Grilled Peach Salad with Rosemary Vinaigrette

We took a cooking class at our co-op recently and finally learned how to grill peaches. This is important, because as far as we can tell, there was Life Before Grilled Peaches and then there is now. (Now is decidedly better, as time periods go. We have thought carefully about this, while a breeze scented with caramelized peaches wafts from the grill, and while gazing at grilled peaches, and while eating them. Mouths full, hyperventilating slightly from the big gulps of peach-scented air, we say to each other "Mrahmaba gralled pashas." And it's true. Gralled pashas are certainly mrahmaba. Just make some. You'll see.)

Here is what you do: Find some peaches that are ripe but fairly firm -- they should be fragrant, yielding a bit to pressure from your thumb, but not yet very soft. Cut each one in half along the seam (which I'm sure is not what it's actually called on a fruit, but you know what I mean). Remove the pit.

Preheat your grill to 500 degrees.* Set each peach half cut-side down in a plate of sugar, then lay face up on a plate or cutting board (or sprinkle the cut side with a little sugar, if you prefer to use a bit less). This helps the peaches caramelize later on the grill.

When the grill is hot, brush with olive oil, and place each peach half cut-side down, oriented so that the grill marks will go crosswise (perpendicular to where the seam was). Grill for 5-7 minutes until there are golden grill marks along the underside. To prevent the peaches from sticking, you can move them back and forth just a bit every couple minutes (so that they slide along the grooves of the grill marks, rather than making new marks).

Remove the peaches from the grill and let cool for a few minutes, then slice into wedges (parallel to where the seam was). You can grill these an hour or two ahead of when you want to use them, but don't slice till just before you serve (the slices get a little brown if they sit for too long).

Use to top a salad. This recipe is especially good for when you have guests and want to serve something that looks fancy but is actually pretty easy to throw together. It is also good for when you don't have guests and want to eat lots of grilled peaches.

Ingredients
Vinaigrette:
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp sherry vinegar
1/2 tsp minced fresh rosemary leaves
Pinch salt
Freshly ground black pepper

1/4 lb mixed baby greens (or sub baby arugula if you want a bit more of a kick to it), washed and dried well in a salad spinner
1 oz mild goat cheese (e.g., North Valley Farms Chevre)
2 tbsp sliced almonds, toasted (scatter in a pan over medium heat on the stovetop and toast for a few minutes, shaking from time to time, until golden brown and fragrant.)
2 peaches, grilled and sliced as above

Whisk the oil and vinegar together to form an emulsion, then stir in the rest of the vinaigrette ingredients. Drizzle about three-quarters of the dressing over the baby greens and toss well to coat the leaves.

Serve in a big bowl or on individual salad plates. Crumble the goat cheese over the top, sprinkle with almonds, and top with the grilled peaches. Drizzle the remaining vinaigrette over the peaches, and serve.

Serves 4.


*You can also do this in a grill pan, which is what our cooking instructor did, and she had it on medium heat.

Wilted Greens Salad with Tuna

The problem with brunch -- and I must admit I feel slightly sacrilegious uttering those words, so allow me to rephrase -- one tiny, insignificant, easily airbrushed imperfection on the face of the deeply beloved meal of brunch (ah, much better) is that it's one meal instead of two.

I bemoan this fact not because of my intrinsically greedy, supersized-endless-refill-loving American ways, but because as someone who eats like a hummingbird (that's the polite term my husband has developed to mean "constantly"), having one big meal all at once can't quite take the place of smaller portions spread out over the day. Now if it's a late brunch, this is easily remedied by a surreptitious cup of coffee and handful of fruit while, for example, your house guests slumber away unknowingly upstairs. But if it's an earlyish brunch, you're left with this awkwardly-sized stretch between french toast and dinnertime that's too small for lunch but too big for nothing.

Enter the Goldilocks Brinner. Large enough to feel like a meal, and light enough not to interfere with dinnertime appetites: just right for any fellow foodie hummingbirds out there.

