The first potato salad of spring

This is a potato salad I put together to use some homemade mayonnaise I made. I prefer my potato salad not to have much mayonnaise, I put just enough to lightly coat. There are olives to add some sharpness. I think the olives worked really well. The adzuki beans were fine but it would probably be better with kidney beans. It was a crisp salad so maybe boil dry kidneys instead of using canned ones. One note is that I put the just-boiled potatoes in lemon juice and a little bit of mayo to soak in the flavor while they cooled. I have no idea of how much of the ingredients I used except that I used 2 ribs of celery.

New potatoes

Green beans

Celery

Adzuki beans

cherry tomatoes

Alphonso or Kalamata olives

Mayonaise

Lemon juice

salt

black pepper

paprika

Another sign of spring: one of the first crocuses that popped up in our neighborhood last week.

Mustard, cumin, and coconut

Somewhat coincidentally, our dinner on Monday ended up being two dishes flavored with mustard, cumin, and coconut. I found both recipes online, but I modified them fairly significantly, so I'm including the recipes.

I have made the coconut greens recipe from 101 cookbooks before, that time with spinach (see above photo), and Jon loved it, so when I was trying to decide what to do with some leftover chard in the fridge, that came to mind. I also used coconut oil this time to enhance the coconut flavor (and because I just bought it for the first time, and I've been trying it in everything). We used both the stems and leaves of the chard. I just threw the stems in with the onion. Chard is more substantial than spinach, and I think it held up really nicely. I don't know which version I liked better.

The dal came up when I was looking up moong dal recipes online. I noticed that it had cucumber cooked with the dal, which I had never tried before. I also happened to have a partially rotten cucumber in the fridge. I cut off the rotten parts (most of the skin) and used the rest in the dal. It was a good use for a no-good cucumber, but we couldn't really taste any cucumberiness. I think it's omit-able, unless you've got some yucky cucumber to use up. The original recipe suggests squash as an alternative, and I think the effect would be similar. The recipe would be good without it, but it wouldn't hurt anything. Once again, I used coconut oil because I had it and to enhance the flavor.

For our salad, Jon tossed together a slightly unusual one: lettuce, red pepper, tomato, avocado, clementine slices, cashews, and coconut flakes. He dressed it with lime juice, honey, and olive oil. It was nice and tropical, a fitting complement to the dishes I made.

Spiced coconut greens (adapted from 101 cookbooks)

1 tbsp coconut oil

1/4 tsp mustard seeds

1/4 tsp cumin seeds

1/4 tsp salt

Pinch chipotle

1/3 cup minced onion

4 Swiss chard stems, chopped (optional)

4 Swiss chard leaves, chopped, or about 6 oz spinach, chopped

Lemon juice

1 1/2 tbsp shredded coconut

Heat coconut oil in a large skillet on high. Add mustard seeds, cumin seeds, salt, and chipotle, and cook until the mustard seeds start to pop. Immediately add onion and chard stems, if using, and cook until the onion is translucent, about 4 minutes. Add the chard or spinach and cook, stirring often, until it is wilted.

Moong dal with cucumber and coconut (adapted from edible garden)

1 cup moong dal

1/2 cup chopped cucumber (about 1/2-inch cubes)

1 tbsp coconut oil

1 tsp mustard seeds

1 tsp ground cumin

1/2 cup chopped onion

Cover dal and cucumber with 2 cups of water. Bring to a boil, cover, and lower heat to a simmer. Cook until dal is your preferred texture.

