larb

Larb. Doesn’t sound so great in English. I considered titling this “laab” instead, since I’ve seen it like that before and laab just sounds so delightfully ethnic. And don’t you just feel sooo worldly and good about yourself when you eat delightfully ethnic food from oh-aren’t-they-quaint Southeast Asian cultures? It’s almost like being a do-gooder. Larb, on the other hand, sounds like an off-brand lard product, dusty cans of which line the shelves of shitty Tex-Mex restaurant kitchens. It’s not. It’s just a rather wonderfully seasoned herb-y pork-y salad that you’ve probably gotten a dozen times before and it’s all old hat. Yeah yeah, but it’s just so fun to make. So easy and I still am impressed every time I make it, or whatever variation on it. I like being impressed.
I have two furry fleabags in the house. I just knew they’d get fleas. One of them escapes periodically and couldn’t be out for more than like 30 minutes before he comes back crying and flinging himself at the door. Not even 30 minutes most times. And it’s like two times per week maybe. Crap! They do go outside on the second story balcony but, but that can’t be possible for them to get fleas up there, right?! I don’t want to give them medicine wahhhh. I might try flea combing every day for a week or something and see if that helps, along with vacuuming a lot. Blast. Anyone want to come visit?? Hi!!

sesame summer squash salad

Tired of summer squash? Too bad, time to eat more. Can’t say I’m tired of it, because I don’t have any  in my garden (yet). But if I did, this salad would be a perfect way to plow through those ceaselessly proliferating plants. Or you could not pick them, let them get gigantic, then leave them on your patio table, hoping that they’ll turn into dried out ornamental gourds. I’ve def done that a few times.

halloumi, cucumber, watermelon, and fennel seed salad

I’m done! I’m done I’m done I’m done! No more 60 hours/week at my desk job plus the many other hours I put into Gathered! That really took it out of me. I felt like I was back in school, what with all of the 5 hour/night sleeps. Bleh, I do NOT do well with that. Some people seem to. I suppose there’s a bit of variation among people, but I’m betting that they are just used to subsisting on a general level of Suck. So when level Suck is elevated to Suck Less after they get 6 hours of sleep, they think “hm, this is nice”. Whereas me, I’m at level Awesome for most days and level Suck Less feels like level Total and Complete Shit.
Despite being a mega crab, I still made this lovely salad. Just for you. And me, because I ate lots. And because I needed another excuse to put more watermelon into my life. It’s not even good this time of year. Not stopping me. One day, possibly this summer, I will make it my goal to eat an entire watermelon. The only hindrance to completing that goal is self respect. Bah. Halloumi , as I’ve mentioned before is wonderful. So, so wonderful. In general, I’m rather cheese indifferent. I don’t not like it, but like, cubes of cheese on a cheese tray don’t do much for me. I’ll eat all of the grapes in the middle, but yeah. Browned cheese, on the other hand. OH HELLO. It’s the best. Then, if the cheese happens to be deliciously salty, then HELLO AGAIN! I LOVE YOU! A deliciously salty, browned, sheep’s milk cheese? YES PLEASE!

microgreens salad with garlic mustard vinaigrette

Every year I get so into spring. Like, so freaking motivated. Maybe even more motivated than I was in January to erase the disgusting damage I did by shoveling handfuls of Christmas cookies in my mouth two times a day (maybe three, I’m sure there were breakfast cookies in there somewhere). But motivated in a different way – motivated in a productive, gorgeous-weather-induced energized kind of way. I suppose spring cleaning is a cultural emblem of the season for a reason. So, there’s a raised bed vegetable garden in the works (despite my decision to forgo it last year) and I have grand visions of growing rows and rows of lovely vegetables. In reality, I’ll probably kill them all. I hate Denver.
Microgreens are so trendy. I’m embarrassed to post about them. I promise I won’t post about them when my garden is full of them. Even if that’s probably as far as my veggies will grow since they’ll soon after wither away for lack of water and blaringly awful sun. Sometimes I like trendy things, though. I wish I could prove that I was into them before they were trendy, but I can’t always. DAMMIT. In any case, I love little microgreens – the little baby plants that are so wonderfully peppery and bite-y. This cute market near my house carries them in big ziplock bags and you can find flowers strewn in them. So perfectly spring. The flowers are both sweet and super spicy. And then putting them in a salad makes you feel like your life will be practically perfect in every way.

