California Cowboy Salad

Do you have a place where the simple thought of it causes you to slow down, breathe deeply, and smile?  The mere mental image of this space creates a warm calm within you?

For me, one such space is a walnut orchard owned and managed by good friends. The space would be considered non-descript to most folks.  But, they had not been there with good friends for many Octoberfest celebrations, sharing a lingering meal over conversations with life long friends.  Oh, and the zip line without safety equipment. And the hay ride over to the winery next door.  And the trips around the orchard by the tractor hauling the trailer with kids hopping on and off.  Kids climbing trees.  Playing tag with flashlights at night.  The bonfire, with guitars, with friends.  And this was the setting for the SubUrban Cowboy themed Gourmet Dinner Club evening.

Yee-haw!  Cooking over a fire, delicious steaks, beans, breads … all rolling over in my mind.  “Can’t wait!”  But, uh, what course were we to prepare?  Salad.  Really?  Salad!

It had to have some steak, and if there is steak on a salad there clearly must be blue cheese, and from there we went with ingredients that could be found locally, namely cherries and walnuts.  And then there’s the pickled shallot rings that have shown up on numerous dishes at home ever since making the most wonderful Tomato Salad with Pickled Shallots and Goat Cheese Croutons from the always enjoyable More Than Burnt Toast blog.  The California Cowboy Salad will certainly grace our family table this summer as it can be put together easily and each person can concoct their own proportions of veggies, meat, cheese, and fruits.  Yee-haw!

cherries from Chan’s, steak from Brentwood Fine Meats, walnuts from the local orchard

Ingredients:

1 1/4 pound sirloin steak

2 heads butter lettuce, torn into bite sized pieces

1/2 cup blue cheese, crumbled

2 cups cherries, pitted and chopped

1/2 cup walnuts, lightly toasted

2 shallots, thinly sliced into rings

1/2 cup olive oil

1/2 cup red wine vinegar, divided

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Directions:

1.  Spread chopped cherries on a parchment lined cookie sheet and set in a 200 degree oven for 2 hours, stirring every 30 minutes.  Remove and cool.  Cherries will be wilted but not completely dry.

2.  In a medium bowl, whisk together olive oil, 1/4 cup red wine vinegar, garlic, salt and pepper.  Trim fat from steak and cut into 2 equal portions.  Reserve 1/3 cup of oil and vinegar mixture for salad dressing, and place the remainder in a zip lock bag along with both steak pieces.  Allow steak to marinate in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

3.  Combine shallot rings and 1/4 cup red wine vinegar in a small bowl and set aside for 1 to 2 hours.

4.  Set gas grill to medium high, remove steak from marinade and pat dry with paper towels, and cook steak for 4 minutes on each side or until medium rare.  Let steak rest on a cutting board for 10 minutes, then slice into 1/4 in strips.

5.  Gently mix lettuce and salad dressing in a large bowl.  To serve, place the lettuce on the serving plate, topped with the steak, blue cheese, drained pickled shallots, dried cherries, and toasted walnuts.

Notes:

• Dried cherries from the supermarket can be substituted for the home dried cherries.
• The sweetness of the cherries, along with the savory steak and salty cheese are simply marvelous together!
• Yes, some of these steps take some time, but think of it as productive puttering around time.
  

Cold Noodle Salad

Washington DC and New York City.  For years, my husband has lead a group of 8th graders to these fine cities for a one week whirlwind tour.  And yes, we have the souvenirs to prove it.  It started with the typical stuff, such as I heart NY T-shirts, moved on to wine and food goodies, and then onto gorgeous detailed Christmas ornaments from Mount Vernon and other presidential collections.  Trip after trip he would announce, “just one more year, then I’m handing off the trip to someone else.”  That finally happened.  Of course, the new leader decides it would be beneficial to have some of that second hand experience along for the journey and asked me to chaperone.  So, there I was, flying across the country with the most amazing group of teens you ever did see.  And, I needed to bring home some souvenirs.  Shopping for the kids and hubby was actually quite fun.  But I also wanted something for myself.  That same self that has been the happy recipient of souvenirs from these exact same places for years.

