The Hungry Tiger

Take your salads to the next level, as your SEO consultant would have you put it.

This recipe here, from Yotam Ottolenghi's "New Vegetarian" column, has a trick in it that I have been using in all sorts of grain salads, pilafs, mixed roast vegetables, and other things of that room-temperature party dish variety. It is a fantastic secret-ingredient sort of thing that will make you feel like a wizard, it is highly generalizable, and I am drawing your attention to it because I love you.

The conditions: You have some dish of this sort, anything from the broad range of things you might call a "salad," or maybe something that would stretch the definition a bit too far. The main qualifying factors are (a) that it involves some non-homogenous stuff tossed or mixed together, (b) it is not to be served piping hot, and (c) you might conceivably want to squeeze some lemon or lime over it before serving.

The thing to do, and here I am partially quoting and partially paraphrasing from that linked recipe: Instead of just adding juice, take one or two or three lemons or limes (as you prefer). Use a small, sharp knife and trim off both ends. Then cut down the sides of the fruit, along their round curves, to remove the skin and white pith. Over a small bowl, remove the segments by slicing between the membranes. Squeeze any remaining juice over the segments. Poke your sharp knife in among the segment and cut them into small pieces -- say, thirds. Then add the segments and the juice to your whatever it is.

YES, this is more work than just squeezing a lime or two. But it is not much more work, if you have a suitable knife (it must be SHARP or you will be sad. I have a lethal little serrated fruit knife with a curved tip that works very well) and holy crow does it make things taste just like they would otherwise only magically extra amazing.

Fennel

I get infatuated with this; we go on a kick of that; suddenly four meals out of every five feature this thing or the other, where the month before it never crossed my mind at all. So we live in a succession of food eras, each characterized by a couple of distinctive flavors that run through everything, until they disappear from the market or we get distracted again. 

 

We are currently in a Fennel Period and a Grilled Lettuce Period. Grilled romaine is so two years ago, but it really is a pleasant way to fulfill simultaneously the desire for something warm and cosy and the desire for something light and salady, without faffing about with a pile of different ingredients. (You know how to make it already, but here's how I've been doing it lately: big head of romaine lettuce, cut in half lengthwise, rinsed, and shaken dry, cut side brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt, on a very hot pan for two minutes or so each side, until lightly charred and wilting -- then roughly chopped and piled on a plate with a little of the aged, thick sort of balsamic vinegar drizzled (vile word) on top.)

Fennel: also perfect for that late winter pushmi-pullyu of fresh springy things on the one side and warm roasty things on the other. The bulbs you know about. I made this Ottolenghi quinoa salad for a potluck last week, with quartered brussels sprouts in the place of the fava beans, and it was very good. Sliced very thin, it makes a swell winter salad, especially with apples; or you can slice it thicker, then steam it and dress it with lemon and red pepper oil a la David Tanis.

The new trick at our house, though, is making full use of the stems. Fennel is too big and awkward to fit in the fridge as it comes. So I lop the bulbs off and put them away separately, then trim off the frondy bits for garnishes or the compost bin. The stems, then, I chop up and keep in a container to toss in with everything. They are lovely. They may look a lot like celery, but I think their texture and flavor are much nicer and more interesting. I have been tossing a half-handful in with any pan of roasting vegetables, or stirring them into a pilaf, and it makes everything taste a little springier and a little different from the way it did last month.

If you really want to enjoy chopped fennel on its own merits, though, try Fennel Rice or Fennel and Eggs:

FENNEL AND EGGS

For two.

At least half a cup chopped fennel, mostly or entirely stems, as pictured above
About a quarter cup finely chopped onion  
Butter
3 or 4 eggs
salt and pepper

Beat the eggs lightly and season with salt and pepper. Saute the fennel and onion slowly in butter until transluscent and tender. Pour the eggs into the pan. Scramble until they are set the way you like them. Serve immediately. Hot buttered toast would not go amiss. 

--

FENNEL RICE

There is no reason why fried rice, which is ultimately a very basic and versatile approach to a very basic and versatile grain, has to be, or pretend to be, Asian. This makes a pretty, green rice dish that goes well with Italian, Spanish, or California-ish flavors.

I think it would be good as a side with salmon, but what do I know?

1-2 Tbsp. light-flavored oil for frying 
3/4 cup chopped fennel, mostly or entirely stems, as pictured above 
2 tsp. minced ginger 
2 cups leftover, cold rice, preferably long-grain   
1 egg, lightly beaten with 1 tsp. ground cumin
2 Tbsp. chopped flat leaf parsley  
Salt and pepper 

Put your large stir-fry pan over high heat. When it's hot, add the oil and swirl it around.

