Healthy, Meet Delicious

I really enjoyed this new monthly column by Mark Bittman in the New York Times Dining section: Healthy, Meet Delicious. Bittman’s philosophy of eating vegan before 6pm and having what he likes for dinner seems like an easy way to eat more healthfully and make sure you get your vegetables in. I have been trying something similar, although I allow myself yogurt and occasionally eggs. But I like this method because I don’t feel deprived and because it is an easy lifestyle change to adopt.

I tried Bittman’s recipe for chopped salad last week and I liked it a lot. If you shred a lot of cabbage and carrots at one time, they will keep for a while undressed and can then easily be incorporated into chopped salad, coleslaw, other salads, stir-fries and so on. I have found that the easiest way to prompt myself to eat more vegetables is to have them prepped and ready for when I get hungry, so I don’t default to an easier and less healthy option at lunchtime.

The smoothie recipe also looks good, and is very similar to one I make often, especially during the summer months.

Iceberg Lettuce: Love It or Hate It?

(nl: IJssla krop)Iceberg lettuce (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the 1940s, iceberg lettuce was the only variety bred to survive cross-country shipping, which is why it became ubiquitous in American salad bowls. Its name came from the piles of ice it was packed in for shipping. Now, with so many kinds of salad greens available, iceberg remains popular on restaurant menus.

I can’t stand the stuff, unless it’s slathered with blue cheese dressing. My husband, however, prefers tasteless iceberg over any lettuce that has a modicum of flavor, although he will eat romaine if he has to. What’s your go-to salad green?

Read: Tip of the Iceberg: Our Love-Hate Relationship With the Nation’s Blandest Vegetable | Food & Think.

Pan-crisped Deviled Eggs on Lettuce

Continuing with posting some of my favorite recipes from cookbooks, this next recipe comes from How to Eat Supper by Lynne Rossetto Kasper (of The Splendid Table) and Sally Swift. In fact, it is my favorite recipe from what is otherwise a very uneven cookbook. If you like deviled eggs at all, you have to try this salad. Not only is the dressing delicious, but pan-crisping takes deviled eggs to a whole ‘nother level. This would make a nice light lunch or an impressive start to a dinner party.

Pan-crisped Deviled Eggs on Lettuce

EGGS

• 8 large eggs, hard-cooked and peeled
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 2 medium garlic cloves, minced
• 2½ teaspoons onion, minced
• 2½ tablespoons parsley, coarse chopped
• 2 to 3 tablespoons milk
• 2½ teaspoons mayonnaise
• 1½ teaspoons white wine vinegar
• Salt and pepper
• 2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil

DRESSING

• The leftover egg stuffing
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 2½ tablespoons milk
• 2½ teaspoons white wine vinegar
• Salt and pepper

SALAD

• 4 handfuls mixed greens

1. Cut the hard-cooked eggs in half lengthwise. Gently remove the yolks and place them in a medium bowl. Reserve the whites.
2. Add the mustard, garlic, onion, parsley, milk, mayonnaise and vinegar to the yolks. With a fork, crush everything together into a thick paste. Add salt and pepper to taste.
3. Pack the mixture back into the hollows of the egg whites, so the filling is even with the surface of the egg, not mounded. You will have leftover stuffing (this becomes the salad dressing).
4. In a large nonstick skillet, heat the oil over medium. Gently place the eggs in the pan, stuffed side down. Cook until the eggs are browned, 3 to 5 minutes. Sprinkle them with salt and pepper as they cook.
5. Combine in a large bowl the leftover egg stuffing with all the dressing ingredients. Add the salad greens to the bowl and toss. Heap them on a serving platter.
6. Gently lift the eggs from the pan, turn them filling side up, set them on the greens and serve.

Notes: Serves 4 as a main dish; 6 as a first course. 15 minutes prep time; 5 minutes stove time. The eggs could be stuffed a day ahead and refrigerated until you are ready to saute them.