It was time to get off the beaten path.  We were in China Town, NYC.  The kids had specific guidelines to stay on the main street for their shopping.  So, I wandered.  And I found it.  A shop just like Ollivander’s Wand Shop in Harry Potter where he buys his famous wand.  It was just a little slip of a store, filled with small boxes from floor to ceiling, with one helpful gentleman to guide me through the options.  Chopsticks.  The options were mind boggling:  plastic or wood, types of wood, inlaid or painted designs, 3 sided or octagons, blunt or pointed tips, pairs or sets.

With a new set of chopsticks in hand, I headed home to California, ready for a beat the heat meal friendly to chopsticks.  And No Recipes posted this cold noodle dish seemingly just for the occasion.  This dish includes his noodles and dressing with toppings that just sounded good to me at the time.  Enjoy!

Cold Noodle Salad with Fresh Vegetables

Ingredients:

16 oz fresh ramen or chow mien noodles

2 scallions, finely sliced

1/2 English cucumber, sliced into 3 inch by 1/4 inch pieces

1/2 cup shredded imitation crab

1/2 cup snow peas, julienned

2 crimini mushrooms, sliced

3 TBS sesame oil

1 TBS garlic, minced

1 tsp ginger, minced

3 TBS rice vinegar

2 TBS soy sauce

2 TBS toasted sesame seeds

1 TBS sugar

Directions:

1.  Prepare dressing by mixing sesame oil, garlic, ginger, rice vinegar, soy sauce, toasted sesame seeds and sugar in a small mixing bowl.

1. Cook noodles according to directions.  Rinse with cool water and drain well.  Add to dressing and mix until noodles are evenly coated.

3. Portion noodles into serving dishes and top with crab and vegetables.

Notes:

• This was both yummy and fun.  Yummy because each person can choose their own toppings.  Fun because we used the new chopsticks!
• The original recipe called for an egg component that was fun to make, but the texture matched the noodles to much for my taste.  While I omitted the eggs in the end, you may find them enjoyable in your version.
• Fresh noodles are best here.  Do not use the ramen noodles from those little soup packages.
• If you have some noodles around, this is a great summer time “clean out the fridge” or “finish up the farmer’s market purchases” type of meal.
• Did I mention the yummy part?  I made a decent sized batch, and the leftovers disappeared quickly.  Always a good sign!

Garlicky 3 Bean Salad

Sometimes we want a dish that is just like we had as a child.  Aunt so and so’s fried chicken, mom’s famous dip, a neighbor’s lasagna.  The tricky part is that our tastes change over time as do cooking styles.  We really cannot recreate that moment from the past.

Three bean salad is one of those classic side dishes that draw real preferences.  But, I don’t even remembering having it as a child.  Just a few years back I started using fresh blue lake beans in the standard salad (yum, crispy and fresh) with the sweetened oil and vinegar dressing.  To most people, this is the familiar flavor.  It just felt weird to me.  Sugar on green beans?  Really?  So, here’s my newest, favoritest version of 3 bean salad.  Enjoy!

Blue lake beans from Smith Family Farms, garlic and onion from Chan’s berry stand

Three Bean Salad

loosely based on the Three Bean Salad from Bon Appetite, 1998

Ingredients

2 or 3 handfuls of blue lake beans

1 can garbanzo beans, drained

1 can kidney beans, drained

1/4 red onion, sliced

3 TBS red wine vinegar

3 TBS olive oil

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 tsp dried basil

salt and pepper

Directions

1.  Rinse the green beans, cut into 2 inch segments, and add to boiling water for 1 minute.  Rinse the green beans with cold water in a colander to stop the cooking process and drain well.

2.  In a mixing bowl, whisk together the red wine vinegar and olive oil.  Add the garlic, dried basil, and salt and pepper to taste.  Add the green beans, garbanzo beans, kidney beans, and sliced red onion.  Mix to coat the vegetables with the dressing.

3.  Refrigerate for at least one hour.  Serve chilled or at room temperature.

Notes:

• In high school, the mom of someone in our youth group really would make home made lasagna for us at events.  This was some seriously spectacular lasagna!  I had no idea in the world what all was involved until I made my own years later.  She surely must have loved us to make lasagna for us so many times!  (Thanks again, Pat.)
• I’ve learned to like fresh blue lake beans, and have come to crave kidney beans, but those garbanzos are in there just for color and texture.
• If you can let this soak for a few hours, the onions start to pickle and get quite tasty!