Two things to do with fennel

I am no longer anise/licorice-averse, thanks to accidentally buying anise-flavored toothpaste in France a few years ago and getting used to the flavor. However, it's usually not the first flavor that comes to my mind. I see fennel bulbs at the store a lot, and they look so pretty with their feathery green fronds, but I've never been blown away by a fennel recipe. I find anise to be an often-strange flavor for savory dishes. I saw this fennel-tomato soup recipe in a recent Vegetarian Times and decided to make it. We un-veg-ified it by using real sausage Jon had gotten on sale, and it was my first time to actually cook meat myself. I had to keep reminding myself that I shouldn't touch it and then other food without washing my hands and cutting board, and that it actually mattered if it got cooked well enough. Luckily, despite my lack of meat safety expertise, we didn't get food poisoning! It was a nice soup. We might decrease the tomatoes next time because Jon isn't wild about tomato-based soups. The sausage was pretty great in it, and the combination of fennel bulb and fennel seed was nice.

Since we only used part of our fennel for the soup, I made up a beet-fennel salad to go with it. I didn't pick beets for any particular reason, except that we had one in the fridge that needed using. I made a clementine vinaigrette to go with it because we had just bought a bag of clementines, and I thought citrus would pair well with fennel. It was a good salad, with great crunch and an interesting mix of flavors.

These were both good, but I don't know that I'm really a fennel convert yet. I think there are just vegetables out there I'd rather have, so like radishes, fennel will probably be a "seldom" food.

Beet-fennel salad with goat cheese and clementine vinaigrette

1 beet, boiled, peeled, and sliced

2 cups fennel, thinly sliced

Crumbled chevre

Dressing:

2 tbsp olive oil

Juice of one clementine

1 tsp cider vinegar

A pinch or two of dried thyme

Arrange fennel and beets on a plate in as artful a manner as you desire. Sprinkle with goat cheese and drizzle with vinaigreete.

Keeping out of a salad rut

Ev and I have a standard salad that we really like. Lettuce (usually red leaf), cucumber, grape tomatoes, red pepper, croutons, avocado, olives, feta with either balsamic and oil or Ev's lemon sesame dressing. We have this probably 4 times a week. But we love variety, and we've been trying to keep from getting in a rut by changing things up a bit. We have had a lettuce, roasted red pepper, goat cheese and olive salad with a mayonaise and balsamic dressing (next time leave out the olives); and a lettuce, cucumber, grapefruit, avocado salad with strawberry balsamic (thanks Rochelle) for our post-party brunch. This post is about a third experimental salad. The idea was to showcase zatar.

Lettuce

peeled cucumber cut into cubes

red pepper

grape tomatoes

feta

sliced almonds

zatar

Squeeze lemon over the top

Drizzle with olive oil

This was a nice fresh salad. It seemed very spring-y to me. For a more complete meal you could add chickpeas, limas or lentils.

Buttermilk bonanza: salad dressing

I didn't photograph it, but one of the things I wanted to try during the buttermilk bonanza was a salad dressing. I'm not really into creamy dressings, but this one was pretty nice. I based it on this recipe from smitten kitchen, but I adapted it to the ingredients in my fridge and my dislike of raw aliums.

This was pretty good. It won't become a staple because both of us prefer oil-and-vinegar or my lemon-sesame dressing, but it might appear again as a change of pace. It was pretty runny, probably in part because I subbed yogurt for mayo, and my yogurt batch was on the runny side, but I didn't mind the runniness.

Evelyn's buttermilk-dill dressing

1/2 cup buttermilk

2 tbsp yogurt

2 tbsp cider vinegar

1 tsp sugar (reduced from 1 tbsp in original recipe, but I would probably omit altogether in the future)

1 1/2 tsp dried dill, or more or less to taste

Salt and pepper to taste

Shake. Taste. Adjust.

Buttermilk used: 1/2 cup

Buttermilk bonanza total: 4 1/2 cups

Japanese spa salad

This recipe is from the September issue of Vegetarian Times. They call it Tofu and Cucumber Salad with Sesame-Ginger Dressing, but I call it Japanese spa salad because it seems like the kind of thing someone would give you at a spa where you went to get "detoxifying" treatments and maybe do some yoga and meditation. It's a great summer salad because it requires absolutely no cooking and makes you feel refreshed. It's definitely not summer here, but I ate it for lunch today because it is so quick to make, especially if you don't bother with the recipe's dressing. (Just drizzle some soy sauce and sesame oil on it instead.)

