Category Archives: salad

Sailcooking: Wood-Fired Steak and Spicy Green Beans

Posted by Dave in meat, salad, vegetarian and tagged with , , ,

Our chartered sailboat docked at an island, as seen from the firepit near the beach.

Some of my friends are experienced sailors, and I recently had the awesome opportunity to sail Lake Superior with them; specifically, we explored the Apostle Islands.  There were a total of four of us guys on our chartered sailboat for four days in early September.

I don’t know much about sailing, so I made my primary contribution be our food; I did the food shopping and the cooking of our evening meals including chicken fajitas, birch-grilled steak, and grilled pork chops marinated in salsa verde.

We stayed on the boat every day of the trip; it was conveniently equiped with quite a complete kitchen, and even a propane-fueled grill over the stern.

The sailboat galley with gimbaled stove.

On one day we sailed to an island that had a dock in water deep enough for our keelboat, so that day we grilled ribeye steaks ashore over local birchwood from the boreal forest.

While we are all meat-eating men, we’re not savages.  We accompanied the dinner with a salad with freshly-made croutons of diced sourdough bread browned in olive oil, minced garlic, and salt.

Garlic sourdough croutons.

Mixed greens salad.

Our side dish was spicy green beans, similar to szechuan-style green beans.  Red pepper flakes and garlic were soaked in olive oil for a while, then we sautéed whole, trimmed green beans in that spiced oil.

Spicy green beans.

While I was aboard preparing the sides, one of my fellow sailors expertly grilled our thick ribeye steaks (rubbed with garlic olive oil, and minced garlic, salt and pepper) at the beach over a birchwood fire.  They were excellent, as evidence by my eating before taking a photograph; grilling over wood makes a huge difference in flavor as compared to gas or charcoal.

Ribeye steak grilled over birchwood, spicy green beans, and salad.

It was a spectacular trip, and the four of us guys managed to eat better than we ought to have. Ah, roughing it. :)

Salade Niçoise

Posted by Dave in fish, mediterranean, potatoes, salad and tagged with , , , ,

Salade Niçoise: a french treat with tuna and anchovies

Here’s a delicious and colorful salad that makes a whole meal… and it’s perfect to make with your fresh vegetables on a warm summer day.

There are a number variations of the Niçoise Salad, common in its namesake city, Nice, France, and along the rest of the Côte d’Azur, where I first enjoyed it.
Apparently it became popular in the states because of Julia Child.

Last night, in anticipation of this salad, my companion and I biked around our city to procure vegetables from the yard and from a little farmers’ market (4-7pm!).  After a nice summer evening’s ride with a short stop for live music and visiting friends, we prepared our ginormous Niçoise salad from these ingredients (for 4 meal-sized servings):

  • romaine and other leaf lettuce, torn to bite sized
  • Nasturtium leaves, chopped
  • fresh basil leaves, chopped
  • fresh parsley, chopped
  • scallion greens, from 2 scallions, finely cut
  • green beans, 1 pound, blanched (we substituted some nice Dragon Tongue Beans that surprising lost their purple stripes when cooked)
  • ripe roma tomatoes, 3, quartered and coarsely chopped
  • eggs, 4, hard-boiled, and quartered
  • fingerling potatoes (~1/2 pound), boiled (e.g., with the eggs)
  • green olives, pitted
  • tuna, 1 can, partially drained of oil
  • anchovy, about 2/3 of one very small jar

Dressing ingredients:

  • balsamic vinegar, 1 T.
  • apple cider vinegar, ~1/8 cup
  • Dijon-style mustard, 1-2 T. (e.g., Grey Poupon Country Dijon)
  • honey, ~1 t., to taste
  • olive oil, 1-2 T.
  • water (sparingly, to dilute slightly if desired)
  • capers
  • salt & pepper, to taste if desired

Niçoise Salad

To serve, we tossed the cooked beans with dressing, and placed them atop the chopped lettuce on a large platter and arranged the other toppings, leaving the tuna and anchovies for last, and finally lightly drizzled the salad with the rest of the dressing and olive oil.

Salade Niçoise, plated

I enjoyed this both for dinner and my subsequent day’s lunch. :)

Give it a try and experinece this tasty sample of southern France, especially if you can find some beautilful vegetables in your garden or at your farmers’ market!

Mediterranean White Fish Salad

Posted by Dave in fish, mediterranean, salad and tagged with , ,

Mediterranean White Fish Salad

I visted the farmers’ market this morning and found some nice romaine lettuce and slender green onions (amongst other things) and decided to make this quick salad for lunch – before, hopefully, heading out to the lake with some friends.

Ingredients, for the fish:

  • white fish filet (I used swai, from frozen; tilapia would be a good choice as well)
  • lemon juice
  • dill
  • mint leaves, finely chopped
  • rosemary
  • fennel seed
  • oregano
  • green onion, whites cut finely
  • salt
  • black pepper
  • kyopoolu (I used Trader Joe’s Red Pepper Spread;
    You can also find kyopoolu or avjar at Polish, Bulgarian, etc. delis or stores.)