Keep the heat high and the food moving in the pan. Put the fennel in and cook for about two minutes, then add the ginger and cook for just a moment before adding the rice. Fry, stirring/tossing constantly, until the rice is heated through. Add the egg and cumin mixture. Keep things moving, so the egg just coats the rice and more or less disappears.

Remove from heat and add parsley plus salt & pepper to taste. My own taste says that you want to err on the side of more pepper, but maybe you disagree! If you have some of your fennel fronds around, you may as well chop them up and toss them in there, too: it's pretty. 

Spinach salad, but not the kind you're thinking of.

The weather is hot and my desire for fresh light cool vegetables is, once again, running face-first into local reality. Tomatoes are approximately one million years away and even spring lettuces are still about three inches tall. And leafy green salads are all very well and good, anyway, but sometimes I just don't want one. (Here you can imagine me stamping my foot petulantly.)

This cold spinach fills roughly the same niche as a green salad but is not one. It's fresh, it's cool, it's green, it's even leafy. It makes a nice contrast to a hot entree or a hot day, or both. It's incidentally even quicker to put together than salad, at least if you follow my habit of washing and parboiling or steaming your spinach as soon as you bring it home from the store. Even if you don't cook the spinach until you're getting dinner ready, it's just not all that time consuming.

Super simple, delicious enough to eat multiple days in a row, suitable to the weather, novel yet not weird: what more could you ask?

Well, you might conceivably ask for it not to include preserved lemons, which I recognize are not the staple of everyone's cupboard that they are of ours, and no one is going to make or buy them just for the sake of putting a tablespoon's worth into a plate of spinach. I don't know that I can really advocate a substitute in this case, either--the soft briny lemon is what brings out the fruit in the olive oil, the vinegar, and even the onions, making the whole thing so well balanced and delicious. Maybe if you had Meyer lemons, you could get a similar effect with their juice in place of the vinegar, and plenty of grated zest?

If you're looking for inspiration for things to do with the preserved lemons you already have, though, or for an excuse to get some or make some, this is just the thing.

Chopped salad of mock summer

It certainly is the time of year when I get fed up with being remotely seasonal in my food purchases. Cabbage is a wonderful comfort and succor in late winter, but it is not enough. I want something BRIGHT and FRESH and MADE OF RAW VEGETABLES, goddammit. 

This chopped salad tastes just dandy with out-of-season vegetables. Of course those same vegetables are irresponsibly shipped from far away, and cost a premium, to boot. If you live somewhere where they are in season, or if you can wait until their season arrives, more power to you. But right now I can't bear it, and so here we are.

Another nice feature of this kind of salad is that you can make it in quantity and keep it in the refrigerator, having a scoop here and there over the next few days at a moment's notice. The vegetables will get lightly pickled in the interim, but if anything that just makes them taste better.

Kasha and roast vegetables with lemon and spices

I wouldn't roast vegetables ahead of time week after week if I only had one meal I liked to make with them them. Here is another favorite, again good for using up leftovers or the sort of intentional "leftovers" I often produce on the weekends.

This warm sort-of-salad combines the cozy autumnal browns of roast vegetables and nutty kasha with bright flavors that ensure that you don't wind up with a plate of stodgy dullness. Even if you make it with the exact same set of vegetables you've used in the gratin I wrote about last week, I promise that it will taste very different; I would (and do!) happily eat both in the same week without feeling monotonous.

It has one specialty ingredient, preserved lemons. They are crucial to the lively, zingy effect. I recognize that not everyone has them in the house, but they're easy to make and not like anything else. That said, I suspect you could make a different, but equally distinctive, dish by using chopped green olives and plenty of lemon juice instead.

(Almost) the same components, different meal: tostadas without tortillas

A lot of the time, I buy more of a given ingredient than gets used up in a single dinner for two. That's fine -- we like leftovers, and also I've finally noticed that it's a good idea to cook a lot of foods from the same culture, or inspired by the same cookbook, in a given week or two.

After I made the salad pictured below, we still had more ripe avocados, more radicchio, and more cilantro and onions and serrano peppers. So last night I made a sort of black bean tostada arrangement, but where crispy tortilla would go, we had grilled (broiled, actually) radicchio. It was great, and while it was in the same taste family as the salad, it was different enough to keep things lively.