Enjoying Summer Cucumbers

Cucumbers Español: Pepinos Português: Pepinos (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We are finally getting to that point in the summer when it seems like we have more fresh, tasty produce than we know what to do with. At this time of year, everyone rhapsodizes about tomatoes, and of course, nothing can beat a fresh tomato straight out of the garden. But I want to recognize another summer favorite: the cucumber.

Most of the year, I avoid eating cucumbers, because I find them bland, mushy and generally without personality. But when I started growing my own cucumbers, I discovered that fresh-picked cucumbers are subtly sweet and snappy. (If you don’t have a garden, cucumbers should be abundant at the farmers market about now.)

To bring out their best flavor, I try to choose cucumbers that are still fairly small. I cut them in half lengthwise and scoop out most of the seeds with a spoon. Then I slice them into rounds or sticks and sprinkle them with coarse salt. Let them sit for few minutes in a colander and drain off any excess liquid. They make a terrific snack just by themselves.

I have two favorite ways of dressing up cucumbers. Almost everyone likes pickles, so I like to reproduce that flavor by quickly marinating cucumbers. These slices make a great appetizer or a side for grilled foods.

Combine 3 cups of thinly sliced cucumbers with 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar, 2 tablespoons olive oil, the grated zest and juice of 1 lime, and salt and pepper to taste. If you prefer some sweet with your sour, add 1 teaspoon sugar. Cover and refrigerate for about 30 minutes. Just before serving, add 2 tablespoons fresh dill or basil, minced, and toss gently. 

This simple salad is just a starting point, and it is amenable to all sorts of additions. Some of my favorites include thinly sliced red onion, minced jalapeno, diced avocado or tomato wedges.

A creamy cucumber salad is another way to showcase this vegetable. This recipe is similar to an Indian condiment called raita, used to cool spicy foods. Either eat this as a side salad, or dice the cucumbers and use it as a dip or as a condiment for fish, grilled chicken and even burgers.

Slice or dice 1 medium cucumber. Combine it with ¾ cup plain yogurt (or substitute sour cream, if yogurt isn’t to your taste). Stir in 1 small minced garlic clove, 1 tablespoon olive oil and the leaves from 2 mint sprigs, thinly sliced. For a little spice, you could add a pinch of cayenne or red pepper flakes. 

Enjoy those veggies!

A Salad of Garden-Fresh Tomatoes

I am getting excited because we have lots of green tomatoes on the vines in our garden right now. I am looking forward to tomato season, when we eat tomatoes from the garden every day — practically every meal — and still have enough to puree or slow-roast and freeze for the winter.

It is still too early to eat tomatoes from the garden, but local tomatoes are making an appearance at the farmers market and co-op, and they are almost as good. The fact is, every summer I can’t wait to eat tomatoes. That’s because the rest of the year, tomatoes aren’t worth buying; grocery store tomatoes have no flavor. I would rather stick with canned tomatoes during the colder months and just gorge myself on fresh tomatoes when they are in season.

The absolutely best way to eat garden-fresh tomatoes is in the classic BLT sandwich, in my opinion. But this salad runs a close second. You really don’t need a recipe for this. I never measure out ingredients for this salad; I just put it together by eye and taste.

Start with 1-2 garden-fresh tomatoes per person. Slice them and arrange the slices on a large platter. Sprinkle the slices with coarse sea salt and and let sit for a few minutes. This salad is very pretty with different colored heirloom tomatoes.

Sprinkle the tomato slices with 2 tablespoons vinegar; I prefer sherry or balsamic vinegar for this salad, but red wine vinegar is also good. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil. Season with pepper. Wash and sliver a handful of basil leaves, and scatter them over the top. Serve.

If you like, you can alternate the tomato slices with thin slices of Vidalia or red onion, or slices of a soft cheese, such as goat cheese or fresh mozzarella. If you use mozzarella, you’ll have made a classic Caprese salad, of course.

Green Bean (or Any Other Vegetable) Salad

Green-beans (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is such a simple recipe, you will probably memorize it after making it once or twice. But I have found myself making it a lot lately, now that fresh vegetables are in season and abundant. A simple preparation highlights the deliciousness of really fresh green beans, and it goes with everything. This salad tastes good warm or after sitting in the fridge for a day or two. It serves four.

