Strawvacodo Salad

It is summer concert season again, when we return to Westport Rivers -- our favorite local vineyard -- for a weekly picnic with live music and excellent wine. (This season is off to a bit of a rough start, thanks to onerous reinterpretation of puritanical liquor laws. But this is still the place to be for the summer.)

Westport Rivers supports area businesses, so that a raw bar, food truck, or both are usually part of the event. Even if we try some of those items, though, this is a picnic so we always bring some or all of the food we are going to want. Pam turned to Intercourses, the cleverly-named romantic cookbook that we have cited many times on this blog, and found another winner.

Not only is this a case of a book cover that is more photogenic than the actual food; it is also a reminder of just how passionate the authors are about this particular ingredient.

Strawberry and avocado salad brings together two ingredients that each warrant a whole chapter in this book -- buy the book to enjoy all of the rhapsodizing about these two fruits. For now, the basics: chill a dressing and chop a bunch of produce.

Dressing
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup raspberry vinegar (we used blackberry-ginger balsamic from L.O.V.E., our aptly-named favorite provider of infused oils and vinegars, run by a fellow UMBC alumna)

1-1/2 T sugar
1/4 t hot sauce
1/4 t salt
1/8 t pepper
1/4 t cinnamon

Produce
1 head romaine (we used about half a head of green lettuce -- not iceberg -- making the sensual ingredients all the more prominent)

1 orange, sectioned then halved (the recipe calls for half a can of mandarin oranges, but fresh seemed a better choice)
1/2 cup sliced onion (we used a few scallions)
1/4 cup toasted pecans (toasted them myself in a cast-iron skillet)
1/2 avocado (this made no sense to me -- I used a whole one)

Pam made the dressing; I prepared the produce. We tossed it all in a bowl and took it to the vineyard -- perfectly paired with Cinco Cães, the lovely sunset, and the lyrical stylings of Rebecca Correia.

Special Salad

Last night James and I bought some stuffed cod at Kyler's Catch Seafood Market and brought it back to our Whaling House for me to bake while he went Whaleboat rowing. I knew we didn't have many options in the way of vegetable or salad at the house and found only a small wilting carrot and a clementine on the downturn in the refrigerator. Not one to waste food I decided I was going to make a salad with them. I found some raisins and slivered almonds in the cupboard and so I shredded the carrot, and sectioned the clementine, removed the membrane, and added the pulp to the carrots. I threw in a handful each of the raisins and almonds. It seemed like it needed a dressing, so I went back to the cupboard where I found a grapefruit/raspberry vinaigrette - a free gift sent along with our last order from L.O.V.E. It turned out to be a perfect topping. This was sublime. I loved that it was sweet, crunchy and chewy. I will definitely make this again, but next time I will plan ahead and make sure we have additional carrots and oranges so that I can have a bigger serving!

Maryland Day 2015

We have a special affinity for the state of Maryland as it is the place where we met and married. We have celebrated the anniversary of day that Maryland became a state for many years, and it was one of the highlights of the year we celebrated all the states' anniversaries. Nowadays, most state anniversaries come and go with nary a mention at our house, but Maryland always gets its due.

This year we made Chèvre Croquettes on Spring Field Greens, a recipe from FireFly Farms found in our Dishing Up Maryland cookbook (which we bought on Nantucket - go figure), and for dessert a Lady Baltimore Cake.

The salad was easy to prepare, especially since we skipped what would have been the most time-consuming part - cooking the beets. Neither one of us is crazy about beets, so we just decided not to include them at all. The Croquettes were prepared using soft goat cheese mixed with a bit of chopped thyme, some garlic salt, and pepper. I formed the mixture into four small medallions and dipped each in a beaten egg, and then corn meal. They were fried in olive oil for 3 minutes and then placed on a bed of greens with chopped red, yellow, and orange peppers and a minced shallot. The vegetables were dressed with a light vinaigrette made from red wine vinegar, olive oil, and Dijon mustard. The salad was quite tasty and was a meal unto itself.

The Lady Baltimore Cake was a much bigger project than the Croquettes. Neither one of us even knew such thing as a Lady Baltimore Cake existed until Pam saw mention of one in Beverly Cleary's book Emily's Runaway Imagination (which takes place in Oregon) earlier this year.