Ingredients
1 can albacore tuna, drained
Medium, good quality curry powder
Handful flat leaf parsley, chopped
Salt & black pepper
Small handful sliced almonds
Olive oil
Yellow and/or black mustard seeds
Several large handfuls of spicy greens (e.g., half baby arugula and half mustard frisee -- something with a bit of a kick), very coarsely chopped/sliced

Combine the tuna with a bit of olive oil in a small bowl, then stir in half a spoonful or so of curry powder, the parsley, a pinch of salt, and ground black pepper to taste. Mix well, then add the almonds and stir gently a couple times to combine.

Meanwhile, heat a bit of olive oil in a wide saute pan over medium heat. When hot, add the mustard seeds and stir once or twice. After about 20 seconds, add the greens and toss to combine with the mustard seeds. Saute for a minute or two until they just begin to wilt, then cover the pan, turn off the heat, and let steam for a minute more until just wilted.

Arrange a bed of the greens on plates (don't preheat the plates -- you want the greens to go ahead and cool to room temperature), sprinkle with just a little olive oil, and top with tuna.

Serves 2 for a very light, halfway-between-brunch-and-an-early-dinner sort of meal.

Peppery Greens with Strawberries

The sweetness of ripe strawberries offsets the spiciness of baby mustard greens and arugula in this quick and easy side salad.


Ingredients
Couple handfuls baby red mustard greens
Couple handfuls baby arugula
Olive oil
Sherry vinegar
Handful ripe strawberries, halved lengthwise and sliced
Salt


Wash greens and spin dry in a salad spinner.

Rip any larger leaves into bite-size pieces, then toss with some olive oil and just a hint of sherry vinegar (about one spoonful per salad). Serve, scatter liberally with strawberries, and sprinkle each salad with a small pinch of salt.

Serves 2-3.

Spring Salad with Beet and Black Radish

Last weekend, my culinary experiences were forcibly broadened when a black radish was foisted upon me by my very own mother.

I had, until that moment, considered my mother to be a rather mild-mannered and gentle purveyor of food-related provisions, offering the occasional overabundance of Meyer lemons or pears or sweet potatoes to take back with us to Sacramento, or a spare pair of turnips leftover from their CSA box. Such gifts were suggested casually, and could be accepted or declined with no particular emotional consequence.

Not so with the black radish (or radishes, to be precise), which were prepackaged and waiting on the dining room table when I walked in the door of my parents' house last Saturday. The radishes were offered to me with a period at the end of the sentence, rather than a question mark, that stated an incontrovertible transition of ownership rather than a query about the radishes' future abode.
I was taking them with me.

I asked (I had not fully grasped, at this point, the severity of the situation) whether this black radish was the same kind of black radish I had heard certain negative things about several weeks before (namely "usually I love our CSA box, but eughgrh, that black radish...I don't know why anyone would plant those").

It was the same black radish. More alarmingly, I became aware that this revelation in no way changed the fact that I was taking the black radishes with me, and that this fact was as immune to future argumentation as my failed attempts as a child to acquire a kitten or (as I recall, my second choice) a baby sister. My mom looked at me. I could tell she felt a touch of compassion -- after all, she too had once owned a black radish. She tried to look encouraging, in an I-hope-you-don't-suffer-too-greatly-while-eating-your-black-radish kind of way. "Anyway," she said. "You're always taking new ingredients and figuring out recipes for them on your blog. So consider this a new ingredient."

In other words, I was issued a Black Radish Challenge. Here are the results. The bite of the radish offset the sweetness of the beets, and made for a perfect springtime lunch. Thanks, mom. :)

Ingredients
Several big handfuls of mixed baby greens
1 medium beet, peeled and grated
1 black radish, halved, thinly sliced, then cut crosswise into matchsticks (about 1/2 cup, or sub red radishes)
6 quail eggs, boiled for just under 3 minutes, peeled, and halved (or sub 1-2 hardboiled chicken eggs)

Vinaigrette: 
A couple generous glugs of olive oil
1 smallish spoonful grainy mustard
2 spoonfuls sherry vinegar
1/4 tsp minced fresh rosemary
Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Whisk the olive oil, mustard, and vinegar together in a large bowl to form an emulsion (it should be thick but not sludgy -- adjust the amount of olive oil as needed). Stir in the rosemary, salt, and pepper. Next, fold in the beets and toss to coat evenly, then add in the salad greens and toss until the beets are evenly distributed and the greens are lightly coated with vinaigrette. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed (there should be just a hint of rosemary, without it being overpowering).

