Salade Niçoise

Summer is a time when most us prefer lighter, refreshing foods. While salad are great and delicious any time of the year, they acquire added significance during summers. Frankly, most of us prefer to stay away from long cooking and the heat it generates.

We’ve done a few salad recipes on this pages, but now we bring you an easy and delicious old favorite:

Yields: 2 servings

Ingredients

Salad

• 1 large handful of haricots verts (thin French green beans)
• 1 small head romaine lettuce, torn
• 2 hard-boiled eggs, peeled
• 4 medium tomatoes, peeled and quartered
• 6 preserved artichokes hearts, drained and quatered
• 6 salted anchovies, rinsed
• 12 black olives,
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Dressing

• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 2 small cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• Salt
• freshly ground black pepper

Directions

1. Cook the beans briefly in salted water until tender crisp.
2. Meanwhile, put torn lettuce in a shallow bowl and arrange eggs, vegetables, anchovies, and olives on top.Sprinkle with parsley.
3. Whisk the vinegar, mustard and garlic, then slowly drizzle in the olive  oil. Season toast, pour over the salad, and serve with crusty bread.

Enjoy, gentle reader, enjoy!

CS

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Cooking Pasta: Debunking the Myth

Part of coming of age and the endless struggle for self is the establishment and ascendance of individual truth, honing mind and temperament, discriminating fact from fancy, empirical evidence from legend and myth.

I thought I had arrived in so many ways and then reality hit me like a flung wet noodle against the wall of my existence. We’ll save for another venue all the charming folktales of my youth soberly and maturedly dispensed with. But there I was, sitting pretty on the comfy wine colored couch, reaching for a bleached white conch shell that sits atop a wicker woven basket poised for reminiscence, aside other brilliant priceless colored stones, crystals, odd shaped rocks and shells randomly picked for their momentary significance and tangible recall. As I held the conch to my ear, I heard the voice of my nine year old neighbor and friend – Batya – herself clearly establishing her own unique truth sets, say:

– You know, that’s not the sound of the ocean you’re hearing, that’s just the echo of the air in the shell.

– What??? That can’t possibly be true, I know it’s the ocean, the waves of the very ocean that the shell came from.

I was not going to let this cute but clearly misinformed enfant terrible wreck my personal objects de time machine recall. Of course, we did what sensible people  do in such circumstances, we checked Wikipedia online.

I shouldn’t have, I know it now….. there are certain life mysteries that are best left alone… but there it was, the total deflation of spirit and romance and everything that’s right with the world….”What you are actually hearing is the sound around you vibrating as an echo in the air within the shell.” Who the heck needed to hear that, to know that? Great! Take the technicolor out of my universe… Hey, absolute reality is not all it’s cracked up to be. I know a butterfly flitting it’s wings impacts the climate at  the opposite end of the globe, and I know with the ten percent of my brain operational part of my brain that yawning is contagious, chicken soup cures a cold and that the five second rule applies. So maybe being primordial isn’t such a bad thing… No such thing as fairy dust?!?!?!? P’shaaaaaawww! What a world, What a world!!!

So talking about cooking pasta. Here I was thinking I had reached maximum maturity when I learned that al dente is très chic, that the “if it sticks” rule really does work and that salt in boiling water is a good thing along with a few drops of oil, so that the pasta doesn’t stick. When I really pay attention, I even cover the pot after its come to a boil and let it stay on low simmer.

Anyway, here are a few things I’ve learned since. Feel free to write in and further debunk my myths.

1. Use a one to four ratio of water to pasta – four parts water to one part of pasta. Pasta needs room to cook.
2. Add 1-2 tablespoons of salt for each gallon of water.
3. Bring it to mighty bubbling boil, and then let it simmer for a minute or two till done.
4. Don’t add oil… get this: oil makes the pasta slick and then all the wonderful sauces can’t adhere to it.
5. Furthermore, after you drain the pasta, don’t rinse it. The starchiness too is a binder for whatever you will be adding to your pasta dish. The only exception is when you are making a cold pasta salad, then it is preferable to rinse the pasta first.

See? Some things are worth knowing after all. By the way, that gum I swallowed approaching the shiva house… seven years until it dissolves. Well what you can’t see can’t hurt you, right? Right?

Photo from: http://www.6ixpassions.com

Stir Fry Beef on Penne Pasta (adpated from 6ix Passions)

Ingredients

• 1 lb penne pasta
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 red onion, cut into strips
  
• 1 lb beef, cubed
• 1 red pepper, cut into strips
• 1 cup mushrooms, chopped
• 8 broccoli florettes
• Mango Salsa
• 1/2 cup fresh basil
• 1/2 cup fresh parsley
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Cook the penne pasta al dente (cooked through, tender, but still offering some resistance to the bite).
2. Stir fry beef with Spanish red onion, mushrooms, red peppers and broccoli
3. Toss on the pasta with mango salsa.
4. Sprinkle with fresh parsley

Enjoy!

SYR

Stir-Fry Beef on Penne Past

More Mushroom Recipes

[While recovering I’m actively on the hunt for new and exciting recipes, considering that our last post has gathered a lot of interest, I thought I’d do best by bringing you more “mushrooms as a main ingredient.” I’ve tried everyone of these, and I found each simply delicious! CS]

From Kaylin’s Kitchen:

Roasted Mushrooms with Garlic, Thyme, and Balsamic Vinegar

1 lb. mushrooms (I used brown Crimini mushrooms)
2 T + 1 tsp. olive oil
salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
1 T finely minced garlic
1 T balsamic vinegar
2 T finely chopped fresh thyme leaves
1 T chopped fresh parsley (optional, for garnish)

Preheat oven to 400F/200C or heat gas or charcoal grill to medium high. Wash mushrooms, pull out stems, and cut into halves (or quarters if the mushrooms are large.) Put mushrooms into bowl and toss with 2 T olive oil, salt, and fresh ground black pepper. Cover a roasting pan with foil, then arrange mushrooms on the pan in a single layer. (Spread them out as much as you can. For cooking on a grill, I’d probably use heavy foil to make a “pan” so the flame doesn’t turn the bottom of the roasting pan black.)

Roast mushrooms 15 minutes. While mushrooms cook, finely chop fresh thyme, then mix with minced garlic, balsamic vinegar, and the tsp. of olive oil. (You could mix this right in the bowl you originally tossed the mushrooms with.)

After 15 minutes, drain off any liquid that has accumulated. (If you spread the mushrooms out well, the liquid will evaporate, but if yours are too crowded like mine, you’ll have a little liquid to pour off.) Then toss the hot mushrooms with they garlic-thyme mixture. Arrange back on roasting pan and cook about 10 minutes more. Serve hot, sprinkled with chopped fresh parsley if desired.

Delicious!!!!

Portobello mushrooms are inexpensive, full of flavor and meat like in taste. Here is a quick and easy recipe from allrecipes.com:

Grilled Portobello Mushrooms

Ingredients

• 3 portobello mushrooms
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 3 tablespoons chopped onion
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

Directions

1. Clean mushrooms and remove stems, reserve for other use. Place caps on a plate with the gills up.
2. In a small bowl, combine the oil, onion, garlic and vinegar. Pour mixture evenly over the mushroom caps and let stand for 1 hour.
3. Grill over hot grill for 10 minutes. Serve immediately.

Recipe Yield: 3 servings

As a child, as a teenager, mushrooms were not exactly my idea of good food… As I grew older, my taste buds got more educated and started appreciating many ingredients I would never have touched in my early years. Mushroom based dishes not only are healthy, but mushrooms add a lot of flavor to almost anything they are cooked with. Enjoy, gentle reader, enjoy

CS