We baked the cake the night before the celebration as we realized that we would need a bit of time for this project. We used recipes we found on the allrecipes.com site for the cake and the frosting. This is a triple layer cake, and while we do have three round cake pans, one of them is 9 inches, while the other two are eight. I used all three and then cut off the excess from the larger cake. This gave us a fun taste test. We felt like kids dipping the cut off pieces of cake into the leftover frosting - there was way more frosting than we needed for the cake. One thing about this cake is that it uses A LOT of egg whites (six for the cake itself, and four for the frosting), so if you make it you may want to have some plan for all the yolks. I attempted to make an omelet the next day with all of them, but it was awful - extremely dry, even though I added two whole eggs to the saved yolks before cooking them. The cake though was yummy, and turned out not to be as sweet one might expect when the frosting recipe calls for 1/4 c of corn syrup and 2 cups of sugar.

The dinner -- and especially the dessert -- was perfectly paired with a non-Maryland wine: a Blanc de Blancs from our favorite local vineyard.

Our celebration was muted, sadly, by the unraveling of our beloved Baltimore in the wake of the murder of Freddie Gray, whose memory we toasted at the outset of the dinner.

Cabbage-Apple-Raisin Slaw

We had half a head of cabbage in the refrigerator left from when we made some coleslaw last month. I really wanted to use it before it went bad, and noticed that we also had two apples, so I went to allrecipes.com and did an ingredient search for apples and cabbage. There was a fair number of recipes for slaw, so I read a few of them and then, improvising with other ingredients I had at home, I came up with the following:

I chopped most what was left of the cabbage (I didn't do all of it simply because of the sheer volume of it all), and chopped up the two apples and put them in large mixing bowl. Next, I used my immersion blender to mix a dollop of sour cream; two dollops of plain yogurt; about 2 T of honey; the juice of half a lemon; and one T of cinnamon until it was all well blended and smooth. I added the mixture to the cabbage and apple, added some raisins and stirred well. I let it chill overnight. We had some with lunch today. It turned out quite good.

Solstice Supper

It being the first day of summer -- and the longest day of the year -- Pam made two good suggestions. The first was to look for solstice recipe ideas in our Wicca Cookbook. The second was to enjoy the resultant feast-for-two outside. It was also the first day of the new CSA-farmbox season at Colchester Neighborhood Farm, so her third suggestion was a a very fresh and local salad!

Stonehenge solstice image lifted from Pixie Campbell.
Not sure whether or where she lifted it!

 Cherry Pottage

I begin this post at the end of the meal. Because this dish required heating and then considerable cooling, I started it first. In fact, because we selected the menu after doing most of the day's chores, we procured cherries rather later in the day than would have been ideal. This should ideally be prepared very early in the day.

Before getting into the preparation, I should address the question on everyone's mind: what the flaming heck is a pottage? Is it just a misspelling of porridge? Well, yes, basically. I thought of it as an archaic form of the word porridge -- which I associate with oatmeal -- probably owing to its use in archaic biblical translations as in "Esau traded his birthright for a mess of pottage."

Our Friend the OED tells us that the word is indeed an archaic (as early as 1225) form of "porridge," further defining it as 

A thick soup or stew, typically made from vegetables, pulses, meat, etc., boiled in water until soft, and usually seasoned

Which raises a further question: What does this have to do with cherries? The cookbook includes a narrative ahead of each recipe, so I turned to this, hoping for clues. Not a word! The authors do, however, ruminate on the value of "special" meals and other things that we use only on certain occasions. In this case, the white sugar used in this recipe meant that it would only have been served as part of a celebration. As with fine silver or china, such a use presents an interesting paradox. We bring out our "special" items in part to show off -- and show thanks for -- our prosperity, yet we have to use these things sparingly, for we are never quite that prosperous. And once we are, the specialness is gone. White sugar is a perfect example; I think of the cherries as a special splurge, but white sugar is about as ordinary an ingredient as we can have.

I hand-pitted an entire quart of fresh cherries with a paring knife (a better tool is on its way for next time) and placed them directly into the blender, with 2/3 cup of red wine and 1/3 cup of granulated sugar. The wine was from a partial bottle of our home-made Barolo that we had set aside for cooking. I pureed this mixture until smooth. Then I melted about two tablespoons of butter in our indispensable cast-iron saucepan and poured in the fruit along with an additional 2/3 cup wine and 1/3 cup sugar.

Meanwhile, Pam cut up a few slices of wheat bread to provide what the recipe calls "soft bread crumbs" because we had no idea how else to do that! We added these and continued heating until bubbly. The recipe calls for "low heat" but also bringing this huge mixture to sufficient activity to reduce and thicken it. So I turned up the heat a bit and stirred this continuously for approximately ever. It was not reducing, so we added one teaspoon of cornstarch (dissolved in a little hot water) to thicken the mixture.