Trim the ends off ½ pound green beans, and snap them in half if the beans are long. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add the green beans and boil just until tender. Drain and spread out on a plate to cool. Meanwhile, whisk together 1 small minced shallot, 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar, ¼ cup olive oil, salt and pepper. Toss the dressing gently with the green beans. Garnish with basil or parsley.

Of course, you could make this salad more hearty by adding another vegetable to it. Boiled new potatoes, roasted red peppers or cherry tomatoes are all traditionally tasty accompaniments to green beans.

This formula will work with almost any green vegetable, so if you don’t have green beans, don’t let that stop you. Try this with broccoli, spinach, kale or whatever you have to hand. Summer is such a wonderful time for eating your vegetables.

Simple Make-Ahead Carrot Salad

This carrot salad is my favorite recipe for using up an abundance of carrots. For such a simple recipe, it is unbelievably versatile, as you can eat it as is with your lunch, or use it to top a green salad or garnish a sandwich. If you want a heartier salad, add some dried fruit and/or toasted nuts. And it seems to keep for days in the fridge.

1. Peel, trim and grate 1 pound carrots. I use my food processor to make short work of the grating chore.
2. In a bowl, whisk together 1 tsp. red wine vinegar, 2 tsp. lemon juice, 2 tbsp. fresh orange juice, salt and pepper. Slowly whisk in ¼ cup olive oil.
3. Toss the dressing with the carrots, garnish with minced parsley and let stand 10 minutes before serving.

This recipe comes from Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food, and I make it all time.

A Fall Salad

I came up with this salad last week. It’s lovely for this time of year. Serve with chicken breasts pan-roasted with onions.

To make the salad, toss together:

• mixed greens
• toasted walnuts
• dried cranberries
• apple slices

I didn’t put this in, but if you have some goat cheese, it would probably make a nice addition.

Toss with a simple vinaigrette. I favor one made with sherry vinegar and a bit of grainy mustard.

This was a very nice salad to welcome the cooler fall weather.

Panzanella, or Bread Salad

I’m sorry things have been so quiet around here. (Can you hear the crickets?) Life has left little time for blogging this summer, and I haven’t done a whole lot of creative cooking either. But I have completed a couple of challenges that I have yet to blog about. I’m hoping to get all caught up and then start a new round of challenges in the fall.

One recent challenge was seasonally appropriate: to make a cold dinner that was also satisfying. For this challenge, I wanted to use something from our garden, which means tomatoes. Naturally, I thought of one of my favorite salads: panzanella, or bread salad. Not only is this a great dish for enjoying dead ripe tomatoes, but it’s also handy for using up stale bread. The juices from the tomatoes soak into the bread and give it new life.

To make this dish an entree, I added leftover grilled chicken and cannellini beans, along with an assortment of vegetables. They combined to create a satisfying, hearty dish for a hot summer night. The inspiration for the basic recipe comes from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan.

Main-Course Panzanella

Yields: 4 servings

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Trim the bread of its crust and cut into smallish squares to make approximately 2 cups bread cubes. Toast the cubes in the oven until browned and dried out, about 10 minutes. Put the cubes in a large bowl. Puree 1 ripe tomato in a food mill over the bowl. Toss the tomato puree with the bread, add some salt, and let it sit for 15 minutes or more.

In a food processor, combine 1 peeled garlic clove, 1 teaspoon anchovy paste* and 1 tablespoon capers,drained. Puree. Combine thoroughly with ¼ cup olive oil, 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar and salt to taste. Set aside.

Meanwhile, prepare the salad ingredients:

• Dice 2 ripe tomatoes.
• Dice 1 yellow or red bell pepper.
• Peel and dice 1 cucumber.
• Thinly slice ½ red or sweet onion.
• Thinly slice 1 breast leftover cooked chicken (preferably roasted or grilled).
• Drain and rinse 1 cup cooked cannellini beans.

Combine everything in the serving bowl with plenty of freshly ground pepper, and toss thoroughly.

