for Chinese flavors while still serving a light, green-centric meal. When D and I got back from the holidays, we were craving greens -- this totally did the trick. It's super flavorful, a nice blend of crunchy and smooth textures, and colorful. For folks on the Perfect Ten diet, you can make the salad Aziz-friendlier by eliminating the sugar, making your own mayonnaise (which takes 5min, really), using Low Sodium Soy Sauce, and generally cutting down on the volume of dressing. Warning: this recipe makes a huge quantity (I had to break out D's massive Le Creuset just to hold everything!).

Oh, and did I mention it takes 20-30min to make, depending on how quick your knife skills are?

Chinese Chicken Salad (serves 8-10)
1/4 mayonnaise (feel free to make your own. It's just 1 egg + olive oil)
1/4 cup unseasoned rice vinegar
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 Tbs sesame oil
1-2 Tbs Tabasco
3 Tbs sugar (can be eliminated if your diet so dictates)
1-2 garlic cloves
One 1" nub of ginger, peeled and grated.
One 2.5lb rotisserie chicken (or smaller), meat shredded
3 scallions thinly sliced
1 bunch of cilantro
1 small napa cabbage
1 head of romaine lettuce
1 cup unsalted roast peanuts, coarsely chopped
1-4 celery ribs, sliced
2 oranges, peeled and cut into sections.

Thinly slice napa cabbage and romaine into ribbons. Rince, and put into very large bowl. Toss with 2 Tbs vinegar, 1 1/2 tps sugar, and 1 Tbs olive oil. Set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk mayonnaise with vinegar, sugar, soy sauce, sesame oil, Tabasco, ginger, and garlic. Add chicken, scallions, celery, peanuts, and cilantro. Mix to coat. Add the chicken mixture to the napa cabbage mixture. Add the orange wedges. Stir and serve.

Neen's Roasted Yam salad

I don't invent recipes. I really don't. I'm not the type of person who walks into a Farmer's Market and designs the week's menu based on what's available, nor am I the type who has all recipes memorized. I'm the chick with the planner and the mountain of (organized) recipe index cards and one list of ingredients assigned to each person shopping. Yeah. I don't do spontaneous. I'm slowly moving away from teaspoon and tablespoon measures. Very, very slowly.

So you can imagine how impressed and dubious Do was when he came home last night and I presented him with a dish that I had invented. In the grocery store, on the fly. Yah. Who da man.

I swung by the grocery store yesterday to pick up some eggs (for challah) and a head of cauliflower (for spiced Cauliflower soup, recipe to follow). The Piedmont Groceries had just set up its fall display, with pumpkins, Indian corn, and all those cool squash. My brain went from "aaaw, I guess it is fall. Maybe I should do something fall-like for dinner." to "Oh, crap, tonight is the first night of Sukkot [Jewish harvest festival]. I should definitely do something fall-like." to "I think I have a recipe clipping at home for a roasted yam salad that sounded yummy. Ok, let's work from there."

I did end up using the recipe clipping for inspiration (Food & Wine's Roasted Yam and Apple Salad, unknown issue). It had a great method for roasting the yams: sesame oil and cumin. And, with a few tweaks to suit our preference for strong flavor, the vinaigrette was pretty damn good too. The lettuce is indispensable, both for color and because it alone adds crunch to an otherwise creamy salad. You may want to soak the lettuce ahead of time to make it extra crunchy. The tangerines add citrus, again to balance out the creamy flavor of the roast yams. Red Cabbage for color. And the rest, just because I'm the type who likes a lot of "stuff" in my salads and on my pizzas.

It was damn good: we had thirds. Really addictive. FYI, for those celebrating Thanksgiving with us, this may well occur.









Neen's Roasted Yam Salad (serves 8-10)
2 yams or sweet potatoes
1 small butternut squash (alternative: use two more yams)
1 Tbs cumin (on the plus side)
1 Tbs sesame oil (on the plus side)
vegetable oil or spray-on oil
1 cup raisins or dried cranberries
2 heads butter lettuce, torn into bite size pieces.
2 tangerines or apples
1/3 of a small purple cabbage
1/2 cup pine nuts
1/2 bunch of cilantro, coarsely chopped.

Vinaigrette
1/2 cup olive oil
2 1/2 Tbs apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 Tbs Dijon Mustard (on the plus side)
2 garlic cloves, crushed.
1 Tbs Korean Chili paste or any curry paste.
1 tsp Balsamic vinegar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Peel butternut squash. Chop squash and yams into 1" cubes. Spread on a baking sheet, drizzle with the vegetable oil, the sesame oil, the cumin, salt and pepper to taste. Roast approximately 1 hour.

