Jumble Salad

I love a salad like this, a jumble of colorful chunks of crunch, drizzled with a little vinaigrette.

There is no recipe - you just keep piling on layers of stuff until you have a plateful of color. Torn lettuce buried in diagonal carrot slices, tomato wedges, slivers of cucumber, broccoli florets, raw corn off the cob and leftover beef, in this case, Black Dragon tri-tip.

Drizzle, drizzle, drizzle and you have a hot-day dinner that can't be bettered.

Gym For The Jaw

Limp salad just doesn't do it for me. One of my pet peeves is salad that has clearly spent too much time getting to know its dressing. Limp and soggy, they hang from the fork and simply are not worth the calories to eat them. For example, wilted salads, even when they are made limp on purpose, always make me think, "Why?"

I like salads that are crisp and crunchy, a workout for the teeth and jaw muscles.

Last night, surveying the contents of the fridge and trying to come up with something a little different to round out our dinner, I decided to put together a simple, crunch-filled salad. I had some small, fresh carrots and a sparkling head of broccoli fresh from the farmer's market, half an onion and that jar of pickled cauliflower that my friend Carla gave me last week. They seemed like the makings for a fun dish, so I pulled them out. I peeled and sliced the carrots in thick diagonals. Beheaded the broccoli and cut it into small florets, peeling and cutting up the stem as well. Minced the onion since I can't eat much raw onion before revolution happens in my stomach but I love the flavor. Chopped a generous handful of fresh Italian parsley. Diced the pickled cauliflower and tossed all those ingredients together.

The dressing was a very strange combination, I'll admit it. I whisked together a quick balsamic vinaigrette, then gentled it with just a teaspoon of mayo. Tossed with the salad stuff, it was creamy without being heavy and tasty, tasty, tasty. We munched our way through all that health food, relishing the exercise and the tangy flavors.

Salad Days

There are days when even I, not a huge fan of salads, find myself dreaming of a big, crunchy, crisp green one - mostly on those incredibly hot days that strike us occasionally. I think of them as the Salad Days.

The Bay area has its own natural air conditioning, a well-behaved fog bank that hovers over the cold water offshore most days and whistles inland most evenings. Mainly, this happens like clockwork and keeps our summer temperatures down into the 70s or low 80s. Every now and then, however, when the high pressure system is inland rather than parked over the ocean, we get wind from the valley and it gets HOT. One such day happened last week - by dinner time, the thermometer in the house read 92. Luckily, that temperature coincided with a nice chunk of leftover grilled Kobe-style steak from the night before. As the temperature rose, the idea of salad was sounding better and better.

Nothing exotic here, really, but each ingredient was lovely of its kind - the crunch of raw broccoli, the softness of fresh red lettuce, the snap of peeled carrots, the squish of fresh tomato mixed with some quartered mushrooms, de-stringed celery slices and fingerling potatoes and drizzled with a little balsamic vinaigrette. A few ripe strawberries and some slices of cold steak. Even a bit of avocado to add richness to the plate. No cooking, just chopping. Less effort expended and no heat needed.

Salads like this - ones with plenty of crunch and flavor - are the perfect hot day dinner, just made for the Salad Days.

Salad Spinners

At this time of year, my garden is full of nasturtiums. I didn't plant them; they are volunteers. They don't survive the dry summers for very long but they are a welcome addition while they last. Not only do they light up the garden, they perk up our salads, too.

They have a peppery, spicy sort of taste that goes well in all kinds of mixed salads and they provide a splash of bright color until the tomatoes are ready to take over that job.

Next time you are looking to put a fresh spin on a salad, look around in the garden - you may find some tasty surprises.

Aunt Salad

I'm not a huge salad fan but when I do make one, I like them to have lots of variety and texture. When I was in my teens, my California-raised Aunt Sally served us a salad one evening that remains fixed in my memory even today.

Unlike the salads served in our home, which consisted mainly of lettuce and tomato with the occasional half an avocado shared among six diners, this salad was filled with raw crunchy broccoli, green and purple onions, cherry tomatoes, red and yellow bell peppers, several kinds of lettuce, raw cauliflower, marinated artichoke hearts and big, big chunks of rich, buttery avocado all bound together into one glorious whole by a nice lemon vinaigrette. I make this kind of bumpy, generous salad whenever I'm presented with a salad bar and, just occasionally, at home.

