Roasted Beet and Burst Tomato Salad with Edamame

Here's a good transition dish when it's still winter but you want it to be summer. Roasted beets and cherry tomatoes bridge the gap, beets with their royal coats and tooth-warming bite, and the mini tomatoes, sweet bursts of summer-to-come. They're accompanied by a wholesome, but interesting assortment of veggies: cabbage, edamame, and tart, juicy lettuce leaf. Bringing it all together is a red wine vinegar and orange vinaigrette. Orange juice tones down the acidity, offering another nod to the sunshine that lies ahead. I've become rather fond of edamame, alone and in salads. A quick boil softens the beans into smooth, satisfying bites that pair well with the lettuce and bright dressing. 

Roasted Beet and Burst Tomato Salad with Edamame

Ingredients:

For salad:

1 box cherry tomatoes

2 beets, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch thick slices.

1 TBSP olive oil

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. ground pepper

1/2 head red leaf lettuce, washed and torn into bite-sized pieces

1/2 head romain lettuce, washed and torn into bite-sized pieces

1/2 head red cabbage, roughly chopped

1 cup edamame beans, (beans should be cooked and de-shelled according to package)

For Vinaigrette (from Fine Cooking): 

1/2 cup olive oil

3 TBSP red wine vinegar

1 TBSP honey

juice of 1/2 orange

zest of one orange

1-2 tsp. fresh thyme, finely chopped

1 TBSP Dijon mustard

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

--Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Toss tomatoes and beets with the oil, salt, and pepper, and place in a single layer in a lined baking pan. Cook for 20 minutes or until beets are tender when pierced with a fork. Remove from oven and let cool.

--Make dressing while the vegetables cool. Whisk together all vinaigrette ingredients. Taste and add more orange juice or mustard as necessary to balance out sweetness. 

--Toss together lettuces, cabbage, and edamame in a large bowl. Spoon roasted vegetables on top. Serve with vinaigrette.

Red Leaf Lettuce, Apple & Grapefruit Salad with Key Lime Vinaigrette

As the smog of midsummer weighs down on us all, an airy salad and its no-cook assembly becomes very appealing. So this is just a short post to share an impromptu salad I arranged and ate. During a recent farmers' market trip, I found a bulk deal on greens irresistible and returned home with an armful of kale, swiss chard, and this red leaf lettuce. I tore up the leaves, added grapefruit and apple from the fruit bowl, and stirred up a dressing of balsamic and key lime juice. The result was tart and light: a tropical salad that feels like it's cleansing the palate. Smooth, rich goat cheese tempers the crisp greens, while a fingerful of pepper eases the salad away from too much sweetness.

Edamame-Asparagus Salad with Herbed Greek Yogurt Dressing

I dearly love The New York Times for innumerable reasons, but I'll mention just a few. First, it gives me great delight to descend the stairs each morning and see sections of paper scattered across the kitchen table. They lie rumpled from an early-morning newsophile, and at the same time remain pristine enough to welcome the next set of eyes, which are a little blurry, but nonetheless eager to absorb its unflinching, insightful content. A second reason is their knack for suggesting excellent wines.

But we'll focus on a third reason for the time being: The NYT brought this recipe to my attention. It combined asparagus and chickpeas with fava beans and a yogurt dressing, offering a springtime dish I couldn't resist trying. I've never worked with favas before and haven't seen them at the local grocery, but they put me to mind of edamame, a relatively recent discovery for me. So I used soybeans instead, added more lemon then called for, and created a creamy, bright side dish.

Green Salad with Peppery Carrot Pennies

This recipe does not remotely resemble any Irish dish that I know of; nonetheless, I am claiming it as my contribution to the flurry of St. Patrick's Day-themed memorabilia and festivities. The recipe does, in my defense, contain two colours from the Irish flag. And carrot soup is common in Ireland. And the salad looks very green. So there you have a couple connective strands. But enough with the hemming and hawing- what's important here is that this is really quite delicious. It's also pretty hands-off. The only hard part is waiting for the carrots to cook.

Only now do I realize that I could have really elevated the dish (and completed the trifecta of Ireland's flag colours) by speckling the salad with rustic chunks of white Dubliner cheese. It's a favorite of my family's. I'm including the cheese in the recipe list, so that hopefully you will add it to your salad. I, alas, will have to wait until next time. But cheese or no cheese, the carrot pennies cooked down beautifully in about forty minutes. They are simple to prepare. I just gave them a quick slip-and-slide through the oil coating the pan. But it's the black pepper that I love--several good shakes of the biting specks brighten up the dish and act as a foil to the sweet carrot and the tangy dressing.