We cooled this on the counter and then in the fridge for a couple of hours, until well after dinner. This definitely falls in the category of a "better on the second day" food. We have not (yet) tested the theory that it also falls in the category of a "better topped with vanilla ice cream and/or cherry liqueur" but odds are high.

Midsummer Ale Bread

This brings to mind another question: "Where have you been all my life?" For several years we used beer as an ingredient in our bread-machine pizza dough, until we realized that it made it too doughy, and that the entire family prefers crustier crust. I had not thought of ale as a main leavening agent, though perhaps I should have. This was amazingly simple: I whisked together 3 cups flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder, 1-1/2 teaspoons salt, and 2 tablespoons sugar (which I took for granted, until reading the discourse on pottage, see above). To this I mixed in 12 ounces of our special Scotch ale, making a thick dough.

I then turned this into a 6x9-inch pan and drizzled 1/2 cup (one stick) of butter over it. Actually, I could tell that was WAY too much butter, so I used some of it to brush the bottom of the pan, and still had plenty to drizzle and plenty more to reserve for the main course (see below).

The directions called for three smaller pans, which would have had the advantage of even more buttery-crusty goodness, but the single pan worked great -- 350F for 50 minutes, plus just a few minutes once I tested it. This was a very easy, delicious bread. A bit crumbly, but designed to break apart for sharing. The authors recommend it for housewarming parties, since a blessing can be said with each piece that is shared, and love will fill every room of a house. We ate it outside -- the longest day of the year and all -- but still blessed our house!

Noodles Della Italia

For the main course, I cooked fettuccini in one pot (this did not make it pottage!) while re-using our indispensable cast-iron saucepan to saute onion, garlic, red bell pepper, sliced mushrooms, and fresh oregano and basil from our front yard. When I read this recipe, I thought it would be rather like pasta primavera, but it had no tomatoes, and I had caramelized the vegetables just enough to give this a much earthier feel and sweeter taste.

What does this have to do with solstice? I'm not sure, except that we do have oregano and basil this time of year. The authors cite Stregheria, the Italian earth-based religion, but the opportunity to share a family recipe that is light and suitable for summer cooking seems to be the main motivation.

Salad

As mentioned above, Pam put together a delicious salad with local Romaine and other leafies, along with a couple kinds of berries. This went very well with a Maine blueberry vinaigrette, and the whole meal went very well with Westport Rivers Pinot Noir, one of the very few good red wines from our region.

A simple meal

Day two of "What's in my refrigerator?"

There are quite a few carrots, so I decided to try a carrot/raisin salad. I don't think I've ever made one before, but I figured it couldn't be hard, and I had to make something quick and easy after work in order to get to my recorder lesson in time. Normally on recorder nights James makes a nice meal while I am at my class and we have a late dinner when I get back, but I was on my own yesterday. Anyway, I looked at several recipes for carrot/raisin salad online until I decided on which combination of ingredients I thought sounded good, and were already available to me. I came up with the following:

1 peeled and shredded carrot
1 handful of raisins
1 small piece of peeled and shredded ginger
1 dollop of mayonnaise
1 sprinkle of chopped walnuts

This was a very yummy side dish to my quesadilla, which I made with the last tortilla we had.

A simple summer dish

Our CSA sent us an e-mail earlier this week with an update to their blog that contained some new recipes. There were several things we would like to try but the Cumin-Spiked Shrimp with Summer Bean Salad was the one that we could make without having to go to the grocery for additional ingredients. Since we are getting ready to go on vacation we are trying to eat what we have on hand, rather than shopping.

I began in the morning by putting the frozen, pre-cooked shrimp into the refrigerator to thaw. About an hour before we ate I began mixing the other ingredients. One can of black beans, rinsed and drained, was added to some diced zucchini (a substitute for fresh corn, which we did not have). I also substituted a small chopped onion for the scallions. I added some sliced cherry tomatoes, 2 small, minced garlic cloves and then added some lime infused olive oil, a splash of lime juice, and a bit of cumin (I didn't measure, I just eyeballed it) and mixed well. I topped it with the thawed shrimp and placed everything back in the refrigerator to meld for about 45 minutes. This was refreshing and tasty. I think it would make good picnic food.

Lime Jubilee

Prelude
(written by James, May 25)

For Pam's Jubilee Birthday (that number is biblical -- look it up) she wanted a lime variation on the coffee-infused cake she made for James' Jubilee Birthday (biblical types differ on how to count the Jubilee years -- this May we covered them both).

