Simple-fancy salad

Hi! I'm back! I've been busy with a new job and new house, but I'm back to working on this blog more frequently.

Let's begin with dinner tonight: roasted beets and pears with baby spinach, pickled red onions, minced dried and reconstituted figs, and herbed goat cheese.

I'm trying really hard to plan out my food for the week--this means planning dinner with ingredients I have already and/or need to use up and packing lunches. I'm doing alright at it. Last week I made a great pizza from scratch using up some of my canned goods and yeast, but I had leftover veggies to incorporate into this week's meals.

I bought goat cheese to eat with crackers and tomatoes at work as well as spinach to go on the pizza, but I haven't finished either. Inspired by a salad I had last Friday night at a restaurant in SF, I decided to not only use up ingredients already on hand, but to also make something I hadn't before. That's another thing I'm really working on: making new things. I want to be inventive with whatever I buy and be experimental. All of this led to the salad above: I had some of the ingredients and I've never roasted beets or rehydrated any fruit!

Besides the obviously awesome bit about using up ingredients on hand, I liked this salad because it didn't require making a dressing. I'm getting better at making dressings from scratch, but I always end up with too much so I tend to try to avoid them. In this dish, though, I roast the beets and pears with a little bit of olive oil, and pickle the onions in apple cider and red wine vinegar, so that plus the figs and goat cheese gives it more than enough moisture, flavor, acid, and creaminess.

Simple-Fancy Salad
(I've named it this because it's simple to make--time-consuming, but easy, and fancy because the ingredients make me feel fancy!)

-2 small beets
-1 dried mission fig
-1/4 red onion chopped into smallish pieces or thinly sliced
-1/2 c tightly packed baby spinach (or more to taste)
-2 bosc pears, thinly sliced
-olive oil
-red wine vinegar
-apple cider vinegar
-salt/pepper
-herbed goat cheese (I really love that "Silver" brand from TJs that comes in a log)

To Make:
1. Preheat the oven to 425.
2. Wash and peel the beets, halve and quarter the halves (each beet should be in 8 pieces).  Place pieces on double layer of tin foil and lightly drizzle with olive oil. Squish the foil around the beets to make a little packet. Roast for about 1 hour-1 1/2 hours.



3. Peel the pears and thinly slice. Drizzle lightly with olive oil and roast for 20-30 mins or until very tender and starting to brown.



4. Meanwhile, slice the onion. Place in a shallow bowl and cover with half cider vinegar and half red wine vinegar to just cover the onions. Let pickle while prepping everything else.

5. Heat water to boiling. Once it's boiling, pour over the mission fig until the fig is covered and let stand until the water cools.

6. Put the spinach in a bowl and tear into bite-sized pieces, if you feel so inclined.

7. The pears will be done first, so take them out and let them cool in the pan. Next, get the beets out. They're done when they can be easily pierced with a fork. Dump them out of the tinfoil onto a cutting board and continue to let them cool. Roughly chop both into bite-sized pieces.

 

8. Add beets and pears to bowl w spinach, drain the fig, mince, and sprinkle on top, drain the onions and  scatter on top, and finally, crumble goat cheese on top. Finish with salt and pepper and toss.



The pears will turn pink and it will be just lovely!

Layered Salad

Salads are one of those things that I really don't make very often. I like them, don't get me wrong, but since I don't usually like just lettuce and dressing for a meal, I can't justify buying all of the ingredients. I love Caesar salads, but they aren't the most healthy or nutritious option in the salad world. I don't like nuts or carrots, which are easy additions to bulk up salads, and I never eat enough lettuce before it goes bad. However, I think I've found a way to eat more salads! I discovered my new favorite salad about a month ago when I was searching for a light summer meal that I could prep ahead of time. I came across an Asian steak salad and was immediately intrigued. It was fantastic. More on that later once I recreate it and take some photos, though.

This got me thinking about other ways to bulk up salads besides with meat. I have the Epicurious ap on my phone (and I'm obsessed!) so I typed in "summer," "salad," and "dinner" into the search categories and discovered this one. Well, my version is variation of the actual salad since I substituted artichoke hearts for olives and left out the fennel since I didn't have any). Anyway, what I love about this salad is that you can make it ahead of time (you're supposed to!) and it's unusual and filling enough to be a lovely dinner.

Layered Salad
as adapted from Epicurious

-1 heads of lettuce. I used a variety of greens but it calls for romaine.
-6-8 oz garbanzo beans (3/4 of a can, or more or less to taste)
-8 artichoke hearts, drained and chopped
-3 tomatoes, chopped (or 8 oz or so cherry tomatoes sliced in half)
-1 zucchini*, thinly sliced. I used a mandoline.

Dressing:
-1 head roasted garlic
-1 tsp olive oil
-1/2 c mayo
-1/4 c buttermilk
-2-3 T chopped, fresh basil
-salt/pepper to taste


In a large bowl, place the lettuce (washed and torn into bite-sized pieces), top with garbanzo beans, then artichoke hearts, then tomatoes, and finally, cover the entire top of the salad with zucchini, overlapping so you can't see anything underneath.


(*this is how you know how much to use. Slice part of the zucchini and start layering it, and stop when the salad is covered) Top with dressing and refrigerate at least 1 hour and up to 8. Toss and serve.

Dressing: blend all ingredients. Note: there will be more dressing than you need, most likely.

Happy New Year!