*I prefer anchovy paste (it comes in a little tube) to actual anchovies because I don’t cook with anchovies often, and then I only use a little at a time. A tube of anchovy paste seems to last me a good long while. You may substitute 2-3 anchovy fillets, if you like.

A New Take on Tuna Salad

My cooking challenge for last week was to prepare a fresh and flavorful fish dish. My husband wanted this dish to reflect the bounty of the season and to be tasty, because he generally thinks fish is bland. (I don’t agree, but that’s another story.) He suggested a flavorful sauce.

The combination of fresh and flavorful got my mind working, and I came up with a salad. But not an ordinary salad. Rather, I wanted a composed dish that would showcase tasty produce surrounding a really nice piece of fish, all dressed with a tasty vinaigrette, which works really well on both fish and vegetables. I hit upon doing a version of a salade Niçoise, but with a twist: no olives (because I don’t really like olives). Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home has a tuna Niçoise recipe that is both gorgeous and easy to make; that would be my template. Leafing through Ad Hoc at Home‘s many vinaigrette recipes, I spotted the one I wanted: bacon vinaigrette! The bacon would taste great on a thick tuna steak and on the vegetables I wanted to accompany it: new potatoes, green beans, cherry tomatoes and avocado.

The vegetable platter.

The best part about this dish is that it is very easy to prepare. The most important step is the shopping, as this dish relies on finding the freshest, tastiest produce and cut of tuna available. It can also adapt to the season. I suggest visiting the farmers market or local co-op and buying whatever looks fresh and beautiful. As for cooking the vegetables, I simply blanched the green beans and steamed the potatoes until they were tender. I then cut everything up and apportioned it on a pretty platter.

As for the tuna, this challenge gave me a chance to explore the best local markets for buying fish. While my regular co-op does a great job of supplying local, organic chicken, bacon and sausage, it doesn’t stock a large selection of fish, and they never have tuna. The grocery store I usually shop at has a fish counter, but I am suspicious of their sources. Their tuna in particular often tastes a little fishy, and it’s a little too red, if you know what I mean.

That meant I had to go further afield. Because I left my shopping so late in the day, I chose to head over to Whole Foods rather than trying out Fresh Market, which is a little farther away. I normally avoid Whole Foods, because the experience of shopping there could easily be the tenth circle of Hell, in my opinion. Starting with the parking lot, which is poorly designed and always jammed with cars fighting for the spaces. Once you’re inside, the food is so gorgeous and artfully laid out, but you have to contend with people jamming the narrow aisles with huge carts and cutting across your path. I feel like a bumper car whenever I go inside. I could stand it just enough to go back to the fish counter and pick out a gigantic, gorgeous tuna steak. I couldn’t even handle ducking over to the bakery for a loaf of bread before my patience snapped. (I do have to give kudos to Whole Foods’ cashiers and fishmongers, who are just as friendly as they can be, unlike their clientele.) The trip was worth it, though, because just take a look at this fish.

The tuna.

Fish this good only requires a little salt and pepper for seasoning and a brief pan-searing in a thin film of olive oil. To judge doneness, watch the edges. You want just a thin sear on both sides. Remove it from the pan and slice thinly for serving. A one-pound steak was plenty for my husband and I, with leftovers. (My toddler refused to partake, of course.)

All that’s left is the dressing, which is also very simple. For two servings, cut 2 slices of bacon into 1-inch pieces. Fry over medium heat until crisp on the outside, then transfer to paper towels to drain, reserving the bacon fat in the pan. Combine 2 tablespoons champagne vinegar, 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard, and ¼ cup olive oil with salt and pepper to taste in a blender. Pour off the bacon fat into this mixture and blend until it is well emulsified. Stir in the bacon pieces and spoon the vinaigrette over the vegetables and fish to serve.

The whole salad.

I feel like this wasn’t too much of a challenge, since it was so easy to prepare. But I think this only goes to show that even the simplest dishes can be the most rewarding, if you take the trouble to find truly excellent ingredients. I would definitely make this salad again and again.

For the next challenge, I am tasked with making an Asian noodle dish. Since I’m still on a light and flavorful kick, I’m thinking Japanese. I hope you’ll join me.