The brand of soft tofu I have is Phoenix Bean, and it's made here in Chicago. I highly recommend it. It seems beanier than most tofu I've had. According to Yelp, one can go buy their tofu directly from the factory. I'm excited to go there sometime and try their other tofus.

This salad is satisfying without being filling, and it makes me feel light and energized.

Japanese spa salad

Makes 1 salad; multiply recipe as necessary

4 oz. soft tofu, sliced

1/2 avocado, sliced

2 inches cucumber, sliced

1/2 sheet nori, crumbled

1 tsp sesame seeds

Dressing (makes enough dressing for several salads):

1/3 cup mayonnaise

1/4 cup rice vinegar

3 tbsp minced fresh ginger

1 tsp sugar

Mix dressing ingredients together. Arrange tofu, avocado, and cucumber on a plate. Sprinkle nori and sesame seeds on top. Drizzle with dressing.

Personal salad focaccia

Jon had the brilliant idea of personal focaccia salads, so we made that for lunch today. I don't think I cooked them quite enough, but they were pretty good. We saw figs on sale, so I sliced one up and put it on the focaccia before it cooked, along with some goat cheese. I also sliced one up for the top. Honestly, I felt like the cooked ones might have been a little too desserty. I'm on the fence about it. The concentrated sweetness was a little weird with the other salad ingredients, but the fig and warm goat cheese thing was pretty great. Maybe make one with and one without, and see how you like them.

Personal Salad Focaccia

Delicious lunch for 1.

1/4 recipe focaccia dough

2 figs, sliced

Goat cheese

Mixed greens

Basil leaves

Sliced avocado

Sliced red pepper

Sliced cucumber

Sunflower seeds

Pumpkin seeds

Olive oil

Balsamic vinegar

Prep dough according to directions in this post. Before baking, put one sliced fig and some goat cheese on dough. Bake at 450 degrees for about 12-15 minutes, or until dough is golden. Top with the rest of salad ingredients. Dress to taste with oil and vinegar.

Cabbage-apple slaw

Well, I didn't win that Corner Bakery contest, so I guess I can post the cabbage-apple slaw recipe I referred to in the TLT post.

This bright, refreshing salad is a great side for sandwiches. You can use a milder crisp apple, like a Fuji, instead of the Granny Smith if you want to tone down the tartness. The amount of dressing may not sound like enough, but the goal is just to kiss the cabbage and apples with dressing so their flavor and crunch get to shine.

2 cups shredded red cabbage

1/2 Granny Smith apple, sliced into matchsticks

2 tbsp sliced almonds, toasted

1/2-inch slice fresh ginger, peeled and minced

Juice of 1 lime

1/2 tsp sesame oil

1/2 tsp soy sauce

Combine cabbage, apple, and almonds in a large bowl and stir or toss to mix. Combine ginger, lime juice, sesame oil, and soy sauce in a small bowl and whisk to combine. Pour dressing over cabbage, apple, and almonds. Toss to combine.

Composed salad

This was the grand finale of salad week. I think the presentation of this salad was beautiful but highly impractical. Jon put the portions for both of us on one plate, and then we scooped it into our own bowls to eat. This made the lettuce end up at the top of the bowls, which was not ideal. I think in the future, we'll assemble it on two plates and either tear the lettuce or use knives to cut it up while we're eating.

I guess since this is the first time meat has appeared on this blog, now is a good time to come out as non-veg. To make a long story short, I started eating vegetarian about nine years ago for a variety of reasons, and I don't feel as strongly about them anymore, so I've reintroduced a little meat to the diet. But you probably won't see much meat here; I find a lot of it pretty boring.

Here's what was on our salad:

Romaine lettuce

Diced beet

Sliced hardboiled eggs

Cubed manouri cheese

Genoa salami

Green beans

Julienned cucumbers

Carrot coins

Bulgur

Avocado

Croutons

Jon made a lemon-basil vinaigrette that was just divine as the dressing.