Grilled Strawberry and Shrimp Skewers with Fennel Slaw

Its summer time and the livin’ is easy.  Time to pull out those quick and light recipes that are just good, good, good to have on hand.  Last weekend, while dog sitting for some friends, I took a few minutes to relax with their cookbooks.  You know when you see a recipe that is just off kilter enough that it has to be either a big hit or a major bomb?  That’s exactly what went through my mind when I saw this.  Strawberries on the grill?  Really?  Really!

Grilling the strawberries doesn’t do anything magnificent to enhance the flavor, but it softens the berries which is a great textural contrast with the shrimp and fennel.  And, its just a nice change of pace.  The vinaigrette is a total keeper with its balance of sweet and bitter.  I’ll be looking for more ways to use this little ditty.

adapted from California Home Cooking by Michele Anna Jordan

Ingredients:

Skewers

10 bamboo skewers, soaked in water for 30 minutes

20 to 30 prawns, at least 30U in size

2 baskets of strawberries, divided

1 cup Honey Pepper Vinaigrette  (recipe below)

1 small fennel bulb, trimmed and sliced thin

1 TBS mint leaves, julienne

Vinaigrette

3 TBS rice vinegar

3 TBS balsamic vinegar

1/4 cup honey, warmed

1 shallot, minced

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 TBS freshly ground black pepper

1 tsp kosher salt

1/2 cup olive oil

Directions:

1.  Prepare the vinaigrette by mixing the vinegars and honey in a bowl, then stirring in the shallots, garlic, pepper and salt.  Whisk in the olive oil slowly until incorporated.

2.  Prepare a hot fire on the grill.

3.  Thread each skewer with 3 prawns and 2 whole strawberries.  Brush lightly with vinaigrette  on each side and place them on the grill.  Turn the skewers after 2 minutes and bush again with the vinaigrette.  Continue cooking until the prawns are pink and no longer translucent on the inside, about 2 more minutes.

4.  Add the mint to the remaining vinaigrette.  Quickly toss together the remaining strawberries, sliced, and the fennel, along with 1 to 2 TBS of the vinaigrette.

5.  Serve the shrimp and strawberry skewers alongside the fennel and strawberry slaw.

Notes:

• This vinaigrette on the shrimp was simply magnificent!
• Not being the biggest fan of fennel, I think the next time Napa cabbage may be a good substitute for the fennel.  It does have to be something with some crunch and heft.  Butter lettuce would not hold its own in this dish.

Go-to Mango Jicama Chopped Salad

Everyone needs a “go to” dish or two.

Need to bring something to a pot luck or block party?  Toss together your “go to” dish.  Having friends over for a BBQ and need that one delicious dish that can be made that morning and stashed in the fridge?  “Go to” dish.

No need to browse all of your cookbooks or favorite blogs over and over for that one dish that is simple to make and is certain to please the crowd.  Save that for a leisurely day.

This Winter, my dish was a salad with sweet dried cranberries, crunchy tart apples, and savory blue cheese tossed with mixed greens.  It was easy to make, the ingredients are easy to find, and oh my was it a crowd pleaser.

The new “go to” dish is mango jicama chopped salad.  This is super easy to prepare, can be stored for several hours, and most importantly tastes fantastic.  It pleased my crowd and is sure to please yours, too.   Enjoy!

Mango Jicama Chopped Salad

adapted from Gourmet, January 2000

Ingredients:

Dressing

1/4 cup fresh lime juice

2 TBS honey

1 TBS rice vinegar

1 tsp garlic, minced

1/4 cup olive oil

Salad

2 cups jicama, peeled and chopped

2 mangoes, pitted, peeled and coarsely chopped

1/2 pound Napa cabbage, sliced crosswise

1/2 seedless cucumber, cut into wheels and quartered

Directions:

1.  Make dressing by pulsing together lime juice, honey, vinegar, and garlic in a mini food processor.  Add oil in a slow stream until emulsified.  Season lightly with salt and pepper.