I'm rather behind, but I'll work on that in the next few days. Meanwhile, Christmas food catch-up:

I went home for a few days over Christmas and somehow or other managed to more or less make two separate dinners by myself (well, I had some help).

Christmas Eve:
-Rolls (which turned out more like biscuits)
-Roasted Veggies with Balsamic
-Spinach and Butter Lettuce Salad with Bleu Cheese, Caramelized Walnuts, Pomegranate, Pear, and Raspberry-Balsamic Vinaigrette
-Lamb with Mint Sauce
-Ground Lamb with Spices (Rosemary, Cardamom, Cinnamon, maybe something else)
-Baked Potatoes with Various Toppings
-The Cake (Angel Food Cake with Coffee Crunch Topping)

Salad:
-Baby Spinach
-Butter Lettuce
-Red Lettuce (or Arugula which I couldn't find)
-Pomegranate Seeds
-Bleu Cheese (crumbled)
-Pears (peeled and sliced)

For the Dressing:
-4 parts raspberry vinaigrette (Annie's is my favorite) to 1 part Balsamic, mix

Combine everything

Christmas Day:
-Turkey
-Mashed Potatoes
-Mashed Sweet Potatoes with Caramelized Shallots
-Roasted Veggies
-Stuffing
-Salad (same as above)
-Rolls (they turned out better)
-Gravy
-Pumpkin Pie + Whipped Cream

Turkey:
-my dad brined it the day before and then Christmas day left me to do the rest of it since he wasn't feeling so great. He usually just stuffs it with tangerines and sticks it in the oven for a while, but I decided to go a little fancier and add these weird, tiny apples I found in the fridge along with the tangerines (in the cavity) and then a spice rub under the skin. I was feeling fancy, what can I say! I got the idea for the spice rub in a Cooking Light that I naturally left at home, but it was a mixture of spices: cinnamon, cumin, black pepper, coriander, and maybe something green. Anyway, that was a fun experience/experiment. I thought it tasted pretty darn good, but I'm not sure there was a drastic difference...

Mashed Sweet Potatoes with Shallots:
-2-3 sweet potatoes, peeled
-1/2-1 shallot, peeled and thinly sliced (into rings)
-Pinch of Brown Sugar (or more to taste)
-Small Sprig of Rosemary (chopped)
-olive oil
-salt and pepper
-a little bit of milk and butter at the end *optional

Cook sweet potatoes in boiling water until tender, drain and put in another bowl. Add some of the cooking water and mash. Add chopped rosemary and mix well.
Heat a pan over medium heat, add the oil. When oil is hot, add the shallots and the brown sugar and cook shallots until soft and tender. Once tender, add to potatoes, mix and serve warm.

A Filling Salad

I like salad, I really do, but I always have a hard time just eating a salad for a meal. This is most likely because I'm a slightly picky eater...I don't like nuts, dried fruit, bell peppers of any color, olives, plain garbanzo beans (I do like hummus though), or raw broccoli. I know, I know, this is really bad. I've tried them all recently but for whatever reason, none of those things taste very good to me. I've had bean salads and those are ok, but they've never really been something I had to have again. The other day I was picking up a few things at Trader Joes and I was blown away by their sample that day. They had a salad made up of baby spinach, black lentils, champagne-pear vinaigrette, and I think raisins (which I avoided). It was delicious! Not only that, it was filling!

While I realize that most people make heartier salads by adding chicken, fish, or tofu, my problem there is that I really just don't eat meat/fake meat that often. I love it, don't get me wrong, but for some reason I just don't buy or prepare it much. I really should, and I'm going to start trying to do that, but it's really nice to have a non-meat/tofu hearty salad option.

Filling Salad (that can be adapted in many exciting ways):
-Baby spinach, or spinach plus one of those spring mixes, I just love spinach
-Feta
-Salt n pepper to taste
-A few spoonfuls cooked black lentils (I just got the kind at TJs that you can microwave)
-A ripe tomato, chopped (I used about half of one, or a little less)
-Chopped red onion, to taste
-Raspberry vinaigrette

-Combine everything in a bowl and enjoy

Tomato salad and other things

I currently have two jobs (though they are ending soon, so still, hire me?) and the one that just ended a few hours ago often feeds us. Sadly this was not the case tonight so I came home hungry. I decided on the last of my mini corn dogs (they are frozen but man oh man they are deeelicious) and to attempt to be healthy, and to use up the end of my tomatoes as they are starting to go bad, I made a fabulous tomato salad.
-One large tomato sliced
-Some fresh basil torn into really little chunks (any size you like, really, but I prefer most things smaller in salads)
-Red onion, also finely chopped
-Put all these on a plate, season with salt and pepper
-Drizzle with olive oil and vinegar
-Eat*

*Perhaps don't eat with corn dogs and beer while watching So You Think You Can Dance. I love the show, I love corn dogs, and am greatly enjoying my beer, but I happened to turn on the TV to the fantastic dance with Janeane and Brandon doing some kind of tango thing. It reminded me that I am totally out of shape and perhaps corn dogs are not the healthiest meal. Luckily the show is now over so I can enjoy my corn dogs in peace. This has also reminded me that I need to go out tango dancing soon. Maybe this weekend? I'll keep you posted.

I apologize for the lack of photos, but let's face it, it's easy to imagine and not exactly the most original salad ever, but highly delicious. I love tomatoes.