It was a fittingly decadent end to salad week.

Pasta salad

We took this salad to a lovely concert in Millennium Park. There is not much dressing but we found it to be plenty with the basil, feta and olives.

1/2 lb mini penne (I think shells or rotini would work well too)

2 big kale leaves

1/2 lb broccoli crown chopped small

20 grape tomatoes halved

10 olives (I used Kalamata and Alphonso) diced

feta crumbled

fresh basil sliced fine

Dressing:

1/2 lemon

2 Tbsp red wine vinegar

3 Tbsp olive oil

thyme

oregano

pepper

ground mustard

salt

Cook the pasta in salted water. Add the broccoli 2 minutes before it is done. Drain in a colander lined with the kale. Let cool. Combine the ingredients. Dress with the dressing.

Dressing. Combine all ingredients except the oil. Let sit. Add the oil and stir well.

Rice noodle salad (salad week begins)

Ev and I were in Utah for 25 days or so. We cooked a lot while we were there but we did not have many of our supplies, so we were kind of limited. We also did eat out more than we are used to. So when we got back on Tuesday we were craving a return to our usual food. So began our week of salads. This is a rice noodle salad, which is mostly uncooked. I resisted the urge to put eggplant in because lately I have been feeling that I add it to everything. As always with my recipes, the measurements are very approximate guesses. As you can see from the pictures, I arranged Evelyn's very artfully on a plate and threw mine in a bowl.

Rice noodle salad:

3 big leaves of kale torn into pieces

6 oz. rice noodles

grape tomatoes

r. pepper sliced thin

16 slices cucumber

extra firm tofu, pressed

sliced white mushrooms (my salad only; Ev doesn't like mushrooms that much)

Dressing:

2 in fresh ginger minced

1 1/2 Tbs soy

1 1/2 Tbs rice vinegar

1 pinch sugar

1 tsp sesame oil

Boil water and cook rice noodles.

Fry the tofu in a dry (un-oiled) non-stick pan over medium high heat. It will take a while for it to release its water, during which time it does not really brown. Continue until the tofu is brown all over (flip it occasionally of course). When done remove and turn off heat. Put the kale on the still hot pan. This should be enough to cook the kale if you make sure all parts spend some time touching the hot pan.

Combine the non-dressing ingredients. Then pour the dressing over.

Dressing:

Combine the first 4 ingredients and let sit. Add the sesame oil and stir well.

This was quite a good salad.

Weird corn salad

This next salad was based on the fact that corn was on sale and I love fresh corn. One can make all sorts of great corn salads that are more or less bean-y and more or less salsa-ish. I wanted to do something different. It ended up tasting good because all of the components were good but it is not all the way there yet.

3 ears corn (these were smallish)

1/2 lb eggplant

14 grape or cherry tomatoes quartered

15 mint leaves finely chopped.

1/2 lime

Cook the corn. Cut it off the cob and let cool.

Slice eggplant and salt. Let sit for about 20 minutes. Rinse and then dice. Fry in oil. Put between paper towels to remove oil and let cool.

When cool combine the ingredients and squeeze the lime over the top.

Lessons:

Ev suggested removing the eggplant. She did not think that its texture worked. She also suggested adding black beans and avocado and maybe some basil. This would end up as a take on the classic bean-y corn salad with mint and basil in place of cilantro and grape tomatoes instead of usual tomatoes. It would probably be pretty good (classics get that way for a reason).

I, however, want to go big. Ditch the tomatoes (too acidic). Roast (or grill) the diced eggplant. Juice the lime separately and add honey to it. Add some diced chicken. I still feel like it needs something else. Can you help me?

We have not tried either of these variations.

Two things to do with radishes

A few weeks ago, The Weekly Pizza got me thinking about radishes. I don't do that very much. I don't dislike radishes, but I have never felt compelled to eat them much. To me, they are basically boring crunchy, slightly peppery things that I ignore at salad bars. Then I saw this sugar snap salad recipe with radishes, feta, and sumac in the most recent Bon Appetit and decided to give it a try. I have also heard that slicing radishes and putting them on buttered bread is good, so I had that on the side for dinner.