This particular salad was also graced a sprinkle of grated cheese and a lovely slab of perfectly grilled and lightly soy seasoned salmon that I bought, ready made, at Andronico's last time I did my shopping. It had been a hot, hot day and only a salad would do for dinner so I pulled out the crisper drawer and got to chopping. It was a cornucopia of fresh California produce, topped with the bounty of the sea at our doorstep. Cool, crisp, satisfyingly chewy-crunchy, it brought Aunt Sally's memorable salad to mind.

Green Goo

You've heard of Green Goddess but have you tried Green Goo?

I invented Green Goo last weekend when My Beloved and I were fixing salads for lunch. As you know, I've been on a Greek yogurt kick, so I thought I'd try making a simple salad dressing by whisking together the yogurt, some basil pesto (I didn't make the pesto - bought it at our local farmer's market) and a squeeze of lemon juice.

Okay, so it wasn't the prettiest dressing you've ever seen - in fact, it was a downright unhealthy sort of green. Try it anyway. The taste was stellar - tangy, garlicky, lemony tune with that earthy basil flavor muttering sub rosa like that funny old guy, Tyrone T. Horneigh, in the Laugh-In show who always gets clocked with the spinster's purse.

Green Goo. Gotta love it.

"Mater" Magic

Salads are ridiculously easy once the tomatoes come ripe. My neighbor went on vacation just as his were coming in - big mistake. He asked me to take in his mail and water the plants in exchange for some ripe tomatoes. Since mine are still a-coming but not yet really here, I jumped at the chance to be a helpful neighbor.

Slice a ripe tomato. Top it with a little yogurt or creme fraiche. Plop on a spoonful of pesto and presto!

Cheating the Season

Okay, I admit it - I bought cherry tomatoes imported from Mexico to hurry along the summer season. Usually, I try to eat locally and seasonally and this year I planted my own cherry tomato bush, but this time I just had to. You see, my oregano, planted as a tiny sprig a month or so ago, is now a healthy plant threatening to outgrow its side of the pot it shares with the tomato and other herbs, so I needed to pinch it back. It reminds me of a six year-old boy - a little too eager and aggressive, but delightful just the same.

I decided to make a caprese salad using the oregano tips rather than the more traditional basil and we actually liked it even better. The vinaigrette was simple - just a tablespoon of Dijon mustard whisked with a similar amount of Meyer lemon juice, a squeezed clove of garlic and about twice the amount of olive oil, plus the minced oregano.

I may have rushed the tomato season a bit, but it was worth it.

Foraging for Memories

Back when I was a botany student at SUNY Brockport, my heroine was a graceful little biology professor with a ballet background named Dr. Jean Bobear. Dr. Bobear could keep a class of mostly adolescent varlets entranced with just the plants found along a 20-foot stretch of campus sidewalk; she had a nearly-encyclopedic memory for local plants. Even better, the only time I ever stumped her by finding a plant whose name, habits and history she didn't know, she was thrilled and researched it in her taxonomy book as soon as we returned to the lab. How wonderful life would be if everyone was so passionate and joyous about their work, and had so little ego!

Dr. Bobear taught a fun course in the summer, "Edible and Useful Plants of Western New York," one of my favorites ever. We got to scrounge all kinds of plant materials, from bayberry from which I made candles to wild spearmint that I stuffed into a chicken and roasted for the class to eat during student presentations. We found goosefoot to be an excellent green when steamed and pigweed and oxalis to be lively additions to salads. Ever since, I have walked with my eyes down, automatically looking and remembering with gratitude Dr. Bobear's expertise.

One of the lessons she instilled was that when collecting plant materials, one must first be sure that there are plenty more before picking - how sad it would be to end the life of a rare plant! So, on one of my rambles around town with Cora, when I found this miner's lettuce (for my fellow plant geeks, Claytonia perfoliata) growing wild and wanted it for my salad, I checked carefully to make sure it was abundant before harvesting.

