Archives for the 'soup, salad, sandwich' Category
Avocado, cucumber salad
I hate to admit it but I can lose a lot of time reading food blogs and drooling at food porn on Tastespotting. I can easily rationalize it as time well spent keeping up with my fellow food bloggers. I get my best ideas from food blogs and the more I read, the more creative I get.
This salad is a riff on Kalyn’s shrimp and avocado salad. I’ve been hooked lately on these little persian cucumbers. They’re about 4 inches long and they’re seedless. Their flavor is very intensely cucumber and they’re dense and crisp…everything you want in a cucumber. I added them to the shrimp, green onions, and avocado chunks.
These baby mustard, beet, kale, and mizuna greens make a soft and tasty bed for the avocado, cucumber, shrimp mix.
For the dressing I threw a large handful of cilantro into the cuisinart, added an avocado, and a big splash of lime juice, and 1/2 teaspoon of chilpotle. I whirled that around and tasted it. Then I added some olive oil to smooth out the flavors.
Plated and garnished with pistachios and coconut shavings it was much prettier than I thought it would be. As I’m writing this up I’m thinking it sounds like a frankenstein salad. But it all worked well together. The cucumber’s crispness was a nice contrast to the shrimp. The slightly spicy baby greens were the perfect compliment to the cool smoothness of the avocado and the dressing was delicious. Almost like a guacamole, but not really.
The early bird catches the spinach
I have a fundamental problem with getting up and out of the house by 7:00 on a Saturday morning. But last week it ensured me a bag full of fresh tender spinach from Primrose Community Farm and it’s sweet, green, fresh flavor is enough to tempt me again tomorrow. Who knows if there will actually be any spinach but that’s part of the fun of cooking seasonally. My dressing on this salad is far from local but then my intent is to do the best I can…every little bit helps. It’s a mix of olive oil, dijon mustard, rice vinegar, and yuzu dressing (it came from World Market). I added sweet naval oranges and green onions. The first salad of the season and it was a big hit.
I’ll append a list tomorrow of what I find at the market. Cristie commented in last week’s post that she was looking forward to watercress…what are you looking forward to?
It was a head down, hurry-up and get home before I freeze kind of morning at the farmers’ market. Geez…it was painfully windy and cold…snowflakes were sighted! I was back home by 8:00…very little chit-chat going on but I certainly do appreciate the farmers and producers for bringing their tasty products for us to buy. I bought:
- Breakfast sauage, bacon, and pork tenderloin from Eric at Jordandal Farm
- Fresh spinach and tender chives from Primrose Community Farm
- Baguette and pain au chocolat from Madison Sourdough
- Eggs from Dreamfarm
- Raw milk cheddar from Brunkow
- Muester from Edelweiss Creamery
- Maple corn and little sausages from Sunnyhill Acres
- Raspberry kolachi from some lovely new bakers…but I don’t remember their names
Did you go to a market? What did you get?
Monday night blues buster…udon
Another frigid evening with the forecast for more snow…today I saw dump trucks and end loaders all over town clearing out old snow to make room for new. What’s a girl to do? Hop a jet to a warmer climate…nah, that’s not my speed. I just head into the kitchen and crank out some kick-ass soup in under 10 minutes.
I made chicken stock a few weeks ago and stashed it in the freezer and today seemed like a good day for the healing hand of a good bowl of soup. While the udon cooked, I heated up the stock with some added fresh ginger and a garlic clove. The rest was easy, rehydrated woodear mushrooms, napa cabbage, and ham all cut into thin strips, and a couple of green onions sliced. I added a dash of soy sauce, sesame oil , and chili oil to the stock and it was ready. Although you can’t tell by the picture I did arrange the noodles in a nice bundle with the cabbage, woodear, and ham snuggled up next to them and then drowned it all in the best broth…ever.
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