Frankenstein salad, quinoa, chard and plum
This unusual combination took root in my head last week and it just couldn’t be denied. I had a small bunch of chard from our CSA, some of those cute, miniature seedless cucumbers, a perfect Santa Rosa plum, and some red onion. I felt pretty confident that it would all work well together despite the Frankenstein nature of the combination. I blanched the chard for one minute and then dunked it quickly into a bowl of ice water. Once it had cooled down I patted it dry and chopped it into ribbons. All the other ingredients were just a quick chop. I cooked a cup of quinoa according to the package directions but next time I should only cook 1/2 cup of quinoa. Once that cooled down I added the chopped veggies and dressed it with a dressing that combined rice wine vinegar, ponzu, yuzu honey, apple cider vinegar and canola oil. I think I also added a few dashes of chili oil.
The salad was surprisingly tasty. Actually the first bite struck me as a strange flavor but then I couldn’t stop eating it…something about the flavor combination was strangely addicting, the dirt-ish flavor of the chard, the cool slippery cucumber, the crisp bite of the onion, and the sweetness of the plum all wrapped up with a sweet-tart dressing. Dave had the exact same reaction…he thought it was weird but then he couldn’t stop eating it. I’ll definitely make this again.
The weakest link - the hamburger bun
I used to be obsessed with perfection. But over the years I’ve realized what a treacherous mate that mindset can be. Thankfully I’ve mellowed, I now understand that perfection is transitory… if it comes my way I’ll grab it, but I’ll never, ever, become its slave. Since we know where our meat comes from and how it it’s butchered, we feel comfortable eating things like steak tartar and medium-rare burgers. A good burger is a sum of its parts though, and if any part is lacking then it just isn’t perfect. I’m of the opinion that the weakest link is consistently the bun. Think about it, how often have you had the perfect burger, with the perfect toppings, and then had a lame bun that collapses, slides off, or just tastes awful? It happens all the time and we just accept it.
I decided to make my own hamburger buns because I couldn’t stand the thought of shelling out $5.00 for a really bad set of buns. I threw the dough together in the morning, let it rise for 6 hours in the refrigerator, formed the buns using my new and fabulously trusty cylinder technique, then they rested and rose for another hour or so and then I baked them.
They tasted fresh and yeasty with an excellent consistency and crumb. They held up really well with no collapsing, slipping, or sliding. Bread baking is so ephemeral, it requires a unique confluence of ingredients and weather. As I recall it was a perfect day…not too hot, not too cool, and no humidity. As for the ingredients, I only measure the liquid and the yeast, I add the rest until I’m happy its look and feel. I think I’ll continue to make my own burger buns, but I doubt that I’ll get this lucky again.
Vanessa’s Burger Bun
printer-friendly version
1 cup water
1 cup whole milk
2 teaspoons yeast
1/2 cup melted butter
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1 cup whole wheat flour
Unbleached white flour
Place all of the ingredients, except for the white flour, to the bowl of a stand mixer. Using a paddle attachment mix well on medium low until well combined and no longer lumpy. Begin to add the white flour slowly, adding 1/2 cup or so at a time with the mixer running on a low speed. Once the dough clears the sides of the bowl you can stop the mixer, scrap the dough off the paddle and fit the dough hook onto the mixer. Let the mixer work the dough on a low speed for 7 - 10 minutes. The dough should be very sticky. Once the dough has been worked well you can stop the mixer, remove the dough from the bowl, coat the inside of the bowl with a thin coat of olive oil and then place the dough back into the bowl, cover it with saran wrap and let it rise for at least 6 hours in the refrigerator, overnight is okay too.
2 hours before you want to bake the buns remove the dough from the refrigerator and roll it into a big fat cylinder, the diameter of which will be the diameter of the buns. Slice the dough into pieces remembering that the thickness of the piece determines the thickness of the bun which will need to be split through the middle after baking.
Arrange the buns on a cookie sheet lined with a silpat. I arranged them so that they would touch each other after their last rise and bake. Now cover them with a clean towel and let them rise for an hour.
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Bake them until they are golden brown and their internal temperature is at 210°F, mine took about 10 minutes.
Beefy Southwest Salad
Last month I hung up my shackles as a part-time office worker and made the leap to freelance writer. It has many perks, including a business casual attire that centers on the classics …tshirt and jeans. Now I don’t have to hurry off every morning, I can take my time, go for a walk with Lovejoy and listen to the birds chirping like crazy in the trees outside my office. I admit that I’m decidedly more relaxed even though I’m working about the same number of hours each day, it’s just that these hours are on my terms, and I think that’s perfect.
I also love my lunch break. It usually starts with me trying to ignore the fact that I can’t concentrate because I’m hungry…that can go on for almost an hour if I’m not careful and it’s such a waste of time. I’m sooo easily distracted when I’m hungry…I’ll check email, my project bids, google news. Then I might tinker with some html work I’m doing on a new theme for the blog which will then lead to reading other blogs. All the while I’m still trying to work, so I’ll flip back to the screen with whatever I’m writing and I’ll ponder some paragraph or fiddle with some punctuation. Absolutely nothing serious, just wasting time until I finally realize that I’m hungry! Then I head into the kitchen and whip up a salad for lunch.
Today’s salad was my favorite yet. In a bowl I put one chunked up avocado, some diced red onion, a handful of chopped cilantro, and some cherry tomatoes cut in half. I dribbled on some olive oil and lime juice, hit it with some salt and a sprinkle of ground cumin and ground chipotle and gave it all a good toss. Then I plated in on a bed of iceberg lettuce. I absolutely love iceberg for its crunch and its crisp, cool texture. On the side I laid on some nice rare beef that I rolled up and sliced and on the other side I added some pepper jack chunks.
This was my kind of salad with the spicy, tangy, southwest flavors of the salad playing nicely against the beef and cheese. It all eventually gets mixed together but I really do like a salad that let’s me compose each bite…at least a little bit.
I’m still doing phase one of South Beach and I’m sticking to it. But I will say this…I miss granola in the morning and wine in the evening. But I’m almost half way through phase one, so I’m cool.
