Posts filed under ‘Salads’
Sexy Cenouras
All you lovely readers should be cursing my name. Really, you should. I mean, I greatly appreciate all your compliments, online and off (i.e., very cool meeting Stacey this weekend at the Headhouse market!), but you’d have a different selection of choice words for me if you knew the breadth and depth of the treasure trove of post drafts waiting in the wings to be published for your pleasure. These drafts are full of sumptuous recipes and tummy-rumbling pictures.
Problem is, there are only 24 hours in a day and I usually try to spend at least five of them sleeping. Really, I’ve thought about giving up sleep altogether but it’s a dangerous proposition. In any case, with all the bounty of my garden and the farm, I’ve been cooking like mad this past month, churning out at least 4 or 5 recipes in a weekend. Unfortunately, in the effort to keep up with all the produce, I haven’t been able to keep up with the writing.
Today I start the ticking off of the draft writing to-do list. Starting off the festivities is this dreamy little recipe for carrots that my e-friend, Gintoino, sent me all the way from Portugal. If you weren’t around for my raving about Portugal, I must insist you click here and here and here to read about this amazing country and its food.
Cenouras de Conserva à Algarvia, which I’ve simplified, for better or worse, as Portuguese Carrot Salad, has become an unexpected favorite in the SFTF kitchen. For starters, it keeps for ages, which is a huge plus since I’m currently leading two lives, one in Philly and one at Longwood Gardens, so I’m not always finishing up my leftovers in a timely manner (seriously, don’t look in the back of my fridge is you have a bad heart). But even more importantly, the flavors are so sensual. I had no idea carrots could be so sexy, but they are!
Close Call
Heat waves on the weekend always push me to hunker down in the house with the air conditioning cranked up (or is that down? ) to 73 chilly degrees. Pure bliss! But hiding out from the heat has its potential drawbacks too. For instance, Sunday evening rolled around and I started thinking about what to make for dinner. Poking my nose into the fridge, I saw that I had a lot of stuff, but nothing in large quantities, save for a bag of lemon cucumbers picked out of the garden on Friday.
As much as I love cucumbers, they’re not really a meal. I started piling the mishmash of produce on the counter in an attempt to figure out a plan of action, one that would avoid stepping out the front door to go to the store. When you sweat on the way down the deck stairs to get into the car, you know it’s too hot for a grocery run.
I pulled out a couple of plums left from a trip to Headhouse two weeks ago. Next to them, I put down an onion that I literally picked up (off the ground) from a farm I visited in New Jersey last week. Then came the bag of nasturtiums, starting to wilt just a bit. The cucumbers, well, I’ve mentioned those already. I rediscovered a little ziplock of grape tomatoes our neighbor so generously bestowed – so sweet and juicy. And finally, there were a few leaves of Swiss chard I’d brought in from the container on the deck.
Flower Power
Gardening brings so much pleasure and beauty to my life. I’m really pleased with how my little plot has been progressing over the past few months. A friend who stopped by my garden the other night asked me to explain my broad sweeping goals for my garden. I didn’t hesitate with my answer: “slightly unkempt cozy cottage garden with a purpose.”
What this mouthful of a mission means is that I wanted a less-fussy but still “designed” garden that would produce practical crops that I could use. My vegetable rows obviously yield plenty of useful crops. I have just begun to harvest carrots, string beans, and lemon cucumbers. Even the tomatoes are starting to blush. Sadly, my gorgeous collection of antique cutting lettuce is just about to bolt in the July heat, but not before I got enough for today’s post.
But it’s been my flowers that have been the most productive so far. I have been taking lots of cut flowers into the house (I have three large bouquets right now in my kitchen), and I’ve already dried dozens of bunches for tea and wreaths yet to be made. However, eating my fresh flowers is the “bee’s knees” in my opinion.
When I was selecting what varieties to grow, I held up a standard in my mind: the best flowers out there are those that serve all of these functions – cutting, preserving, and eating. As such, borage ranks right up there among the best. Its cool cucumber taste has long been a key ingredient in the English “Pimm’s Cup” cocktail. It’s striking when used in salads and to garnish desserts. When you think about it, there just aren’t that many naturally blue ingredients available, making borage special.
