salad
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Wednesday, November 17th, 2010
Let me tell you about this salad that chef Casey Schanen of Nell Thorn made at the cooking school the other night. Not that everything else he made wasn’t amazing, but the salad was the real eye-opener for me. Here’s what was in it: fresh arugula, roasted squash, arugula pesto, and warm ricotta cheese. Yeah.
I’ve been hearing a lot about making ricotta at home, but for whatever reason I’ve never tried it. It really is astoundingly easy, and as much as I love cold ricotta, it turns out I love fresh, warm ricotta even more. In this salad it fills the same role as fried goat cheese – the warm creaminess adds to the dressing and enriches the greens – but without the crunch (and oil). And ricotta has a fantastic springy texture in the mouth that I find addictive.
So Casey heated milk, stirred in salt and fresh lemon juice, and scooped out the curds into cheesecloth. I tossed the arugula with good olive oil and salt, and we portioned it onto plates with a sprinkle of roasted orange squash. A scoop of ricotta went on top of that, then a drizzle of garlicky arugula pesto with pumpkin seeds. That was it. I would eat salad more often if it was like this.
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Posted in classes | 1 Response »
Tags: cheesy goodness, cooking classes, greens, Gretchens, NaBloPoMo, ricotta, salad
Friday, July 2nd, 2010
This week we did our annual car camping trip to Washington Park on Fidalgo Island. It rained. Welcome to a Pacific Northwest summer.
Fortunately the firewood we brought burned well, and we were able to successfully cook our dinner. Hebrew National hot dogs, blistered over the fire and dressed with sweet relish and very hot Dijon mustard, macaroni salad, Bonny Doon grenache, and toasted marshmallows. I tend to think that, if you don’t cook it on a stick over the fire, it’s not real camping food. Except the macaroni salad, which can be scooped directly out of its tupperware in case you don’t feel like washing extra dishes.
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Posted in eating in, eating out | No Responses »
Tags: camping, fire, hot dogs, noodles, pasta, rain, salad, Skagit Valley
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
It just goes to show how unsuccessful my attempts at vegetable gardening have been the last few years, that I’m this impressed about actually having fresh lettuce in my yard. For whatever reason (thirty straight days of rain, maybe), my lettuce starts have performed fabulously this spring, and we’ve had a number of gorgeously fresh salads. The one shown above (accompanying Jon’s deeply savory meatloaf) was sprinkled with tiny sliced radishes and dressed with mustard and balsamic vinegar, while others have had chive flowers shredded into them. A real taste of spring.
Posted in eating in | 2 Responses »
Tags: homegrown food, lettuce, meatloaf, salad
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
‘Tis the weekend for barbecued ribs and potato salad. And it actually looks like the weather is going to be beautiful for the Fourth of July, can you believe it? Of course, the mosquitoes have been hellish this week. We’ll have to smoke them out with the grill.
Or just plan on hunkering inside and eating lots of potato salad. We’ll see how it goes.
What’s on your Fourth of July menu?
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Tags: Fourth of July, grilling, holidays, potatoes, salad
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009
After a rather tough week at work, I felt that I had earned a little blowout for our Friday night dinner. My husband aided and abetted by driving up to Taylor Shellfish after work and picking up a bag of fresh oysters, then compounding his wonderfulness by also stopping by Slough Food for manchego and sopressata. I came home on a sultry afternoon to a cold flute of muscadet and good cheese and salumi. The perfect antidote to a long, mostly booze-free week.
After soaking in the fragrance of the lilacs and daphnes on the porch, we moved inside and had a “counter dinner”. I laid out everything we needed on the kitchen island, we pulled up stools and poured fresh glasses of wine, and began.
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Posted in eating in | 1 Response »
Tags: fennel, oysters, salad, shellfish, wine
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
When I decided to make two new recipes for dinner out of a brand new Malouf & Malouf cookbook (Saha
), I figured there was a chance it might be a complete flop, but at least it would look pretty. Fortunately for me, it was pretty and tasty: shrimp with ouzo and garlic, and a salad of watercress, red onion, radish and fried strips of pita bread. It was good enough to make again; a little tweaking is in order for next time, of course.
The most exciting part was cutting a pita bread into thin strips and frying it in olive oil and butter until golden and crispy. That was really, really fun. The resulting croutons were almost like buttery potato chips.
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Posted in eating in | No Responses »
Tags: bread, fried food, middle-eastern food, ouzo, salad, seafood, shrimp
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009
It was midmorning on Saturday that we realized there was nothing in the house for lunch. Well, apart from peanut butter and sardines. So I volunteered to trot down the hill to the co-op and see what looked edible. It was snowing, but not too hard, and it’s not a bad walk as long as I don’t try to carry anything too heavy back up the hill.
So I peeked into the meat case and saw these gorgeous dry-pack sea scallops – they were enormous and very fresh, so I snagged a package. Then, on my way to cruise the cheese case, my eye was caught by a pack of prosciutto. Lunch seemed to be taking shape rapidly. When I checked out, the cashier commented that I was the second person that morning who was obviously going to be having prosciutto-wrapped scallops, based on the groceries that had passed down her belt. Great minds think alike? Click to continue »
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Tags: lunch, prosciutto, salad, scallops, shellfish
Monday, March 2nd, 2009
A couple of months ago we had a nice splurge at Barbara-Jo’s Books to Cooks. One of our more exciting acquisitions was a copy of Greg Malouf’s Turquoise, a gorgeous production that immediately made me want to go to Turkey (not something that had ever happened to me before). Despite its beauty, I had completely failed to make anything out of it until this week, when I was suddenly feeling adventurous.
We decided to try two new side dishes during the week: a salad of grated celery root, peppers and mint, and a dish of baked mushrooms and chiles in a paprika sauce. I thought they both sounded interesting, and used vegetables that are at least somewhat in season.
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Tags: celery root, cheese, chile peppers, feta, mushrooms, peppers, salad, spicy food, Turkish food
Thursday, February 5th, 2009
One of our new (to us) cookbooks was beginning to pine away from lack of use, and we decided we must make something from it. As it turned out, we managed three different dishes from the book in one meal: not all exactly as written, but definitely inspired by. As a result, we’ve decided that Greg Malouf is a genius. These recipes are from Artichoke to Za’atar
(I prefer its UK title, Arabesque)- now we have to get to work on Turquoise. And I really must get hold of a copy of Saha.
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Posted in eating in | 2 Responses »
Tags: cheesy goodness, fennel, lamb, potatoes, salad
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008
I can hardly believe it, but it’s true: I had never eaten pasta carbonara before this week. Shocking, I know. And I might not have gotten around to it, if I hadn’t seen this amazing post. Jennifer’s carbonara was full of delicious local eggs, plus she had some wonderful looking pork jowl to work with; mine was a little more subdued but still very successful.
We had come home from a wine tasting at our local shop, and were feverishly trying to think what we could cook with what was on hand. We had two eggs left in the fridge, a fresh pack of Hempler’s bacon, some parmesan cheese in the freezer, and some random boxes of Barilla pasta – and I already had carbonara on the brain from the aforementioned blog post. It seemed worth a try.
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Posted in eating in | 4 Responses »
Tags: bacon, eggs, fennel, Italian food, noodles, pasta, salad