Arrange the greens on plates, sprinkle with radish, and top with the egg and a bit of extra black pepper.

Serves 2 for a light lunch or side salad.

Mizuna Salad with Sweet Potato and Pomegranate

Mizuna is on the savory, peppery side, which makes it a perfect complement to the sweet potato and pomegranate in this recipe. You could also use baby arugula or another flavorful green. Feel free to substitute regular sweet potatoes and/or regular sliced almonds, or to jettison one ingredient in favor of another -- the trick is just to keep in mind the balance between savory and sweet. 

Ingredients
Several large handfuls of mizuna or other baby greens
Part of a leftover roasted Japanese sweet potato, cut into small pieces
Seeds of 1-2 pomegranates (see this new page for an easy seeding trick)
Handful toasted Marcona almonds, halved lengthwise
1-2 oz. goat cheese, crumbled

Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Coarsely chop the mizuna a few times if the leaves are large enough to be unwieldy (you don't want the leaves to mass together later while all the other ingredients fall through - shoot for pieces that are about an inch long). Whisk together a liberal glug of olive oil with a bit less than half as much balsamic vinegar, add salt and pepper to taste, and toss with the greens till the leaves are lightly coated.

Arrange mizuna as a bed on each plate, then sprinkle generously with sweet potato, pomegranate seeds, almonds, and goat cheese.

Serves 2.

Beet Reprise

Curiouser and curiouser. Apparently, beets can be...well, I can't quite bring myself to say it. I'll just note that we polished this off much more quickly than I would have expected.

The secret seems to be to leave them raw, and to offset the sweetness with something tangy (in this case, a mustard vinaigrette). I found this recipe on the NY Times website, and tweaked it just a bit:

Ingredients
1 large shallot
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp sherry vinegar
Small spoonful grain mustard
Salt and black pepper to taste
A small handful of parsley, finely chopped (about 1 tbsp)
2 small to medium beets, peeled and grated



Quarter the shallot lengthwise, turn it 90 degrees, and slice. Saute in a little olive oil over medium heat for 1-2 minutes till just soft, and set aside. In a smallish mixing bowl, whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, and mustard, then add the shallots, salt, pepper, and parsley. Add the grated beets and mix to coat evenly. Let sit for 5 minutes to let the flavors blend, and serve.

Serves 2.

The Rehabilitation of the Beet

We are not exactly a beet-loving household. We tolerate them from afar -- in Spain, for example, they sometimes place a beet on an otherwise perfectly acceptable veggie sandwich, and we are fine with that (as long as we are not actually in Spain). But up close -- in the same country, for instance -- they become decidedly more troubling. Let's put it this way: there are only three things in the world that my husband won't eat, and the beet is one of them.

But we knew they were coming. It's that time of year. So when they showed up in our CSA box this week, we did not jump, or scream. We calmly extracted them from the box, turned, and stuffed them safely in the back of the vegetable drawer, buried under a heap of parsley, carrots, radishes, and about six other things we managed to cram in on top of them. We returned to our lives, and did not think about beets. Or rather, we thought about not thinking about beets. We tried not to think about not thinking about beets. We thought about beets.

We could, we reasoned, try the beets. A little, tiny, modicum of beets. A beetlette. We could try a beetlette, mixed in with other things, and see if maybe it wouldn't be quite so beety. And a fellow beetophobe had suggested trying them raw, rather than cooked, which would make them less beety as well. We could try a raw, practically infinitesimal, highly camouflaged bit of a beet, and see. Yes. We would do that. We would do that, and see, and then we could never ever ever eat beets ever again.

Except that after all that, we kind of liked them.

Ingredients
Baby greens
Olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Sherry vinegar
2-3 lemon cucumbers, peeled, quartered, and sliced
1 cup cooked chickpeas
2 radishes, halved, sliced, then turned crosswise and sliced into thin strips
1 beet, peeled and grated
1-3 carrots, peeled and grated
2 medium- or hard-boiled pastured eggs, quartered

Whisk together a generous dousing of olive oil with about a third as much vinegar to form an emulsion, and add a pinch of salt and black pepper to taste. Toss the greens with enough of the vinaigrette to lightly coat them (you'll also want a little more vinaigrette to drizzle over the salad, so save a bit or make more if necessary).