Nasturtiums are another favorite. My two small plants have more than quadrupled in size over the past two months, making their flowers a frequent and welcomed peppery addition to my salads. They’re also great in butter and cheese spreads. I’m getting so many of them, some quite large, I’m also thinking about stuffing them with soft cheese the way I do with squash blossoms.
Gosh, I’ve rambled on so much about my garden gatherings that I’ve completely forgotten to talk about what the real recipe is for today: a sweet and tangy dressing for the salad. Buoyed by the delicious results of my strawberry dressing earlier this season, I put some of my stash of fresh blueberries into this one, along with some of the lavender-infused vinegar I’d brewed myself. If it’s no longer blueberry season where you are, the same results can be gotten with frozen berries. Just be sure to thaw them before proceeding with the recipe.
For the Four Eyes
No matter how much I enjoy them, I always feel a little strange about eating dandelion greens. It’s also strange to think about somebody purposely growing dandelions, don’t you think? But the truth is, they’re mighty tasty, in that slightly bitter way.
The farm is growing dandelions for the first time this year, and the large bunch I brought home with me landed on the counter next to the mesh bag of baby red potatoes I’d just picked up at the store. Fate would have these two ingredients married together over the course of the next hour into a hearty warm salad, one of those concoctions where I raided the fridge and threw in whatever seemed viable, including the rest of the chicory from last week.
Thinkin’ Outside the Rind
This is a post I probably should have put up last week – both because I made the dish then and, more importantly, because watermelon season may well have quietly slipped away for another year sometime between this week and last week. (I didn’t see any at the Headhouse Market on Sunday.) There’s just been such an influx of great produce and recipe ideas in my kitchen lately that I can’t get everything posted fast enough. But perhaps you can still find a watermelon in your own garden or at your farmers market. Or you might even have a few stashed away like I do (watermelons will keep for several weeks if placed on a cool basement floor).
I’ve had this unusual recipe dog-eared in The Cook’s Encyclopedia of Four Ingredient Cooking for quite some time and finally gave it a try last week to take to dinner at Farmer Dave’s house. The reason I hadn’t given it a go sooner is because, well, I don’t like olives. So I needed an occasion to get some unbiased taste testers to both tell me if it was good and to then actually eat it. It was the perfect quick dish to take to a weeknight dinner party, and it seemed to be well-received despite the disappointing lack of saltiness (to contrast with the sweet melon) in both the olives and the feta, which really is the point of the whole salad.
While the reference cookbook is dedicated to using only four ingredients, you’ll notice my version now has six. I found the lemon juice and salt gave it a little extra kick when my olives failed to hold up their end of the bargain. If you get flavorful ones, you could certainly omit either or both the salt and lemon juice.
A quick review of The Cook’s Encyclopedia of Four Ingredient Cooking: It’s a very interesting book to have on hand for both curiosity sake and for easy-to-prepare recipes (with only four ingredients, none of the recipes can get very complicated). I find the combinations they come up with in the book to be great starting points that often lead me to fun new dishes. It also gets me thinking about what four ingredient recipes I can come up with on my own. The last successful one was a cold salad of rice noodles, cucumber sticks, crushed peanuts and a little bottled thai peanut sauce (that was cheating a little bit, I know). Got any great four ingredient recipes to share? I’d love to hear about them!
Back to this recipe – get yourself one of the last watermelons of the year, good quality olives, and some salty feta cheese to make this savory watermelon salad that moves watermelon from the dessert plate onto the dinner plate instead. See, doesn’t the watermelon salad look great next to an early fall feast of grilled veggies, butternut squash, and a grilled veggie burger with farm fresh lettuce? Give it a try before the season is gone for good.
Savory Watermelon Salad
Adapted from The Cook’s Encyclopedia of Four Ingredient Cooking
4 c. cubed and seeded watermelon
3/4 c. black olives, pitted and sliced
3/4 c. feta cheese, crumbled
3/4 c. toasted seeds – pumpkin, sunflower, pine nuts, etc.
1 T. fresh lemon juice
1 t. coarse sea salt
Place watermelon and olive slices in a medium serving bowl. Toss to combine. Add the lemon juice and salt and toss again. Finally, add the cheese and seeds and toss lightly just to combine. Allow to sit for 20 minutes in the fridge before serving.
(serves 6-8)
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