Slicing radishes is really fun. I was pleased with how thin I could get them. I actually had to keep myself from slicing as thinly as possible because the flavor was more pronounced with thicker slices. They made me feel like a knife skills champ.

The salad was pretty good. I think my sumac is a bit old, so fresh sumac would probably have even more punch. And my good olive oil was very nice in this recipe. I will definitely keep it in the summer potluck rotation. I've been using my lentil and quinoa salads a lot, and it's nice to have something else to toss in there. I am a leftover fan, but the leftovers of the salad weren't great. They weren't bad, but the radishes lost most of their crunch, and the pink leached out of their skins, so the feta was a weird rosy color. So I'd recommend making just as much as you think you can eat in one sitting.

The buttered bread with radishes was good, but I don't think it was any better than buttered bread without radishes. So if you feel the need to eat some radishes, both of these dishes are good, but I still don't think I like radishes enough to spend money on them on a regular basis. I haven't tried the radish leaves yet, though. I think they might be a nice addition to a regular lettuce salad. Perhaps I'll start buying radish bunches just for the leaves. I kind of do that with beets already. Beets are good, but I like beet greens even more.

I'm not including the recipes because I followed the magazine recipe basically word-for-word, so you can just use the link above, and I'm pretty sure you're smart enough to slice up radishes and put them on buttered bread without a recipe.

Two things to do with olive oil

As I mentioned in a recent post, we got some really good olive oil recently. It's this stuff from California.

In the past, I've mostly stuck to imported Greek and Italian olive oils, but they had samples of this out at a local grocery store, and it's a great finishing oil. It's fairly bitter and grassy and assertive, but still fresh. While dousing bread in olive oil and balsamic is awesome, I've been trying to highlight this excellent oil in other ways as well. Here are two recipes I made this week that tasted good and let the olive oil stand out. The bulgur salad is a variation on something we do pretty often. The crostini came about because I saw a pickled cherry recipe in a recent Bon Appetit and just had to make it. (By the way, I didn't pit the cherries before pickling them, and I think they're fine.) It's pretty good, but I'll probably tinker with it when I make it again. I find it a little too acidic, and I feel like the cherry flavor would stand out more if I left them in the hot liquid for a shorter amount of time and decreased the vinegar a bit. But the rosemary is great in there! This seemed like a logical way to use up some pickled cherries. I think the crostini would be even better with a nice creamy chevre in place of the feta, but feta was what I had.

Bulgur salad

1 cup coarsely ground bulgur

pinch of salt

3/4 cups halved grapes

1 celery rib, thinly sliced

a big spring of mint, leaves julienned

juice of 1/2 lemon

olive oil

Bring 1 1/2 cups of water to a boil. Add the bulgur and a pinch of salt, turn off heat, and let bulgur steam until the water has been absorbed. If all the water has been absorbed and the bulgur isn't tender enough, add another 1/4-1/2 cup of water, bring to a boil, and turn off heat to let it steam a little more. In the meantime, place the grapes and celery in a medium mixing bowl. Add the cooked bulgur and dress with mint, lemon juice, and oil. Serve by itself or over a regular salad with lettuce, tomatoes, red peppers, and cucumbers, like I did.

Pickled cherry and feta crostini

Makes 1. Increase as necessary.

1 slice Italian bread

2 tsp crumbled feta cheese or a big smear of goat cheese

4 pickled cherries, pits removed and cherries chopped into 8ths

Black pepper

Olive oil

Toast the bread. I don't have a toaster, so I spread a little butter on it and fried it for a few minutes in a skillet, but toasting/grilling/broiling would work too. (I didn't want to use the oven for just one piece of bread.) Place cheese on bread and add cherries to the top. Sprinkle with black pepper and pour a little olive oil on it.