2.  Toss together jicama, mangoes, cabbage, and cucumber.  Gently mix with dressing to taste.

Notes:

• After mixing together the jicama, mangoes and cucumber, I was hesitant to add the Napa cabbage.  Those 3 ingredients just looked so perfect on their own.  After scooping some into a smaller bowl and adding the cabbage, it was clear that the salad is much improved by its presence.
• The original recipe calls for romaine lettuce also.  The double batch I made filled the bowl, so the romaine just didn’t get invited to the party.
• 1 cup of toasted pumpkin seeds was also in the recipe and the notes  online by other cooks loved them.  Unfortunately, I had shopped at our local store, not the good store in the next town.  No pepitas were to be found.  One more reason in a long string of reasons to avoid that store whenever possible.
• A big shout out to my wonderful Father-in-Law, my sous chef!
  

Go-To Winter Salad

Everyone needs a dish to whip up at a moment’s notice to stretch a meal for additional guests at the table or to bring to a shared meal.  Lately, this has been my “go to” salad.  It is a snap to prepare, the ingredients last nicely in the fridge for several days or even a week, and it incorporates the sweet, savory, and earthy tastes of winter.  This salad must have made it to at least three Monday Night Football social gatherings before anyone realized I kept bringing the same tasty salad week after week.  And even then, there were certainly no complaints to be heard.  The recipe as listed here is perfect for a small crowd but can be pared down as needed.   While much easier to explain in sentences, here we go in the traditional recipe format:

Ingredients:

12 to 16 oz lettuce (spring mix or butter lettuce work best,  romaine nor iceberg do so well in this salad)

2 to 3 tart apples, cored and diced

6 oz Maytag blue cheese, crumbled

1 cup pecans halves, toasted (optional)

1/2 cup dried cranberries (optional)

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

1 TBS Dijon mustard

2 TBS sugar

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1.  Prepare vinaigrette by mixing olive oil, vinegar, mustard, sugar, salt, and pepper.

2.  Place lettuce in a large bowl and add just enough vinegrette to coat the leaves lightly.  Gently mix the greens, adding vinegrette as needed.

3.  Add apples, blue cheese, pecans and dried cranberries.  Toss lightly.

Notes:

• I use a small mason jar with lid for making all of my vinaigrette.  Just add the ingredients, screw on the lid, and give it a good shake.

Friends and Family Caesar Salad

After a few days of glorious sunshine, I was so ready to set aside the soup pot and dig out the big ol’ salad bowl. Salad as a main course made its 2009 debut! As you well know, the only low fat ingredient in a Caesar salad is the lettuce, but hey, bikini season is still months away.

This is called a Friends and Family recipe because you should honestly only eat it with friends and family. The garlic and other strong flavors in this salad will, um, make your presence known. Best enjoyed with others who are indulging with you.

About the garlic and anchovies … you can reduce the amount of garlic if you must (but that begs the question of why), and even if you are one of those people who have never eaten an anchovy and are convinced that they are just about the grossest thing that could ever be added to a salad, do give it a go at least once. There are more than the 7 anchovies listed in the ingredients in one of those little tins, and honestly, I’ve been known to up that anchovy count by nearly 50% cuz they just MAKE the salad. Trust me here people!

Homemade croûtons are perfect with this salad. Just cube some bread (grab one of those 2 packs of bread at Costco, enjoy one loaf fresh and use the other for croûtons!), toss with a bit of olive oil, and bake at 300 degrees for about 40 minutes, stirring half way through the baking.

Salad ingredients:

Romaine, torn into pieces

Croutons

Fresh lemon juice

Freshly ground black pepper

Parmesan, grated or shaved

Caesar Dressing

Dressing ingredients:

4 eggs

4 TBS roughly chopped garlic

7 anchovy fillets

1 1/2 tsp Coleman’s dry mustard

2 TBS lemon juice

1 TBS Worcestershire sauce

Dash of hot sauce (I prefer Crystal)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

2 TBS red wine vinegar

1 3/4 cups olive oil (approximate)

Dressing directions:

1. Add everything except the vinegar and oil to a blender. Process at high speed for 20 seconds. Add vinegar and process for another 20 seconds.

2. With the blender on low speed, slowly drizzle in the oil. The mixture will turn more creamy in texture, and the little whirlpool in the center will shrink in size. When that whirlpool disappears altogether, stop adding oil.

3. Refrigerate at least 30 minutes.

To assemble the salad, toss the lettuce with just enough Caesar dressing to coat lightly. Add a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, black pepper, croûtons, and Parmesan and mix gently.

Notes:

• I’ve been making this for years now, and have never had a problem with the raw eggs.
• The amount of oil required actually depends on the temperature. Warmer days require more oil than colder days.