Any meal with this much radicchio really is only for those who like the taste of bitter things. But the black beans are mild and creamy, as of course is the avocado, so there is considerable balance for that bitterness.

The arrangement was a bed of freshly cooked radicchio; then black beans heated through with some salt, olive oil, and cumin; then lots of sliced avocado; then the same vinegared onion as last time; then a minced mixture of cilantro, serrano pepper, and a small clove of garlic; then feta cheese and a drizzle of oil. For the radicchio, I turned the broiler on and oiled a baking dish. Then I cut the radicchio into substantial chunks -- eighths, maybe? -- and put them in the dish, letting the pieces fall apart where they liked. I gave them a sprinkle of salt and a quick brush of olive oil, and popped them under the broiler for what turned out to be 7 minutes, until the outer leaves were getting brown and crispy, while the inner parts of each piece were still warmed through and juicy.

Composed salad

As the weather gets warmer, I am naturally drawn more and more to suppers that are not so much cooked as assembled. Composed salads are nice for this, as they allow plenty of range for imaginative combinations of ingredients, and have a little bit more gravitas as a main dish than a simple tossed salad does. I made this one with some leftover "vegan popcorn chicken" from Whole Foods -- sort of a shameful thing to buy, and place to buy it, but it sure is good, and the salad I made from it was really, really good. If you eat real meat, leftover roast chicken would of course work perfectly in the same kind of composition.

This dinner also reminded me to tell you that I always buy my avocados in a state of rock-hard unripeness. They will ripen just fine on your counter, and no one but you will have a chance to prod and poke and bother and bruise them as they get riper and more vulnerable. (Once they're ripe, you can move them to the fridge if they are ready too soon for you.) I think Mark Bittman wrote a "Bitten" entry about his same realization, so this is no doubt old news to you, but this habit has made my avocado eating adventures infinitely more pleasant and consistent, so I want to proselytize.

Bottom layer: a ring of delicate tender pale green lettuce, surrounding chiffonaded radicchio
On top of that: "chicken"
Then: sliced avocado
And: red onion that had been chopped and left to sit for about half an hour with vinegar and a pinch of salt
Topped with: Cilantro and serrano pepper minced together
Drizzled with: Olive oil and vinegar (the vinegar from the onion isn't enough -- you want plenty of acidic sparkle)
Plus: A sprinkling of salt and some coarsely ground black pepper.

Radicchio adds a nice bitter bite that complements the richness of the avocado and the acid of the vinegar, though I'm sure the salad would still be good without it. Chopped endive would be a good (if less colorful) substitute. If you reheat your chicken or "chicken", heap it in the center of the plate so it rests on the radicchio, wilting it slightly.

An exciting new method for cooking celery root

As you may recall, I am fond of celery root, aka celeriac. Its potato-like texture and gentle, nutty flavor are lovely in gratins, soups, and all the other usual suspects for root vegetables. I also like it cold or at room temperature: cut into batons, planks, or cubes, cooked, and dressed with a simple vinaigrette, it is tasty and substantial, but refreshing. As long as your olive oil is good, this and perhaps some scallions or red onions are really all you need to make a very satisfying salad. And as you can see, it's also delicately pretty and pale. It is thus especially nice for this time of year, when the markets are largely still full of winter vegetables but your heart is crying SPRING!

The trouble with celery root is that you lose so much of it to peeling. The same gnarled, hairy form that makes it look so much less appetizing than it truly is also makes prep a bit of a hassle and disappointment. Dirt and tough skin are trapped in deep, narrow crevasses that you must cut out ruthlessly, which means you can lose up to a third of the original mass to your preparatory ministrations. However, my recent reading of Lidia Bastianich's Lidia's Family Table has taught me that there is another way.

You can boil or roast the root whole, let it cool a bit, and then the skin will come right off, just as with a potato. You'll still have to do a little bit of excavation in the deeper cracks, but you'll lose much less of the tasty edible part, and it will be much quicker and easier. This works great for gratins -- rather than peel, cut and parboil, you use this method, then slice up the cooked globe and continue on your merry way. It's a snap. And for salads, it's just perfect. Brilliant.

Little black dress lentil salad

Even though I love them, I will admit that lentils can be unromantic and drab. Not so the small, dark, and elegant French lentils (also known as Puy lentils) or the equally petite and glossy black Beluga lentils. These retain their shape and their chic dark color when cooked and are excellent in salads. The visual contrast with red pepper and bright green parsley is lovely as well, but what I like best about this salad is how simple it is to make and how good it tastes.