Ingredients for the salad:

  • romaine lettuce
  • green onions, greens cut finely
  • kalamata olives
  • balsamic vinaigrette dressing
  • olive oil

To prepare:

Pat the filet mostly dry and coat liberally with all the spices, i.e., everything but the green onion and kyopoolu, as if you were making blackened fish, for instance.  In a cast iron or other skillet on medium high heat, pan fry the filet in olive oil.  When the fish is nearly done (flip to cook both sides), add the green onion to the hot pan and spread a teaspoon or two of kyopoolu on onse side of the filet, and flip that side down briefly.

Here, I served the fish filet atop a salad of the ingredients above, drizzled with some olive oil.

This was a tasty salad; I hope it inspires you to have a nice summertime lunches too. :)

Sesame Pea Shoot Salad

Posted by Dave in asian, gluten-free, salad, vegetarian and tagged with , , ,

Sesame Pea Shoot Salad with red pepper and chickpeas

This salad was my veggie offering at two Memorial Day BBQ parties that I attended; it’s a simple salad of basically 3 vegetables and a tangy dressing.

The salad dressing is my homemade version fo Trader Joe’s Goddess dressing.  I simply worked from the ingredient list on my empty bottle: vegetable oil, water, tahini, apple cider vinegar, soy sauce, [lemon juice,] salt, garlic, sesame seeds, [spices, zanthan gum.]

“Goddess” dressing ingredients

I skipped the ingredients shown in brackets (above), used sunflower oil, and I used tamari instead of soy sauce.  (Tamari is basically a gluten-free soy sauce.)

Combine these ingredients in a blender and liquify while adjusting to taste.  To the best of my recollection I used these quantities:

  • ~2 T. sunflower oil
  • ~1/3 cup water
  • ~1- 1 1/2 T. apple cider vinegar
  • ~2 T. tahini
  • ~1 1/2 T. tamari (or soy sauce)
  • 4 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
  • salt to taste (sparingly, as the tamari or soy sauce is salty)

I deferred the addition of~4 T. sesame seeds to the salad afterward rather than blending into the salad dressing.

If you’ve not had Trader Joe’s Goddess dressing, it’s a smooth dressing that is tan in color (slightly browner than the tahini).

The blended “Goddess” dressing

To prepare the salad, I coarsely chopped 8 oz. of pea shoots, finely diced one red pepper (seeds and veins removed), and drained and rinsed one soup-sized can of chickpeas.

Then I tossed the pea shoots, red pepper, and chickpeas with about 1/4 of the aforementioned prepared dressing (add sparingly, so as not to drown the vegetables in dressing), and a generous amount of sesame seeds.

I don’t know whether or not everyone enjoyed this salad, but I did, and the dish was empty by the time I left the party.

Regardless, whether you buy it from the store or make it yourself, this dressing is a hit.

Yay, I’m all caught up – now just to read all your recipes that I missed! :-)

A Shrimpy Lobster Roll

Posted by Dave in asian, salad, shellfish and tagged with , , ,

The Grilled Shrimp Roll

Shrimp Week’s dramatic conclusion!

If you’ve ever had a Lobster Roll, then you know it’s approximately the best sandwich in the universe…
Certainly, you’ll agree it’s at least the best sandwich in Maine.
Here’s my twist on that classic, prepared with some left-over grilled shrimp.

Shrimp Roll ingredients

Ingredients (per sandwich):

  • cooked shrimp, I used 5 large grilled shrimp cut to bite-sized pieces
  • 2 napa cabbage leaves
  • 1 celery stalk, diced
  • chives, minced
  • ciabatta or other long sandwich roll
  • Thai Peanut-Lime Dipping Sauce

Preparation:
In a bowl, simply mix shrimp, celery, chives, and (sparingly) the coconut milk-based peanut-lime sauce to prepare a sort of shrimp salad.  Since the sauce is quite thin, be sure not to add too much.
Assemble the sandwich by filling the roll with that mix, atop the napa cabbage leaf; this helps prevent the thin sauce from saturating the roll.

Grilled Shrimp Salad / sandwich filling

I served the Shrimp Roll with a bit more sauce for dipping.

Grilled Shrimp Roll with Thai Peanut-Lime Dipping Sauce

As you can see, this sandwich is so tasty that I didn’t manage to get another photo before taking a few bites. :-)

You can find the recipe for the sauce here:

Coconut, Peanut, & Pea Shoot Salad

Posted by Dave in asian, salad, shellfish, soup, vegan, vegetarian and tagged with , , , ,

Coconut, Peanut, and Pea Shoot Salad

Here’s a delicious salad that I arrived at by accident… and, despite having two nuts in its name, it contains no nuts, since coconut is not a proper nut and peanut is a legume or bean!

I was planning to make Tom Kha Talay, but when I opened the can of what I thought was coconut milk, I found that I had bought a can of young coconut meat instead. No problem, right?