Another of Dr. Bobear's lessons was to be sure that anything you foraged was carefully identified and eaten only in small amounts the first time, just in case you have mistakenedly identified it or happen to have an allergy to it. She also taught me not to collect plants near sidewalks and roadways as passing dogs are likely to have "marked" it!

Henry Brooks Adams said: "A teacher affects eternity - he can never tell where his influence stops." More than 25 years later, Dr. Bobear's lessons are still with me - and now with you, too.

We Fava-red This Version

Because the fava beans I painstakingly shelled and steamed reminded me of edamame, I thought perhaps a little Asian twist would perk up their mild flavor without drowning it. I was dreaming of ginger and shoyu and such.

In the fridge I found an avocado, some fresh bright orange carrots, a single tangerine and some bacon left over from my BLT at Barney's. With some green onion and rice vinegar, all that seemed like a fun combination for my second fava salad attempt.

I took the zest off the tangerine before sectioning it for the salad and kept the zest to add to the dressing. To the zest, I added sliced green onion, the shoyu, rice wine vinegar, grated fresh ginger and a dollop of Dijon mustard, mixed it all together and drizzled it very lightly over the avocado slices, tangerine sections, fava beans, carrot slices and bacon bits.

It was a beautiful salad with fresh bright colors and tangy, lively dressing. The creamy avocado was great with the tangerine, the crunch of the carrot and bacon bits. Once again, I felt that the delicate favas were a little out of their league with these big flavors but they did add a pretty note of green and, because I used only a light drizzle of dressing, there was an occasional hint of fresh fava flavor peeking through from bite to bite.

We favored this version strongly over the previous one - this one, we'd even make again!

Crunch 'n' Munch Salad

I've been trying for the past couple of months to buy something new to me each time I go to the store, to widen my repertoire and to get out of the blogging blahs. My latest attempt is kohlrabi, a vegetable I had never tasted and rarely even heard about.

Kohlrabi is actually an enlarged stem of a plant closely related to broccoli (oh, those lovable crucifers!) so once the barrel-shaped purple stem was peeled down to its pale green innards, it tasted like very mild, crisp broccoli with celery root texture. I'd say that kohlrabi is to broccoli as celery root is to celery, a milder, sweeter cousin.

A few days ago, we ate half the kohlrabi in our Hobo Packets, but I still had a bit left, so I decided to try making a sort of chunky slaw with the remainder. I cut the kohlrabi into matchsticks and sliced a fennel bulb into into curls of about the same thickness, squeezed half a Meyer lemon over them and, just before serving, tossed both with a Dijon-style mustard vinaigrette made with Meyer lemon juice and olive oil. Garnished with lemon zest and a sprig of fennel leaf, it made a pretty salad with a manly crunch and a sweet-tart tang.

If that doesn't get me out of the blogging blahs, nothing will!

Waldorf with a Twist

We had some nice Fuji apples in the fridge but not enough for a pie or a tart, so instead I had the idea to make apple salad. I didn't want a heavy, honest-to-the-recipe Waldorf salad but I did want some sweet and savory crunch.

I diced the apples, some celery and fennel, mixed that all together with some raisins.

All that sweetness needed something to keep it from being cloying, so I added a full lemon's worth of juice and the zest from half the lemon to a very little mayo and stirred them together. Also added a handful of walnut pieces for the nutty bitterness, two green onions, sliced, and a lot of fresh thyme from the garden to slide it over to the savory side. Toss and tumble.

All in all, we were pleased with this twist on the Waldorf.

Picasso Salad

Love these late summer salads that end up looking like art work.

Light green romaine on the bottom, raw zucchini ribbons underneath a round of heirloom yellow tomato, two of dry-farmed red tomatoes and topped with purple onion slivers.

Honest, I didn't arrange it - the face just appeared.

Pablo. Colorful guy. Is he winking?

Skinny Little Shrooms

Since tomatoes seem to be suspect these days, I'm sticking with green salads until the FDA figures out where the nasty ones came from. So, on Father's Day, when I was making dinner to celebrate two of my favorite Dads, I used a combination of red leaf lettuce, butter lettuce, frisee, green onions and red Swiss chard stems for crunchy color (pure serendipity that they matched the napkins so well) but, it wasn't really beautiful until I added the skinny little shrooms. I love these enoki mushrooms for their weird shape, mild taste and for the white fireworks they add to almost any dish. Plated on my favorite fused glass plates and over my mother's china, it made quite a pretty picture!