winter fruit, beets, and fennel salad

Hey, it kind of looks like a I’m posting a NewYearNewYou recipe. I might be. I may or may not have gotten on the Whole 30 bandwagon. Who are you if you don’t get on some sort of New Years bandwagon? One of those selectively self-righteous “Resolutions just set you up for failure” or “I don’t make resolutions, I make changes” jerks who read that in some lame article in some publication whose parent company also publishes an equal amount of newyearnewyou articles. New Years resolutions are fun. And if you fail and spiral into some depression then you need to lighten up! Or actually do good on a resolution for once because you’re probably worthless. That was harsh.
In any case, it only seemed fitting after my month and a half long debauch to go super clean. I stupidly got a subscription to the enviro-nut Whole Living (when I should have gotten a subscription to Bon Appétit since the subscription ran out at my work) as part of some Groupon-y 3 for $5 magazine deal, and they have this somewhat decent clean eating plan in it this month. But it calls for drinking vegetable and fruit juices for breakfasts. I don’t get juices at.all. What is wrong with the whole food item? It’s supposed to be too hard on your digestive system or something? It just seems preposterous. Plus, I don’t like drinking my calories. Smoothies and milk and juices and milkshakes (debatable, this is more that I just vastly prefer ice cream) and protein shakes and eggnog and punch and soda. I like beer, wine, and spirits for those that are begging to point that out. But I hardly drink at all. So far, just a lousy five days in, I feel so much freaking better. It was getting to the point that after every time I would eat some cookies I’d feel like a post-nasal drip thing. I don’t know what was causing it, but it was totally corrollated to cookie eating. Scary.

fried plantains + avocado salad

I never want to see another Christmas cookie again. Or Christmas cake. Or Christmas pie. Or Christmas giant bowl of whipped cream. But namely the cookies. I baked like a madman and ate like an utter lard. I get to the point where I’ve stuffed myself so awfully and then I start to feel terrible about myself and then I figure aw fuck it what’s another 10 cookies going to do when you’ve already eaten 23. It’s really a pretty dumb mindset. And you’d think after years of reading stupid Shape magazine I’d be a little more rational. I can’t decide if coming to terms with my inability to control my Christmas dessert consumption and just swearing them off, until maybe Valentine’s Day sugar cookies, is a better way to go, or if I should strive to just be more reasonable when and if I do decide to eat some dessert. I guess I’d like to be able to just eat two cookies, but uh, yeah, probably not going to happen.
Anyway, enough about my lard tendencies. I did cook an amazing amount of food, and really awesome food, for Christmas dinner. And I have an amazing amount of leftovers, too. Joe left for the week, so it’s just me trying to make my way through most of a ham, like 4 pounds of roasted potatoes, several pounds of roasted sweet potatoes with a brown butter vinaigrette, and a mountain of my famous brussels sprouts. I’m going to have to make some sort of soup out of the rest of the ham and then freeze it. There’s just no way I’m going to be able to eat my way through it all. I was most excited about presenting to my friends on Christmas Day the roasted potatoes. If you’ve made that recipe I posted, then you know why. If you haven’t, then you’ve been eating crap roasted potatoes and I hope you feel sorry. We were eating at my friends’ house and so we carted all the food over there (they made their share of food too… it was a feast) and in a hurried we-gotta-make-it-over-there-in-a-timely-fashion move, I put the fresh out of the oven potato chunks in a big tupperware and drove over there. Piping hot potatoes give off condensation. Condensation makes gorgeous crispy potatoes soggy and disgusting. GAH. I can be excused for drowning my sorrow in Christmas dessert. I made a brown sugar cranberry walnut gingerbread upside down cake. I’m awesome.

shaved summer squash salad

Over a year ago, Joe brought me home a road bike that had been abandoned at his old work. I procrastinated on fixing it up until a couple weeks ago. What a shame. This is the first time I’ve had a bike since like 2003. THEY ARE SO FUN. I never want to drive anywhere anymore. We live in a really perfect spot for errand- and outing-biking and long distances, too. We live right near the confluence of the Platte River and Cherry Creek. There are trails along both of those waterways and you can go pretty far on them, as well as get downtown easily without having to traverse the whole way on city streets. We’re planning an outing some upcoming weekend to bike up north to Broomfield where, unbeknownst to me until a few days ago, is an Abbott’s Frozen Custard. Holy. Crap. It’s originally from Rochester, NY, where I’m from, and it is summer to me. Plus, not only is the frozen custard itself mean summer, but when I was younger we’d always bike to the Abbott’s on the Erie Canal. So we HAVE to bike to this one!
So, while I have indulgent super rich frozen custard looming over me, this salad recipe will be here to balance out my sugar load. It’s a such simple salad. But don’t let that stop you from making it. It really is worth making. It’ll be wonderful for a first course or side dish on a super hot day. If you want, you could put on grilled steak, chicken, or fish to make it a one-dish meal.

wilted spinach salad with tuna and bacon

This recipe was born out of a need to use up an impulse purchase of spinach. Quite similar to the last post’s fennel bulb, actually. I didn’t, however, let the spinach get to such a sorry state. That would have been gross. But I wasn’t sure what to use it for – a simple sautéed accompaniment to something? I thought about incorporating it in that blasted tortilla, also mentioned in the last post. I thought about making a kind of proper tuna salad and putting it on top of a bed of the spinach. But I was inspired to make a warm, wilted salad after seeing this version. It’s pretty wintery, but then again, the weather has been downright damp and Boston-y and this salad fit the bill when I made it.
I’m hoping this salad will be a gateway salad. I really fell out of salad mode this past winter. I don’t think I made a single one at home. I eat them a lot at work – we get our clients lunch and the employees get to freeload along. But I never felt in the mood to make one myself. Which is a shame, because a well dressed salad with thoughtfully included and prepared ingredients is a beautiful thing. So this salad was a good reminder. Since it’s just gently wilted spinach, it still retains the qualities of a fresh, raw salad. I’m already looking forward to crisp, cool summer salads of gorgeous tomatoes and fresh herbs. Yum! In the meantime, I’m going to start looking for unique spring greens like pea shoots or fava greens. I haven’t found them yet at my regular grocery store, but I might check at a more special grocery store.

chipotle chicken + salad with honey lime dressing

Even though a snow storm is just as likely as a pleasant sunny day, I can’t help but try to will the weather to warm up permanently with some summery food. I’m all but done with the heavier foods I love in the winter – squash, stews, casseroles, warm salads…and I just want to eat crisp veggies, light sauces, and lots of fresh herbs.