Meanwhile, whisk all vinaigrette ingredients together in a small bowl and set aside. Separate tangerines into sections, and cut each section into three. Put tangerines into a large salad bowl, along with the pine nuts, the raisins, the lettuce*, and the cilantro. Using a Cuisinart, shred the red cabbage and add it to the salad bowl.

Once the yams are roasted until tender, add them to the salad bowl and mix with the vinaigrette.


*ALTERNATIVE PRESENTATION: Do really liked the contrast between the crunchy lettuce and the creamy yams. One way to keep the lettuce crunchy for as long as possible is to prepare the salad as stated above without adding the lettuce, and instead to prepare a mound of lettuce on each person's plate. Then the salad can simply be heaped on top of the lettuce bed, and mixed together by each guest.

Quick and Elegant Salmon with Israeli Coucous Salad

Major success on the cooking front last night:

1. Had an unexpectedly delicious dinner
2. Rediscovered an old cookbook
3. Made up a successful dish from scratch
4. All prep took less than 20 min.

Did I say major success?

When we were planning the weekly menu last weekend, I picked up our copy of New Kosher Cuisine. It's a community cookbook that I'd gotten back in D.C. on recommendation from a good friend. It turned out to be too practical for our cooking style back then (though the Challah recipe is still our go-to challah recipe), but our interests and time constraints have changed radically in the past year or so. Like all community cookbooks it can be hit or miss, but I've gotten better at guesstimating what a dish would taste like based on reading the recipe. And oh man, was "Company Fish" a hit.

It's supposed to be a Shabbat dinner meal, when you have company over (hence the title of the dish). I'm not sure that would work for the super observant unless they were also super prompt (the fish needs to go straight from the broiler to the table, meaning your guests must already be home from shul and/or you don't mind using your broiler after sundown), but it's otherwise perfect for inviting guests over on a weeknight. The dish is super quick: since you marinate it ahead of time, it takes literally no more than 10min to have it from the fridge to the table. It's also quite impressive: strong complex flavors infuse all of the fish, and you really can't help but make sure the last drop of sauce is consumed. And the marinade ingredients are all standard (inexpensive) pantry fare -- what's not to like? Added bonus: the flavor of the sauce and the texture of the fish are on showcase here, so it's good for folks who are apprehensive about "fishy" flavors AND you don't need to feel compelled to buy expensive cuts of fish. Fresh fish, and voila.

The other success was the impromptu salad. Again, very simple: it was all ingredients we had in the fridge, and the chopping was the longest part. But it was so full of flavor and the freshness of summer that (don't read this part Mom) we totally started digging into the serving bowl with our forks once we we'd inhaled the servings on our plates. Great showcase for those uber fresh farmer's market veggies.


Israeli Couscous Salad, serves 4 generously

1 cup Israeli Couscous
1 cucumber
1 beautiful heirloom tomato,
4 oz feta
1 small-medium red onion
2 lemons
1/2 cup chopped mint

Toast the israeli coucous in a little bit of oil, stirring regularly. Meanwhile boil water in a kettle. Once the couscous is toasted to your taste, pour ~2 cups boiling water into the pot (slowly, and stand back, it's pretty exciting). Simmer water for ~6min, or until coucous is done. Drain couscous, put into salad bowl.

Mince 1 red onion, chop 1 cucumber, 1 tomato, and 1/2 cup of mint, and all it all to the salad bowl. Crumble 4oz of feta into the bowl. Add the juice of two lemons. Salt and Pepper very generously.


Company Fish (New Kosher Cuisine cookbook), serves 8-10.
Neen: don't bother being too precise with your measurements. And don't be afraid to cut the recipe down -- fish is always best straight out of the oven.

1/3 cup soy or tamari sauce
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
2-4 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbs Dijon
Grated zest of two limes (Neen: or a couple tsp lime juice, if that's what you have)
1/4 cup peanut oil
1/4-1/2 cup scallions, chopped
4 lbs ocean perch or salmon, skin removed.

Combine marinade ingredients in a small bowl. Place fish in a non-aluminum dish and cover with marinade. Refrigerate for 3 to 6 hours.

Preheat broiler. Broil fish 4 to 8 min until brown. Transfer to platter and spoon sauce over fish. Serve immediately.

Panzanella: a Balm for Grad School Phobias

Grad school starts tomorrow. I'm spazzing out.