Serves 1.
Green Salad with Peppery Carrot Pennies
Ingredients:
2 carrots, scrubbed clean
1 TBSP olive oil
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
one large handful lettuce leaves (I used oak leaf lettuce, I believe)
salad dressing of choice (I used bottled red wine vinaigrette)
white cheddar or other sharp cheese, crumbled into small pieces (optional, but highly recommended)

Directions:
--Heat oven to 475 degrees F. Cut carrots into rounds, about 1/2 an inch wide. Take a 9-inch round or square pan and coat with oil. Add carrots to pan and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Spread carrots across pan, turning over to coat both sides with the oil, salt, and pepper. Roast for 40 minutes or until outsides have crisped and a knife easily pokes through the pennies.
--Wash lettuce and place in a bowl or on a plate. Toss with 1-2 TBSP dressing. Top the salad with the roasted pennies. Add cheese if desired.

Garlic-Rosemary Foccacia and Apple Salad with Hazelnut-Crusted Goat Cheese

Right about this time of year, I start to really miss the bygone Harvest Party. Every fall, around the October moon, my family's group of Michigan friends would organize the party. It was a potluck, always held at the same household, a lovely futon-filled house with a sloping backyard we scattered with toothy carved pumpkins. We kids would play in the backyard while parents (I only now assume) drank wine and didn't pay attention to us.  And we would all eat. It was a chance for everyone to delight in the delicious skills of others, and to offer their own. Most of the kids have grown up (or are in the process of doing so), and have spread across the country, so the party is no longer. Its vestiges are manifested, for me, through an autumn hankering to be in the kitchen. With the leaves turning and the air crisping up, all I want to do is cook. My extreme affinity for fall flavors doesn't help either. Squash and apples--I just love the stuff.



Mushroom-ricotta lasagna

Brown Sugar-Apple Cake

So this weekend was rather a cook-o-rama for me. I spent my entire Saturday in the kitchen, going straight from cooking (and eating) brunch to making dinner. And then I baked a cake on Sunday. I'm happy to supply any recipe pictured. I'm just highlighting two here: a foccacia and spring-mix salad with crisp apples and warm goat cheese coated in hazelnuts.

The foccacia starts with the simple white bread loaf recipe, only it's flecked with rosemary leaves. I kneaded them in before the dough rose. You could sprinkle them on top, but I wanted each bite to impart the fragrant, woodsy flavour. Then I added a good dose of olive oil, sliced garlic and coarse salt before baking. It's straightforward and scrumptious.

Garlic-Rosemary Foccacia

Ingredients:

1 recipe classic white bread loaf dough

1 TBSP dried rosemary leaves, crushed or coarsely chopped (I crushed them by rubbing the dried leaves between my hands)

2 TBSP olive oil

2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced

coarse salt

Directions:

--Make bread dough as directed. As you knead the dough smooth, add the rosemary. Continue with recipe, letting rise as normal.

--Heat oven to 425 degrees F. Lightly grease a 9x13 pan or cookie sheet. Pat dough down on pan. Using fingertips, press dimples into top of dough.

--Sprinkle olive oil, garlic and a few pinches of coarse salt over dough. Bake 20 minutes or until garlic is browned and foccacia feels hollow when tapped.

The salad is a really quick meal (and pairs nicely with the above foccacia). Sliced apples add an autumny note to a classic pepper-spring mix salad. The goat cheese receives a coating of chopped hazelnuts and is popped in the oven for a couple minutes, to become extra creamy and provide a contrast to the crunch of the nuts and apples.

Apple Salad with Hazelnut-Crusted Goat Cheese

Ingredients:

4 cups salad greens (I used a spring mix)

1 red bell pepper, sliced

2 tomatoes, chopped

2 apples, chopped into 1-inch squares

8-oz goat cheese, sliced into 9 rounds

1/4 cup hazelnuts, chopped

Dressing of your choice (I went for balsamic)

Directions:

--Mix greens, pepper, tomatoes and apples together in a large bowl. Add dressing and toss gently.

--Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line an 8x8 pan with parchment Place hazelnuts in a saucer. Gently roll sides of cheese in hazelnuts to form a coating. Place in pan. Repeat with 8 other rounds of cheese. Bake for 5 minutes, until cheese begins to soften and spread.

--Remove from oven. With a small spatula, place on top of salad greens.



Couscous Cakes & Salad with Lemon-Balsamic Vinaigrette

I often find recipes that look too good to be true. The magazine, blog or book might display a beautiful photo and claim an easy recipe, but in reality the dish is terribly fiddly and near impossible without surgical tools or a team of sous chefs. The recipe's author might successfully manage the tricky flipping or careful stirring, perhaps, but I will never be able to fully recreate the delicate dish. Such, I thought, would be the case with these couscous cakes. They looked beautiful in the picture, and the recipe appeared quite straightforward. Simply stir together cooked couscous and eggs, stuff into measuring cups to form the shape, and then dunk into a frying pan. But I knew it couldn't be so simple; there were simply too many opportunities for the cakes to fall apart, casting tiny kernels of couscous across the kitchen. Contrary to my fears, however, the recipe really was quite easy and manageable. The cakes held together just as the recipe claimed they would, and tasted just as gorgeous and complex as they looked.