LITTLE BLACK LENTILS

3/4 cup French lentils or tiny black "Beluga" lentils
1/2 small onion, diced
1 medium carrot, chopped fine or grated
1 small red pepper, diced
a handful of frozen corn
a couple of glugs of good olive oil
a splash or two of sherry vinegar
a fat pinch of salt
lots of freshly ground pepper
some chopped parsley
[Ahem.]

Cook the lentils in at least three cups of salted water until cooked but not mushy. Drain and rinse briefly with cold water. In a large bowl combine the lentils and vegetables. Add the olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper and parsley. Mix gently but so that everything is nicely coated. The corn will thaw quickly, chilling the salad a bit in the process. This would be good with feta or goat cheese, but it's also excellent just as it is.

Summertime: several ideas, and a recipe for ajvar

It's getting to be that time of year again -- the time when we can go to the farmer's market and get ridiculous quantities of tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, and the other vegetables of high summer for what seems like almost no money at all. Here are a few recipes from the past that make great use of this bounty: Ratatouille.

This is, of course, an obvious one, but this version is -- to my mind, anyway -- particularly good. The vegetables strike the right balance of melding together and keeping their integrity. You do have to turn on the oven and turn on the burners (oof, hot!) but the advantage is that you don't have to spend ages sauteeing each vegetable in turn. This means things move more quickly and you have to spend less time hovering over the hot stove in question, for a net win on the hot-and-sticky axis.

Frittata with zucchini and ricotta. This is so good that I have been known to buy zucchini out of season in order to make it.

Summer squash gratin. For when you have more summer squash than these other recipes can absorb. It's simple and savory, and pleasantly not-soggy. I think it's nice to save yellow squash for this one and use green zucchini for the frittata.

Tomato salad. Well, obviously.

Ajvar. This is a green vegetable concoction in rough puree, not the smooth sludgy red stuff I've seen in jars at the grocery store. It's made with eggplant and green peppers, and lots of olive oil. It's spectacular, and one of the few things that actually makes me eager to buy green peppers (I generally prefer red). I see that I never did give a recipe for it, and I think I've made enough little tweaks to the original Paula Wolfert recipe by now that I feel comfortable writing it up here. I'll put it at the end of this entry.

Meanwhile, I'm eager to make one or the other of these gazpacho recipes from Lobstersquad -- or both! But first I need to buy a pitcher to put it in, which is something I'm long overdue to do anyhow. This skillet corn from my own mama's website looks fantastic, too. What summer vegetable dishes are you making?

Arugula salad with fried eggs and sizzling mushrooms

Tonight we were in the mood for something light for dinner -- a salad, but something a bit more substantial than an ordinary green salad. I had a big bag of arugula from the farmer's market, as well as lovely eggs with positively orange yolks, and some golden oyster mushrooms.

This does dirty two whole pans (horror!) but the results were well worth it, and the labor involved was minimal enough that I didn't break a sweat. These quantities are, obviously, for two.

1. Take two shallow bowls or deep plates and make a bed of torn arugula in each one.

2. Take about half a pound of oyster mushrooms. Rinse off any dirt, trim away woody ends, separate them, and slice into roughly 1" pieces. Dice a small onion or a couple of shallots and sauté in two tablespoons of olive oil on medium-high heat for a couple of minutes. Add mushrooms and cook a minute more before lowering the heat to medium low. Add half a teaspoon of salt and a generous sprinkling of cumin. Leave the mushrooms to cook gently for about 20 minutes, stirring every now and again, until they start to brown around the edges. If they finish up before you're ready for them, just turn them off and let them sit in the pan.

3. When the mushrooms are getting nearly done, fry two eggs in salted butter. When they are done to your liking, slide one egg onto each bed of arugula. The heat of the egg should start to wilt the greens a bit.

4. Array half of the mushrooms over each egg. Sprinkle a bit of sherry vinegar over each salad (important!), grind a few turns of the pepper grinder over each, and serve. If you've left the yolks runny, the diner can break them to make a dressing for the greens -- the olive oil and butter, of course, will serve to dress them, as well. A shaving of parmesan or crumble of goat cheese would be a fine addition, I'm sure. I may try that next time, though it was delicious enough without. Bread makes the meal a bit more substantial and gives you a means to wipe the plate clean. Sorry no picture; we ate everything up too quickly!