Panzanella

We impulse-bought a loaf of nice Italian bread one evening last week because we got some great olive oil and wanted to have an excuse to sop it up. The next day, the half we hadn't eaten was rock-hard, so we made this panzanella to use it up. I have always been wary of panzanella and fattoush, a Middle Eastern bread salad, because I don't like soggy bread. One of the only dishes Jon has made that I have disliked to the point of not eating it was a gazpacho that was thickened with bread. Yuck! (I'm not wild about cold soup anyway, which I probably should have mentioned when he suggested a gazpacho. I want to like gazpacho, but I just prefer my soups hot.) But last year, my friend Bridget brought a panzanella to a potluck, and I really liked it, so when life handed me really stale bread, I decided to try it.

I used the dressing recipe that Bridget did, which was Ina Garten's, but I improvised the rest of the ingredients. The dressing called for raw garlic, which I usually shy away from, but it was alright. I might try sauteing the garlic next time to take the edge off. This was a nice light supper, and we managed to eat the whole thing. I don't think leftover panzanella would be good.

Panzanella (source: Ina Garten, via my friend)

Dressing:
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
3 tbsp olive oil
1 pinch salt
Ground pepper to taste
Dried basil, thyme, and oregano, to taste

Salad:
1/2 loaf stale bread, cut into 1-inch cubes (about 6 cups)
10 cherry tomatoes, halved
1 cucumber, cut into 1-inch chunks
8 Kalamata olives, halved
2 tbsp feta cheese, crumbled

Combine dressing ingredients in a small bowl. Combine salad ingredients in a large bowl. A few minutes before you want to eat, dress the salad and stir it around to distribute. Let it sit for a few minutes, then serve.

Two broccoli salads

Last week, I flew back to Houston from France, where I had been for 9 days. The day after I got in, I was speaking at a conference, which was going on the next two days as well. Jon and I didn't have much time between conference activities to go grocery shopping and cook, but these two salads were perfect quick meals. Each one only takes about 15 minutes to prepare. Like the last time I returned from a long trip, I was craving lighter fare and veggies, and these really hit the spot. Both have pasta and broccoli as a backbone, but they are very different end results. I prepared the broccoli the same way for both salads-cut into florets and blanched in the water that would later cook the pasta. I don't like raw broccoli, but I find that just a few seconds in hot water takes away the sharp bitterness I dislike.

Israeli couscous is small round pasta. It's bigger than regular couscous-each piece is about the size of a peppercorn. The Israeli couscous salad began as an attempt to deconstruct one of my favorite broccoli preparations-broccoli with raisin vinaigrette. I thought that roasted broccoli pieces in Israeli couscous with raisins, pine nuts, and a cumin-spiked vinaigrette would be nice. Well, we ended up being in a big hurry when I made it, and we were out of raisins, so I decided to sub tangerines in there and blanch instead of roast the broccoli. I'd still like to try my idea with raisins, but this incarnation was good too. Be warned: it has a lot of cumin. Unless you have advanced to expert-level in cumin, you might want to cut it in half.

The soba and broccoli salad is even easier than the couscous, and it's great comfort food, served either warm or room temperature. I made it again this afternoon so I can have it for dinner tonight at school.

Israeli couscous with broccoli and tangerines

1 crown broccoli, rinsed and chopped into florets

1 cup Israeli couscous

2 tangerines, peeled, separated into segments, and each segment cut in half width-wise

1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

1 tbsp sherry or red wine vinegar

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp whole cumin seeds

Pinch of salt

Bring a medium saucepan of water to a boil. Toss in the broccoli. Almost immediately (10-30 seconds later), use a slotted spoon to transfer it to a medium bowl. When the water has come back up to a boil, add the couscous and cook until it is done (8 minutes or so).

In the meantime, put the tangerines in the bowl with the broccoli and prepare the vinaigrette by whisking together the remaining ingredients. When the couscous is done, drain it and transfer it to the bowl with the broccoli and tangerines. Dress everything with the vinaigrette.