The first trial was scooping the couscous mixture into 1/4 cup measuring cups and then unmolding them onto a plate while the pan heated up. The mixture, as you can see above, stayed together very neatly, giving me little towers of grain. The next not-so-challenging task was flipping the cakes in the pan. And once I realised that I needed to give the cakes enough time on one side to really crisp up, flipping was a breeze, as the cakes kept their shape very willingly.

The salad accompanying the cake is really a free-for-all; put whatever you'd like in it. I had basil in the couscous recipe, so I went with Italian flavours in the salad; tomatoes and artichokes, with a lemon-balsamic vinaigrette. The vinaigrette was lovely and tart, very refreshing on the summer evening and a nice compliment to the lightly fried cakes.

Adapted from Fine Cooking's couscous cakes.

Couscous Cakes & Salad with Lemon-Balsamic Vinaigrette

Ingredients for Cakes:
3/4 cup couscous

1/2 cup canned chickpeas, rinsed and drained

1 large clove garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1 TBSP dried basil
2 large eggs
zest of one lemon

salt and pepper

olive oil for the pan

Ingredients for Salad:

8 oz. baby greens, rinsed

14-oz jar of marinated artichoke hearts, chopped

1/2 cup cherry tomatoes, halved

handful of bean sprouts

Ingredients for Dressing:

2 TBSP lemon juice
5 TBSP olive oil
4 TBSP balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper

Directions:

--Bring to a boil 1 cup water. Pour over couscous and let sit 4-5 minutes.

--Mash chickpeas with a fork (or chop in a food processor). Mix with garlic, basil, lemon zest and 1 tsp salt until combined. Lightly whisk eggs and add to chickpeas along with couscous. Press mixture into a 1/4 cup measuring cup, and invert onto a plate. Repeat with remaining mixture; batter should make approximately 9 cakes.

--Heat 1 1/2 TBSP olive oil in a frying or nonstick pan over medium heat. Using a spatula, transfer couscous patties to pan, as many as your pan fits at one time. Flatten cakes to about 3/4 inch thick and cook until brown and patty stays together, about 4 minutes. Flip and cook until other side is browned. Transfer to paper towel-lined plate. Add 1 1/2 TBSP more oil and cook remaining cakes.

--Assemble salad. Put greens in bowl and scatter artichokes, tomatoes and bean sprouts over salad greens. Whisk together dressing ingredients, adding salt and pepper to taste, and pour over greens. Gently toss.

--Serve salad with couscous cakes on top or on the side. I let the dinner guests add as many as they wanted from a side platter, but it could be quite pretty to place them directly in the bowl of salad as well.

Curried Panzanella Salad with Ricotta and Sesame

Stale bread. Happens to us all. And for someone who doesn't like to throw anything away, until it's growing its own fuzzy garden, it is a problem. Living on my own makes it difficult to finish a whole loaf in a decent amount of time, so after a few good peanut butter sandwiches, I'm usually left with a half-loaf of dry bread. French Toast and Bread Pudding are good options, but for dinner I thought I'd make bread salad.

This is a summery panzanella, filled with corn, spinach and whole wheat bread. I toasted the bread in big, rustic chunks on a skillet (although this could be done in the oven) with olive oil and roasted garlic. They went into a bowl of cooked sweet corn and spinach, and the whole thing got a dousing of curry powder, salt and pepper. Then on top goes a dusting of sesame seeds and a dollup of mixed ricotta and mozzarella. The toasted bread and sesame seeds add a terrific crunch to the juicy corn and silky spinach. The ricotta breaks apart as you eat it, adding a creaminess to every bite. The proportions of ingredients here are really guidelines; more spinach or less bread would still create a lovely salad; just use what's available.

Curried Panzanella Salad with Ricotta and Sesame
Ingredients:
2 ears corn
1/2 cup frozen spinach (or about 1 cup of fresh leaves)
1 TBSP olive oil
Half a loaf of bread, cut into roughly 1-inch square chunks. Your choice of bread type type (I used whole wheat)
1 bulb garlic, roasted and diced (or 2 TBSP minced garlic)
1 tsp curry powder
salt and pepper
1/2 cup ricotta
4 oz mozzarella, shredded
sesame seeds

Directions:
--Bring a pot of water to boil. Add corn and cook about four minutes, more if the ears are particularly large. Remove corn from pot but do not drain water out. Add frozen spinach into the water and cook two minutes, until leaves are fully defrosted and separated (or until fresh leaves are wilted). With a knife, cut kernels from the cob. Mix spinach with corn, 1/2 TBSP curry powder and salt and pepper to taste.
--Heat oil in a small skillet. Add 1/2 TBSP curry powder. Add bread and garlic and cook, stirring often, until bread is toasty and crisp on the outside, about four minutes.
--Mix ricotta and mozarella together. Add bread to corn mixture and stir. Divide into two bowls and top each with a scoop of ricotta. Sprinkle with sesame seeds.