I wish I could tell why I'm spazzing. It's not the the material, it's not the return to the papers-and-problem sets rhythm of life, and surprisingly it's not concern that Do and I are going to lose our daily dinners routine. I think it's the people. I'm worried about the social networking component, which seems ever so much more important in a Masters program than in college. I'm talking about the semi-professional relationship building, not the making new friends part. Eep! My tummy is churning just thinking about it. Maybe I should crawl back into bed and read sci-fi.

I've been leaning towards comfort food recently. Surprise, surprise.

Panzanella started as a way to use up leftover Sourdough, and ended as summer's equivalent of beef stew (insert your go-to winter comfort food here). This Italian salad is fresh and flavorful and light, yet also satisfyingly filling (because of the bread). It's the perfect summer dish: it uses leftovers, it's fast, requires no heat, it's beautiful, and it's so good that Do had to restrain himself from adding it to our "All Time Favorites" list. (He's worried that we use the term too liberally. I think that we just cook damn fine food on a regular basis).

And it's addictive. Maybe we'll start a new category, a tier 2 All Time Favorites, and label it "Addictive." As in, you can't keep yourself from going back for seconds, and thirds, and fourths....

The flavor is great. You know how satisfying it is to dip your bread in oil&vinegar at an Italian restaurant, while you're waiting for the food to come? Top quality bread, dripping with yumminess but not soggy (Do feels very strongly that soggy = bad). Add the crunch of red onion and the freshness of basil, the lightness of cucumber and a whole lot of perfectly ripe summer tomatoes. It's summer in a bowl.






Panzanella from Gourmet Cookbook
Serves 4-6.

1/2 lb day old crusty sourdough bread (or another thick, dense bread), cut into 3/4" cubes (6 cups)
4 large tomatoes (1 1/4 lb total), cut into 3/4" pieces OR 2 pints of cherry tomatoes, halved
3/4 seedless cucumber, cut into 1/2" pieces.
1/2 cup diced red onion
1/2 extra-virgin olive oil
2 Tbs red wine vinegar
1 clove minced garlic
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2/3 cup thinly sliced fresh basil leaves.

Stir together bread, tomatoes, cucumber, and onion in a serving bowl.
Whisk together oil, vinegar, garlic, salt, and pepper in a small bowl. Add to bread mixture, along with basil, and toss to combine. Let stand at room temperature, stirring occasionally, for 20 min before serving.

Potluck contributions from the road

Okay. As I write this, we are in Charlottesville, VA, on a romantic get-away weekend full of wine tasting and gourmet food. It's a for real vacation: I've even taken Monday off.

However! It's also Krysta's very first potluck. Think of it as a blogosphere House-warming. Blog-warming? There's no way that we were going to miss this. Romantic vacation or no romantic vacation, we will be in Krysta's backyard in California this afternoon, sipping mojitos and shooting the shit. Because that's what friends are for.

So we've stopped the car in Charlottesville and found a coffeeshop. Not that this is any great sacrifice: we just came from a wine tasting in Barboursville (one of Virginia's most renowned vineyards) and are heading towards a gourmet dinner and bed at our favorite Joshua Wilton House in Harrisonburg. We figure that Krysta's in California and they're three hours behind, so we shouldn't be the last ones to show at her party.

And, much to my delight, we've stumbled across Charlottesville's Mudhouse Coffeeshop. I feel like I'm on a pilgrimage: one of my more thought-provoking non-food authors, Lauren Winner, waxes poetical about this coffeeshop and even titled her second book Mudhouse Sabbath, after this establishment. I won't go into how interesting her ideas and perspectives are, because it's not good manners to talk religion at a party. Suffice it to say, this is super exciting. I feel like I should be asking for an autograph from the barista. ;)

Anyways, our contributions to Krysta's party are a strawberry spinach salad and the services my favorite grill-meister. We're assuming that Krysta has a backyard grill (it's California, right? Who doesn't have a backyard? And if you have a backyard, why wouldn't you have a grill? We certainly would.), and you always need someone to flip the burgers, so Do is volunteering. He figures he'll be less of a hazard in your backyard than he would in our kitchen!