Broccoli and soba salad

1 crown broccoli, rinsed and chopped into florets

1 bundle of soba noodles*

1/4 red pepper, diced

1-2 tbsp tahini-miso dressing

Bring a medium saucepan of water to a boil. Toss in the broccoli. Almost immediately (10-30 seconds later), use a slotted spoon to transfer it to a medium bowl. When the water has come back to a boil, toss in the soba noodles and cook until they are done.

In the meantime, put the red pepper in the bowl with the broccoli. When the noodles are done, drain them and throw them into the bowl with the broccoli and pepper. Dress with tahini-miso dressing to taste. The heat and water on the noodles will help the dressing spread out well, so make sure to dress it while it's still hot.

*In my experience, soba noodles are generally sold as several wrapped bundles in a plastic package. If you get them in some different increment, just throw in what looks like 2 servings.

Detox Week

I went up to Chicago for the first few days of 2011, and then I flew to New Orleans for the Joint Math Meetings, a giant convention featuring math talks, job interviews (I had two; I think they went well), and an overwhelming number of people and exhibits of math books. I just got home yesterday, and I am in detox mode for the next week. In 20 degree Chicago, I wasn't especially anxious to eat healthfully-my body wanted to build a layer of blubber, and it's just hard to resist temptation in New Orleans, what with all the gumbo and bread pudding. When I got home, I was pleased to see that the lettuce I had left in the fridge was still good, if a little limp, and I made myself a nice salad of lettuce, carrot, cucumber, sprouts, sunflower seeds, and almonds. It was exactly what I wanted. I have dubbed this week detox week. I really feel like I need to recover from the assault to my stomach the beginning of the month has been. I haven't planned my menu entirely, but below are some things that sound pretty good to me right now.

Sweet potato soup, spinach or kale soup, soba noodles, barley and lentil soup, onion soup, crepes topped with salad. Of course, the soups will be accompanied by salad, and I'm thinking about making a nice whole grain loaf in the bread machine to go with it.

I'm glad it's cold in Houston this week so I can really enjoy all the soup I'm planning to make!

Kale and tofu salad

I got this recipe off of Cheap, Healthy, Good a few months ago but just got around to making it. Believe it or not, I had never had raw kale, and I was a bit wary. I didn't think it would taste bad, but I didn't think kale's bitter green virtues would be accentuated by raw consumption. I was wrong. I think I still prefer the just-wilted taste, but the raw kale was a nice change of pace. I was also wary of the combination of soy sauce and balsamic vinegar, but it was pretty good. The only thing is that I found it overly flavored when I made it the first time. I had let it sit in the marinade for several hours. I think just a 30-minute marinade is ideal.

Kale and tofu salad, slightly modified from this post.

1 pound extra firm tofu

3 tbsp balsamic vinegar

3 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp honey

4-5 cups chopped kale (I just used regular curly kale, but any kind would probably be good)

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

3 tbsp olive oil

Juice of 1-2 lemons

Salt and pepper

Cube the tofu. Mix together next 4 ingredients and marinate tofu in them for about 30 minutes. Place tofu on oiled baking sheet and pour excess marinade over it. Cook tofu in 375 oven for about 30 minutes, flipping after 20 minutes.

Put the kale in a big bowl. Mix together next four ingredients and adjust acidity and seasoning to taste. Toss kale with dressing. Add tofu.

Festive salad

This is a salad Jon and I co-invented a few nights ago. Jon doesn't tend to go for salads with fruit in them, but the grapefruit seemed like a nice change of pace for the evening. We peeled all the membrane off the grapefruit for extra fanciness. And I think having the cucumber slices peeled made it seem fancier as well. The fig vinegar was a gift from a friend. It's very thick and syrupy, and we were happy to use it for the first time on this salad. Delicious!