Quinoa salad, Fey's favorite pasta salad

Eating lots of quinoa salad lately. This involves first making a batch of quinoa (1 cup quinoa + 2 cups salted water) and letting it cool, then adding things like roasted red peppers from the jar, sweet corn, feta cheese, halved cherry tomatoes, basil, and so on, plus a vinaigrette and plenty of freshly ground pepper.

I'm also attracted to a recent pasta salad recipe along these lines from the New York Times: very similar, but with pasta, of course, mozzarella instead of feta, and the addition of slow-roasted tomatoes as well as the fresh raw ones.

You take the tomatoes, which conveniently can be subpar or over-ripe, cut them into 3/4" slices, brush with olive oil, and put them in a 275° oven for 15 minutes before turning it down to 200° and leaving it for another 4-6 hours. Then you chop them very very very fine, almost to a paste. Instead of a vinaigrette, you mix these tomatoes with equal parts (2 tablespoons each, in the original) of olive oil and melted butter, plus minced garlic. Sounds good, doesn't it?

Good cold: open faced sandwiches and two vegetable mezze

We are entering the time of year when I frequently think it would be extremely unpleasant to stand near a hot stove at the end of a working day, but not yet the time of year when we can eat tomatoes every night. So the plan is to have a number of items that can be mixed and matched chilled or at room temperature, maybe alongside something very very quick to cook at the time, like scrambled eggs. Ideally they would also serve as nice components of smørrebrød, the existence of which I have only recently discovered.

Smørrebrød is an open-faced Danish sandwich constructed on that dense European bread that comes in remarkable dark brown bricks, sliced thin -- "health" bread, or that specially bricklike pumpernickel, or whateverelsebrot in that vein. I picked some up from World Market this morning. It is always covered completely by its toppings and always, or almost always, has a sauce of some sort on top (which makes sense when you experience how very dense indeed the bread can be). I found thinned Greek yogurt, a bit of salt, and lemon juice was easy and nice for the purpose.

You always eat these with knife and fork and always butter the bread thickly or spread it with goose schmaltz, to seal it against the toppings. (You will note that the smørrebrød concept is very closely related to the simple, down-home habit of Piling Tasty Things on Top of Toast.) I like this concept and think I will pursue it often, while I also intend to pursue often my more tried-and-true habit of the eclectic mezze. Today's cooking was therefore directed towards suitability for both, with some hardboiled eggs, sauteed mushrooms from the farmer's market, asparagus roasted in the toaster oven, etc. Two other dishes were new for me, and the recipes appear below.

Black beans and corn

Cooking, working; working, cooking. We bought a substantial box of very ripe figs at the market yesterday and so I'm making a little half-batch of simple fig preserves with what was left over after we had some for desert yesterday with whipped ricotta and almonds.

The big surprise hit recipe of the weekend, though, was a black bean and corn salad from Rachael Ray (of all people?). S. and I often wind up watching her show without sound when we go to the gym -- she's awfully perky, but she seems to do a nice job of choosing recipes for good, real food that you can make quickly rather than going through horrible contortions to make things quick that never should have been, and judging by the comments on the Food Network recipe pages she is a fine influence for encouraging people to have the confidence to cook from scratch.

Anyway, I read a recommendation for this recipe in particular somewhere and verily, it is good. Sorry I can't remember where I read about it, but thanks, whoever you were. The recipe, paraphrased for posterity, is below. It is very very very very easy.

Citrusy wilted cabbage salad

Continuing my series on cabbage, I present to you a simple dish I tossed together recently in the face of a relatively bare cupboard.

I'm calling this a salad, because I am a little at a loss for the best possible descriptor, and because it is dressed at the end, just like a salad is. But unlike the usual salad, this is excellent hot. I imagine it would be good cold, too, but we've never had leftovers, so I can't say for sure. I've used it as a bed for crispy fried tofu; it's also good as a side dish and I imagine it would go very well with a firm, white-fleshed fish. The flavor is lively, which means it's good for brightening up a dismal day. It also means that it would be appropriate in warmer months of the year. I'd bet that in its cold or room temperature state it would make a nice alternative to cole slaw, with the added benefit that you don't have to worry about mayonnaise in the hot sun.

The amount of hot pepper I have here gives the dish, to my taste, just a moderate amount of spiciness, which complements and accentuates the tanginess of the lime. If you want something milder, of course, you can use just half a pepper, choose a milder variety, and/or remove the seeds. I don't recommend skipping it altogether (though of course you can do whatever you like!) -- this is a dish that makes use of the flavor of the pepper, not just its heat.