Do actually really enjoys making burgers; it's a great lazy meal for us. After reading a Minimalist column about the Perfect Burger, he's gone absolutely wild. Burgers stuffed with blue cheese or cheddar, burgers stuffed with pesto, burger made out of ground lamb, burgers glazed with bar-b-q sauce while cooking, burgers topped with paté... As you can see to the left, his most recent permutation was a cheddar cheeseburger topped with an egg over easy. It was messy as hell to eat, but delicious and really entertaining. He would tell you about it himself, but he's busy taking advantage of the free wifi to submit computer jobs to his lab computers. In a perfect state (i.e., distracted) to be volunteered for grill meister duties! :)

As for the salad, it's really no big deal. Strawberries are on sale here these days, super juicy ones, and strawberry-spinach salad can tempt even the carnivores to eat their greens! This salad is nothing more than strawberries, spinach, thyme, mint, and a dressing made out of oil, sugar, and lemon juice. The dressing isn't phenomenal, so I'm not going to give you a recipe for it, but the idea of including fresh mint and thyme was a good one. If anyone has any tips for what dressing to serve with a strawberry-spinach salad, I'm all ears!

A toast to the hostess!

And now, back to our romantic vacation...

Salad scares me. I'm working on it.

Salads give me pause.

The very thought produces trepidation, the "uh oh" sentiment more commonly associated with yeast or pairing wine. I'd rather bring homemade bread or a bottle or two to a potluck any day.
I read in some book that Alice Waters has an indisputable gift for composing salads, whatever critics may say of her other cooking skills. Composing salads. When salads are compared to a sonata, how do you expect me to not feel intimated?

I think it's the fact that there are so many options. There are an infinite number of ingredients in my kitchen alone that could be conducive to salads. Greens, sun dried tomatoes, nuts, honey, canned beans? Pick a shelf, any shelf, and I'm sure I'll find something that can be added to a salad. With so much choice and so little guidance, how to you turn that cacophony of ingredients into a composed salad? And let's not even talk about dressings.

I do have an ace in my back pocket: the salad that my Dad makes every day. Without fail, after the main course and before the desert (if any), my parents serve a green tossed salad with a classic vinaigrette (olive oil/balsamic vinegar/garlic/mustard). Dependable as time. Sometimes there would be unexpected additions like sunflower seeds, but otherwise it is lettuce, cucumber, tomato, and green/red/or yellow peppers (The salad pictured to the left was the one served at my Mom's birthday dinner last Tuesday). Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring. In West Africa, Switzerland, the Caribbean, and in the U.S. That salad is part being home for me. The very first day of my parents' week-long visit, Dad realized that my kitchen lacks a cruet for salad dressing and we promptly drove to Crate and Barrel to remedy the situation. I now am the proud owner of a cruet.

Which means I need to make salad.

Uh oh.

This morning, I took D to the Dupont Farmer's Market for the first time. (Yes, we picked up morels so that he could experience last week's success. He's never had morels either!). It was far more exciting than last week: they had new potatoes and spring garlic and very very tender radishes, and the variety of greens is just blossoming. One stand (to the left of Cibola Meats, for those who also frequent the market) even had watercress. Okay. Time to suck it up and make a salad. I couldn't just walk past that watercress.

Once we'd hiked home, I dug through my recipe clippings folder. Most of the salads I'd been attracted to were pretty basic: greens and soft cheese. Okay. That's doable. We still had some leftover Keswick Creamery Quark from last week's Farmer's Market trip. Breathe. Cut up some of those delicious radishes (did I mention that I hate radishes? They are always so woody, but the samples offered at the Market made me rethink my prejudices). How about some Mint? That's spring-like. And pine nuts & raisins are my trusty standbys when texture is needed. (I can't tell you how often D makes fun of me for that. "Hey honey, do you think this chocolate cake needs some pine nuts and raisins?").

The salad, much to my relief, was fabulous. The moral of this story is that you can't go far wrong when throwing together Farmer's Market discoveries.

Actually, the dressing was the weakest link. It just didn't taste like much, which was sad. Did it not have enough vinegar? Or is it because I'm used to mustard and raw garlic in my vinaigrette? I'm including it because I wouldn't trust my own salad recommendations at this stage, judge for yourself!

April Farmer's Market Salad
Oh, what did we throw in?
1/4 lb. Watercress
1 cup Quark, crumbled (any extremely soft white cheese should work. Ricotta?)
8 radishes, thinly sliced
1/2 cup mint leaves, torn
1/2 cup dill, minced.
handful of raisins.
handful of pine nuts.

Toss with dressing. Serves two.

Food & Wine Dressing (unknown date, unknown author)
1/4 cup + 2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil
2 Tbs red wine vinegar
1 tsp honey
2 Tbs salted roasted almonds, coarsely chopped.

In a blender, blend all of the above. Toss 1/2 of the dressing with salad (more if you like lots of dressing on your salad) and serve immediately with Lots of salt and pepper.