Salad ingredients:

Lettuce (both red leaf and romaine)

Cucumber, peeled

Avocado

Red grapefruit

Sprouts

Feta cheese

Sunflower seeds

Topped with:

Fig vinegar

Extra-virgin olive oil

Black pepper

Salt

Split pea veggie patties with cabbage salad

I got this recipe out of the October 2009 issue of Vegetarian Times, and I’m going to come right out and tell you that it has an Achilles heel. Like many Vegetarian Times recipes, it doesn’t fill me up, at least not at anywhere near the suggested serving size. I think VT is very health-conscious, which is great, but their form of health-consciousness is a little different from mine. I think that by eating a wide variety of foods, mostly not-very-processed plants, I am doing OK. I am not trying to lose weight, and I don’t count calories. VT has a little bit of a war on calories. I think 350 Calories is their definition of “lite,” and I think they try to make sure a high percentage of their recipes come in under that mark. I am a hungry girl, and 350 Calories is not a meal for me! I halved the original VT recipe, which claimed to serve 6, and had a little more than a third of it for lunch. An hour later, I was hungry and ended up having a not very nutrition-dense snack of bread and butter. I had the rest of the recipe for dinner, and while I didn’t go to bed hungry, I wasn’t terribly full either. So the original recipe probably serves more like 2-3 people than 6. This is both an advertisement and a warning. This meal is yummy and full of good veggies, but it might not fill you up for long. (In case you were wondering, the recipe says that 1 of their servings, which is 2 patties and 1 cup of salad, has 190 Calories. If I had read that first, I probably would have known that I needed to increase the serving size dramatically.) If you are looking to cut calories and lose weight, this is probably a great recipe for you.

Now that I’ve ranted about VT’s mission to deprive me of satiety, let’s move on to the recipe. The patties are held together by leftover split pea soup and an egg, which I think is ingenious. I have made veggie patty-type foods quite a few times, and often they don’t hold together very well at all. The soup really takes care of that. Some carrot, sugar snap peas, and corn round out the patties. I like that the patties are flavored with sesame oil, soy sauce, and ginger, but those flavors are not overwhelming. It’s served on a terrific bed of cabbage and carrots. This might have been my first time to eat Napa cabbage. It is not exotic to me, but it’s something, like turnips or radishes, that I see all the time in the store and never eat. Napa cabbage is pretty awesome! I guess I kind of just thought it was expensive white cabbage, but it has a less bitter flavor, and the leaves are easier to work with than cabbage leaves. I guess it’s more like lettuce that way. I really liked the crisp texture of the cabbage in the salad.

Split pea veggie patties

makes about 6 patties, 3 VT servings, 1-2 Evelyn servings; multiply as needed

1 cup split pea soup (of course, you could use canned)

1 egg

1/4 cup cornmeal

1/2 cup sugar snap peas, coarsely chopped

1/2 cup grated carrot

1/2 cup corn kernels (frozen are fine)

1 green onion, chopped (both white and green parts)

1 tbsp toasted sesame oil

1 tsp soy sauce

1 tsp fresh ginger, minced or grated

Whisk together soup and eggs in a medium bowl. Stir in cornmeal, followed by the rest of the ingredients.

Heat a nonstick or your preferred frying pan over medium. Add some oil if you need it, and once the pan is hot, drop 1/4-cup scoops of pea mixture onto the pan. Flatten into disc shapes with a fork and cook 5 minutes, or until bottom is slightly browned. Flip and cook 5 minutes more.

Serve 4 patties each on a bed of cabbage salad, below.

Cabbage salad

makes 1 salad; multiply as needed

4 leaves Napa cabbage

1/2 cup grated carrot

2 tsp sesame seeds, toasted if you feel like

Miso salad dressing or other salad dressing (An Asian-ish one makes a lot of sense, but I think this would be fine with a vinaigrette or whatever you have. OK, not ranch.)

Thoroughly wash and thinly slice cabbage leaves. Combine with grated carrot and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Dress salad with 3 tbsp or so miso salad dressing (probably less of other salad dressings). Place 4 veggie patties on cabbage salad and dress with a little more dressing to taste.