Arrange a heaping bed of greens on each plate, then layer on the cucumbers, radishes, and chickpeas. Sprinkle liberally with the grated beets and carrots, and drizzle a couple more spoonfuls of vinaigrette over the top. Add the egg on top or on the side, sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste, and serve.

Serves 2 hungry beetophobes as the main part of a meal, or more as a side salad.

Cucumber Salad with Pan-Seared Kale

I can't help but feel that kale and I have some unfinished business. After my summertime kale saga and subsequent declaration of victory, I pretty much checked kale off a mental list of untried vegetables and have been blithely ignoring it for the most part since. But kale, I suspect, has unplumbed depths. It is more than a risotto ingredient or toast topper. I have not, in short, given kale its due.

Case in point: It can apparently be pan-seared with black sesame seeds and tossed with cucumbers and rice vinegar for a delicious and vaguely Japanese-ish accompaniment to take-out sushi.

Ingredients
2 small or one large cucumber, diced
Seasoned rice vinegar
Olive oil
Black sesame seeds
7-10 leaves dino kale, rinsed, dried, and sliced crosswise into ribbons

Sprinkle the cucumber with rice vinegar, stir, and set in the fridge to chill and crisp for at least 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat a little olive oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Add a liberal sprinkling of sesame seeds and stir for 10 seconds or so, then add the kale. Toss with the sesame seeds (I found tongs to be the most useful here) and cook, turning occasionally but not too often, until wilted and just slightly browned or seared. Set aside (or in the fridge) to let it cool to room temperature.

Mix the kale and cucumber together, and serve.

Wild Rice, Asian Pear, and Blue Cheese Salad

Ingredients
1/2 cup wild rice
Mixed baby greens or baby arugula
A handful of pecans, toasted
Some Bleu d'Auvergne or your favorite blue cheese, crumbled
1-2 Asian pears (or substitute Bosc pears), sliced and cut into 1-inch squares
Olive oil

Sherry vinegar
Salt & black pepper

Heat a little olive oil in a small pot over medium heat. Add the wild rice, stir for a minute or two, then add 1 cup of water. Cover, bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for 45 minutes until cooked.

Toss the greens with some olive oil in a salad bowl. If you're using arugula, add the rice over it while it's hot so that the greens wilt just a little bit (otherwise, add it after it's cooled a little). Toss with a little sherry vinegar, salt, and pepper, then top with the Asian pears, pecans, and blue cheese.

Grated Trombocino with Tomato and Basil

Trombocino again, but Italian this time, and uncooked. As if this squash wasn't unique enough already, it has an entirely different character when raw, and tastes surprisingly like honeydew melon.

Ingredients
1/2 trombocino squash, coarsely grated (about 2 cups)
3-4 ripe and fragrant tomatoes, sliced and quartered
A handful of fresh basil, chiffonade (if it happens to be blooming, save the flowers for garnish)
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Freshly ground black pepper

Drain the grated squash by pressing or squeezing it gently to remove some of the excess water. Combine in a bowl with the tomato and basil, drizzle with olive oil and a couple spoonfuls of balsamic vinegar, and add some black pepper. Toss, serve, and garnish with basil flowers.

Serves 2.

Tomatoes Tossed with Lemon Basil

There were purple tomatoes in our produce box this week -- perfectly ripe and wonderfully fragrant. We cut them up, tossed them with a little extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and then added some freshly ground black pepper and a liberal sprinkling of chopped lemon basil. There's not much you have to do to amazing tomatoes to make them amazing, and so despite its simplicity, this salad was heavenly.

I hadn't appreciated lemon basil until it started showing up in our weekly box, and I can't remember seeing it in stores very often. It seems like the sort of thing that might be worth sticking in a pot on your back porch to have on hand. Use less of it in a salad like this than you would with regular basil.

Nicoise(ish) Salad

Leftover quail eggs, green and yellow beans, and baby greens in the fridge, and a toasty 106 degrees outside? Clearly the evening called for a cool summertime salad and a distinct lack of grocery-shopping. I've never found Nicoise salads to be particularly appealing (partly because I don't like most olives, so here I substituted a green variety that isn't pickled, which makes it taste much more olive oil-esque and less olive-y), but this adulterated version was pretty darn good.