If you’ve ever bought a young coconut, often served in China-towns as a coconut water beverage, then you’re probably familiar with the tender, sweet meat that lines the young coconut cavity.  The canned version I bought is the same, but in a sweet sugar-based syrup.

So, what to do?  I still had a pile of pea shoots for a salad to accompany the soup… how about adding the sweet coconut meat to a soup and a salad?

Here are the salad ingredients: pea shoots, mung bean sprouts, sliced young coconut meat, chopped roasted, unsalted peanut, tossed with a modest amount of Trader Joes’ Goddess dressing and a dash of fresh lime juice, and topped with more chopped peanut and lime zest.

As a fairly quick lunch, a number of the ingredients are off-the-shelf from the store.
If you haven’t had Trader Joe’s Goddess dressing, it is an oil and vinegar-based dressing with a delicious flavor dominated by soy, tahini (sesame), and garlic.

Prepared ingredients

For my  lunch, the salad was accompanied by Tom Yum Goong, made from store-bought Tom Yum Paste, homemade fish stock, diced potato, sliced carrot, sliced scallion, chopped green cabbage, quartered baby bella mushroom, chopped fresh cilantro, peeled shrimp (from frozen, raw), and chopped young coconut meat.

Tom Yum Goong with Coconut, Peanut, and Pea Shoot Salad

Next time you’re in an asian grocery, pick up some young coconut, and give this great salad and/or soup a try!

Chicken Fajita Salad

Posted by Dave in meat, salad, texmex and tagged with , , ,

Chicken Fajita Salad

Marinate chicken breasts (one per serving) in lime juice, minced garlic, salt, pepper, thyme, ground cumin, and crushed whole dry mexican oregano (i.e., oregano with buds).
I suggest marinating them for 8-48 hours.

Prepare pico de gallo: diced tomato (cored), finely diced jalapeno, minced garlic, minced onion (white), chopped cilantro, lime juice, salt.
Optionally add diced ripe (but not too ripe) avocado.

Prepare a creamy cilantro-lime sauce of: sour cream, heavy cream and/or milk, fresh cilantro leaves, fresh lime juice, minced garlic, balsamic vinegar, cumin powder, fresh ground pepper, and salt.
Purée this in a food processor or blender.

Pan fry strips of corn tortillas in olive oil until crisp.

Grill or pan fry the whole marinated chicken breasts in oil and marinade; blacken and sauté red pepper strips. Slice the chicken breasts (across the grain) and serve with the sautéd red pepper strips atop chopped Romaine lettuce. Top with cilantro-lime sauce, pico de gallo, crisp tortilla strips, and garnish with slices of lime, ripe avocado, and cilantro leaves.

I consulted these recipes for ingredient ideas:

“Creamy Cilantro-Lime Sauce”

http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/creamy-cilantro-lime-sauce-10000000221985/

“Chicken Fajita Salad”

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/chicken-fajita-salad/

Spicy Cornmeal-crusted Catfish

Posted by Dave in awards, fish, potatoes, salad and tagged with , , , , ,

Spicy Cornmeal-crusted Catfish

Pan-fried catfish fillets are one of my favorites. Here the catfish is dipped in an egg/milk wash and coated with cornmeal, seasoned with crushed rosemary, oregano, thyme, turkish paprika, cayenne powder, salt and pepper and pan-fried. Topped with a sauce of mayonnaise, hot pepper sauce, minced cilantro leaves, and lime juice.

Accompanied by roasted potato stacks (sweet and russet potato, with olive oil, garlic, salt and peper, sprinked with thyme leaves) and sautéed red cabbage and spinach, with pine nuts, and tossed with a mustard vinaigrette dressing (olive oil, balsamic vinegar, dijon mustard, honey, garlic, and black pepper).

Here are some related recipes:
“Roasted Potato Stacks”

http://gourmandrecipes.com/roasted-potato-recipe/

“Red Cabbage and Warm Spinach Salad”

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Red-Cabbage-and-Warm-Spinach-Salad-103305 

Certified Yummly Recipes on Yummly.com

UPDATE: The recipe search site Yummly selected this recipe of mine and dubbed my blog “Certified yummly.” :)

“Kickin’ Catfish Recipes for National Catfish Day”

http://www.yummly.com/blog/2012/06/kickin-catfish-recipes-for-national-catfish-day/

Panini with Cucumber and Tomato Salad

Posted by Dave in meat, salad, vegetarian and tagged with , , ,

Panini with Cucumber and Tomato Salad

Salad: european cucumber, sugar plum tomatoes, and chopped red onion tossed with a dressing of apple cider vinegar, celery seed, salt, pepper, and olive oil.

Sandwich: sourdough smeared with hummus, dry salami, sliced mushroom, pecorino romano, sliced jalapeno, red onion, sliced garlic… panini pressed or baked open faced at ~350°F until cheese melts and garlic browns then topped with sliced avocado and tzatziki sauce (greek yogurt, cucumber, dill, garlic).