Fall Salad with Pear, Toasted Walnuts, and Gorgonzola

Yes, it has taken quite awhile to get these recipes posted.  Know how March and April are just crazy for tax accountants?  Well, its like that in October for my job.  Sigh. Here we go ….

This is a perfect Fall salad, with the sweetness of the pears, salty and savory flavors from the Gorgonzola, and the toasty crunch of the walnuts.  If you’re looking for a nice salad that you can toss together earlier in the day and dress at the last minute, this is a beauty.  Just one more reason it is perfect for a Kaleidoscope dinner.  🙂

Ingredients:

butter lettuce or red leaf lettuce, torn into pieces

1 pear, cored and diced

1/3 cup walnuts roughly chopped

Gorgonzola

2 TBS olive oil

1 TBS wine vinegar

1 TBS grainy mustard

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1.  Toast walnuts in the oven or in a skillet on the stove until just darkening.

2.  Lightly mix the lettuce, pear, and walnuts in a serving bowl.

3.  Whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper.  Gently pour dressing over the salad and mix.

4.  Sprinkle lightly with crumbled Gorgonzola cheese.

Notes:

* Select a nice deep green lettuce for this salad.  Don’t use iceberg or those anemic looking hearts of romaine here; crunch from lettuce just doesn’t belong here.

*  Go easy with the cheese.  Remember, this is about balance.  If there is too much cheese, it gets a mushy feeling when you eat it, and that is not the goal here.

*  For mixing salad dressings, I actually just pour all of the ingredients into a small canning jar, screw on the lid, and shake ‘er on up.  Easy and kinda fun!

Thai Beef and Grape Tomato Salad

Tomatoes abound at this time of year, and I’ve become addicted to the low-acid types lately. Just wash, slice, and slurp them up. Yum! The current edition of Cooking Light has a whole section dedicated to heirloom tomatoes, and I may just be cooking right through them all. For starters, I gravitated to this recipe because 1) dinner salads are perfect during this week of scorching heat, and 2) it uses fish sauce which I love. OK, if you’re new to fish sauce, this may not make sense, but really, you’ve gotta give it a try. During the summer, it is great in a marinade and then in the winter adding a bit to a savory soup adds a perfect layer of flavor. You just use the smallest of amounts, but it adds essential flavors. Even loving the stuff, I only go through about one bottle per year, but it makes me feel so experimental. (Yes, millions of people in the world keep this as a pantry staple, but let me hold on to my little day dream here.)

In adapting the recipe, I substituted another type of cherry or grape tomato for the requested green grape tomatoes. Why? Stopping by Lon’s on the way home, I just took what they had. With those tomatoes having been picked just that day, I figured that more than makes up for the ingredient substitution. Also, I added some baby bok choy as that is just been my habit this summer. It has both the deep green leaves and the sweet / crunchy textures that I love in salads. And while the original recipe calls for romaine lettuce, I honestly took this opportunity to use up the last bits of about 3 heads of different types of lettuce in the fridge.

Marinade:

6 TBS brown sugar

2 TBS ginger, finely minced

2 TBS low-sodium soy sauce

2 TBS Thai fish sauce

4 garlic cloves, minced

Dressing:

1 TBS brown sugar

2 TBS fresh line juice

2 TBS low-sodium soy sauce

2 TBS peanut oil

2 tsp chile paste with garlic

2 tsp grated fresh ginger

2 tsp Thai fish sauce

Salad:

1 1/2 pound flank steak

3 cups romaine lettuce, chopped

1 baby bok choy, chopped

2 3/4 cups halved grape tomatoes

3/4 cup radishes, thinly sliced

1/2 cup cucumber, thinly sliced

1/4 cup red onion, thinly sliced

2 TBS basil, chopped

2 TBS cilantro, chopped

Directions:

1. In the morning, put all of the marinade ingredients in a large zip lock bag, squish them around, then add the flank steak. Pop it in the fridge for the day.

2. In the evening, grill the steak on for about 4 minutes on each side, remove from the grill and let rest for 10 minutes, then slice thinly across the grain.

3. Combine dressing ingredients and set aside.

4. Toss the veggies and herbs in a bowl, add the dressing, and mix gently.

5. Top with those delicious flank steak slices and serve.