 

Ingredients
Mixed baby greens & (optional) a handful of baby arugula
1 1/2 cups cooked cannellini beans* (or substitute canned)
1 can (hook-and-line/troll caught) albacore tuna, drained
2-3 shallots, halved and thinly sliced
1 tsp black mustard seeds
Several handfuls green and/or yellow beans
4 quail eggs (or sub 1 regular egg, boiled & sliced)
2-3 tbsp good quality extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp sherry vinegar
Zest of 1 lemon
Sliced olives (green or black)
1 tbsp chopped parsley, plus a little extra for garnish
2 sprigs oregano, finely chopped
Salt & freshly ground black pepper

In a wide pan, heat a little olive oil over medium-high heat. Add shallot and mustard seeds and saute for 1-2 minutes till soft, then add green beans and continue to saute, stirring, until just tender (after a couple minutes, you can add a tbsp of water and cover for a minute or two to cook them quickly without letting them dry out). Set aside to cool.



In a small pot, bring water to a simmer. Carefully poke holes in the big end of each quail egg with a pushpin (start very gently and twist the pin back and forth, just until it goes through the shell). Lay the eggs in a slotted spoon, then lower into the simmering water for just under 3 minutes. Raise spoon out of water, drain, and run under cool water for about 20 seconds. Peel each quail egg (by far the best way I found to do this was to gently crack the shell on all sides to smithereens, then gently peel while holding the egg under a light drizzle of cold water). Cut each egg in half and set aside. (As far as we can tell, after eating this salad, quail eggs were invented so that one could eat a medium-boiled egg with some yolk in every bite. If you by any chance feel exceedingly warm and fuzzy toward egg yolks, which certain authors of certain blogs do, quail eggs would be a good thing to track down somewhere and incorporate into some sort of arrangement where they go into your mouth, and you smile in blissful happiness.)

Combine tuna with a little olive oil in a bowl, then add cannellini beans and a little salt and pepper (unless your tuna and/or beans are already very salty -- if so, make sure to taste before you salt more).

Whisk olive oil, sherry vinegar, lemon zest, oregano, parsley, salt, and pepper together in a small bowl.

Toss the greens with a couple spoonfuls of dressing and arrange as a bed on each plate. Top with green beans on one side, white beans and tuna on the other. Drizzle with 1-2 more spoonfuls of dressing per plate. Sprinkle extra shallots from the pan over the top, along with the olives and extra parsley, and arrange the eggs on the top. Garnish with a sprig of parsley or oregano, and serve. (If it tastes at all bland, it needs a bit more salt and/or pepper to help the flavors pop out.)

Serves 2.


*Rinse and pick through dried beans carefully, then soak overnight in cold water, or put in a pot with enough water to cover by 1-2 inches and bring to a boil, simmer for 2-3 minutes, then turn off heat and let soak for an hour. Then, put in a pot with fresh water (about an inch above the beans), a bay leaf, and a few whole peeled garlic cloves, bring to a boil, and simmer for 60-90 minutes until tender.

Smoked Salmon Salad with Shaved Fennel and Asian Pear

Found at Costco: Smoked wild Alaskan salmon, Asian pears
Found at the Coop: Fennel bulb, local baby salad greens

Ingredients

Vinaigrette (make first and let sit to blend flavors)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp white wine vinegar
1 tbsp Meyer lemon juice
1 tbsp finely chopped fennel (top part)
Freshly ground black pepper

Several handfuls of mixed baby greens
Several slices of smoked salmon per person
½ fennel bulb, shaved, soaked in ice water for 10-20 minutes, drained, and patted dry (I have no idea how you're supposed to shave fennel, so I just quartered the bulb and then used a carrot peeler to shave off thin crescent-shaped slices)
Several small pieces of fennel (top), washed and patted dry
½ Asian pear, sliced fairly thinly


Whisk vinaigrette ingredients together in a small bowl.

Arrange lettuce in a bed on each plate. Layer shaved fennel over and drizzle lightly with dressing. Fan slices of Asian pear on one side and smoked salmon on the other, drizzle again with dressing, and garnish with fennel sprigs.

Serves 2