Mexican food in general is a cuisine that I pretty much shun until the temperature gets above 60. I’m never ever in the mood for it until warm weather sets in. So here is a great inaugural dish. The spicy, smoky chipotles go great with loads of cilantro. The chicken could easily be swapped for any other kind of meat or fish. And you can cook those meats in any way you’d like – bake, broil, roast, grill. The sauce can be put on after cooking or before cooking. If you really like some spice, double the chipotle pepper amount!

Chef’s Salad

So, with spring kind of on its way, it’s time to start ushering in salads. Yeah yeah yeah…I know bagged mixed greens are a total rip, but I’m getting over my cold and I deserve the easy way out! This salad is a bit heftier than the salads I like to eat in the middle of summer, but that’s fitting. It’s kind of in between warm spinach winter salads and super fresh all veggie salads of the summer. You can make a chef’s salad any way you’d like, with any kind of ingredient, but I guarantee you’ll love them as much as I love them. I want to eat them every night, and that’s probably not a bad thing.

farro risotto + grilled lemon pepper chicken + grilled peach, endive, and watercress salad

Phew! What a dinner! Unfortunately, in my hurry to start cooking, I dropped my poor camera. It now says something about needing to change my battery. Uhh…no? I would like it to just work. Please!

So, no pictures for this meal. It’s too bad, because it was just wonderful. And it’s really not as intimidating as the post heading may suggest. I promise…especially if you’ve made the parsley risotto from the prior post. If you haven’t, well, then I can’t make the promise as emphatically.

While you’re making the farro risotto, which is pretty simple, you can work on the grilled peaches and the chicken. You can even wash and chop the veggies as well during the cooking, though it would probably do you well to do that before hand.

farro risotto
adapted from marthastewart.com

(feel free to halve this recipe, as I kind of wish I’d done)

2c farro (though I’m sure hard red winter wheat would work – it at least looks the same!)
1/2c white wine
5 1/2c chicken or vegetable stock
any hard cheese rinds if you have them lying around, but no biggie if not (but start stocking them up!)
parsley pesto or equivalent – very flexible

1. Bring to a boil 2c stock + the wine. Add the farro and the cheese rind if you have one. Stir regularly.

2. When the stock looks to be absorbed, add another 1/2c stock. Continue to do this in 1/2c stages until you’ve reached 5 1/2 cups, or just keep taste testing. I lost track and just stopped adding stock when the farro was the right tenderness.

3. When the farro is tender, turn off the heat, remove the cheese rind, and add the parsley pesto to taste. I used about half of what I’d made from the previous recipe. If you’re using store bought pesto, then just add to you’re liking. I’d guess it was about 1/4c – 1/3c.

grilled peach, endive, and watercress salad
also from marthastewart.com

2 peaches or nectarines
oil or butter for grilling
1 bunch watercress, thicker stems removed
2 heads endive, sliced 1/4 in. thick width-wise
juice of one lemon
1T honey
1/2T olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat up a grill pan. Split the peaches in half and remove the pits. Brush the halves with oil or butter and put face down on the hot grill.

2. While the peaches are cooking, rinse the watercress. Remove the thicker parts of the stems and watch out for little snails! I may have eaten one during my dinner…

3. Chop the endive and don’t worry about separating the discs. They’ll loosen up with you serve the salad.

4. Flip the peaches when they have dark enough grill marks.

5. Assemble the dressing – lemon juice, honey, oil, salt, and pepper.

6. When the peaches have good grill marks on both sides, remove and slice up in wedges.

7. Put the greens in a big bowl with the peaches on top. You can put the dressing on individually if desired.

lemon pepper chicken

chicken breast
lemon zest from the lemon above
salt and pepper to taste

1. Rub the chicken on both sides with the spice mixture.

2. With the grill already preheated from the peaches, add a little more oil to the pan and plop the chicken on.

3. Depending on thickness, grill the chicken about 6-8 minutes on each side.

4. When done, slice up the chicken and put on top of the salad. You can also have it whole on the side.

Okay! It’s over!! Hopefully the components were easy to assemble all at the same time. That’s always a lovely thing when it works out. Also, I can’t stress enough the usage of a garbage bowl. Maybe I’m the last person on Earth to have discovered this life saver, but I’ll keep singing its praises until I die. It makes cooking so much cleaner and less stressful. Your counters stay neat and prep work is so much swifter. Anyway, I think this meal is pretty doable. Enjoy!