Playful Caesar

My Virginia brother and his wife have lived in Paris for five years during two tours of duty during his Navy career. He seems to have concentrated on learning about wines while she attended classes at the Cordon Bleu;
needless to say, when we visit them, I have high expectations. They have a way of finding really, really good restaurants, even in places like Rochester, NY where ziti with red sauce from a can is considered a culinary highlight.

This time, my expectations were exceeded. We dined at a restaurant called FarrahOlivia by Morou in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, where my first course was a delightfully silly deconstructed Caesar salad. All the pieces were there, wonderfully fresh and beautifully presented - left to right at the top, fresh sardines as a riff on the usual anchovies, Caesar dressing in a tangy pool, and crisp, crisp bread crumbs rather than croutons which might have been difficult to eat in this way. The lettuce was sliced lengthwise to present both young and mature leaves, drizzled with dressing and punctuated by a delicate, flavorful parmesan cheese custard.

He has done it again, my Virginia brother. Stay tuned for the rest of the meal...

Leafless Salad

I can really tell that spring has sprung now because I am enjoying salads again. I generally go into salad hibernation 'round about November and don't emerge until March or April. The leafy ones are still slightly suspect, to me, but this crunchy, munchy one was the order of the day, even though I had to chew only on the left side as I had a root canal yesterday on the right.

My Beloved was away on business so I was taking a cooking vacay. Broccoli and cauliflower chunks, whole cherry tomatoes, cubes of avocado, celery and a sprinkling of pickle relish all seemed appealing when I opened the fridge so I added them to a small can of tuna and dressed the whole thing with a little mayonnaise (no, not homemade - too fussy when it's just me) thinned with lemon juice and enlivened with a shaking of dill weed.

The exciting news of the day is that I'm pretty sure my lettuce has sprouted! The heads should be ready about the same time as my appetite for leafy salads kicks in!

Salad Weather

We've had seriously sunny weather for the past month or more but only a few days warm enough to tempt me to make a salad. I'm one of those who looks askance at salads in the cooler months. We're on a warming trend according to the (notoriously erroneous) weatherman, so I took a chance and concocted this from what we had in the house. Nothing very innovative; I'm more of a follower than a leader.

Nice, leafy lettuce with red edges. Sweet little tangerines. Voluptuous avocado. Crisp scallions. Sprightly fresh mint leaves. Savory Dijon vinaigrette. Happy people.

Cool Curry Salad

My Beloved and I are hot weather wimps, having lived so long in the cool Bay area where spring temperatures are likely to hover around 65F; when the thermometer rises about 75F, we start to wilt. At 88+, we become melting puddles of whine.

Little did I know when I set out to use up some leftover brown rice from Massa Organics, that I would invent a great salad for a blistering hot Northern California day. I was just thinking of all the good, fresh veggies I'd like to add to the rice, never suspecting that the weather was going to turn from coolish to ovenish overnight.

I love curry flavor so I used that as the baseline, mixing curry powder with about a walnut of mayo and a blob of ricotta cheese I found at the back of the fridge (still good!). I added some lemon juice, as the mayo-ricotta was too bland and ended up adding a full juicy lemon's worth (make your curry sauce much more tart than you ultimately want, as the bland veggies will buffer it).

Then I chopped some celery, scallions, raw broccoli florets and added biggish chunks of ripe avocado and fresh English peas, and mixed those into the curried rice in about a 1-1 ratio of rice to veggies. Tasted it, and it was pretty good but it still lacked a little something so I thought to add raisins to get some sweet into the tart/savory blend, They were perfect, adding visual punch as well as a sweet note. I would have added bacon bits if I had had any. A little S&P and you're there.

The finished salad was delicious next to the cold chicken we had left over from the previous night's mint chicken and even good the second day, when the weather turned even hotter.

Would somebody please call the Fog Man and tell him we're ready for relief?