As we sometimes do, we got a bit carried away with a theme, so that the menu now reads:

Beer-Lime Grilled Chicken 
Lime Biscuits 
Cilantro-Lime Slaw 
LimeAde
Lime Sherbet, natch, as our only store-bought offering
A Lime Variation on our Award-Winning Mocha Cake

Margaritas may also be involved, and perhaps Corona, which is only palatable with a wedge of lime.

Lime Cake
(written by James, May 26)

Of course it is appropriate to begin the preparations for Pam's Big Day on her Attainment Day, when she has already attained her newly-earned aged. After preparing some famous queso dip for an unrelated event this afternoon, we prepared two items that are best completed a day ahead, both to clear the kitchen for other activities and because neither of these has any last-minute steps.

The first of these is Pam's kidney bean salad -- a gift to herself each birthday. No limes are involved. Then James began the lime cake, varying the Molly Katzen pound cake that has become our standard. I followed the recipe in the original Moosewood Cook Book, using Katzen's suggested variations for a lemon cake as a starting point to create a raspberry-lime cake.

Rather than using butter and flour on the Bundt pan, I prepared it with lime-infused olive oil (brought in from Lebherz just for the occasion) and flour. I replaced the vanilla extract in the original recipe with raspberry extract, adding the freshly-squeezed juice of three limes and the zest of two. After the batter was prepared, I gently mixed in a small package of fresh raspberries.

I usually do not sample batter, but if it is any guide, this is going to be a really nice cake!

Slaw
(written by James, May 27)

I started the slaw -- perhaps only the second I have ever made -- fairly early this morning so that it could chill and the flavors could meld. I must confess to cheating, using one of those ubiquitous bags-o-veggies that have taken over produce shelves recently. Perhaps a bit later, when our CSA presents us with actual cabbage, I will do this again with fresh ingredients. But on a busy cooking day early in the season, I was happy to have the shortcut.

Since the bag had about 6 cups of cabbage rather than 4, I increased the ingredients in rough proportion -- lighter on the mayo and heavier on everything else. I could not imagine what I would have done with a partial bag of shredded cabbage, so I used it all. I also made a few minor substitutions, as described below.

I used one cup of Light Hellman's, the only mayo that crosses our threshold. It has 60 percent of the calories of regular. We tried Lowfat Hellman's once, which is 50 percent, and learned our limits! We had scallions on hand, so I used these for a very mild onion taste, rather than buying red onion. I used a serrano-honey balsamic in place of the rice vinegar, and probably used more than was called for. I have no idea what "sweet chili sauce" is, so I used deli-style crushed red peppers. I whisked all of this together before stirring in the vegetation (using our silicon scraper-spoon to good effect).

The result was a nearly perfect slaw -- not too creamy or too vinegarish, and just tangy enough for a nice late spring meal outdoors.

Chicken
(written by James, May 27)

Speaking of which, after a few days of unseasonably cold, windy, and wet weather, the skies lifted, the sun came out, and the angels sang off in the distance, for the occasion of Pam's birthday. This meant that recent landscaping preparations were worthwhile, and that grilling outside was part of the festivities, rather than a frozen exile. I prepared the marinade just as directed in the aptly-named Beer Lime Grilled Chicken recipe,  except that I used some flat pale ale from the back of the fridge rather than the light-colored beer it calls for. (Those who are not hop-heads might be surprised to learn that "pale ale" is actually much darker than most mainstream beers.) The extra flavor certainly did not harm the outcome -- the pre-packaged, boneless, skinless organic chicken breasts turned out moister and more delicious than would have been thought likely.

(Incidentally, neither margaritas nor Corona were involved after all -- each diner enjoying some combination of limeade, ginger-ale, and home-brew.

Limeade and Biscuits

(written by Pam, May 28)

I adapted a favorite recipe for ginger-lemonade I clipped out of a newspaper years ago to make mint-limeade. I started with making a mint-infused syrup with chopped fresh mint from the garden, 1/4 c. of water, and 1/2 c. of sugar. All of this was heated until boiling, then removed from the stove top to steep. While the syrup cooled I juiced 9 limes. The lime juice, 4 cups of water, 1/4 of sugar and the mint syrup all went into a pitcher and were stirred until well mixed. Our friends brought over some lemon-lime seltzer water which when mixed with the limeade made a refreshing spritzer.

The lime biscuits were pretty simple -- much like other biscuit recipes I used, but with added lime zest and a bit of lime juice. I did think that the 10 tablespoons of butter the recipe called for seemed like overkill and used about 7 instead. They were plenty buttery, and quite tasty with just a hint of lime.

To round out the meal we also had some macaroni and cheese, and Tostitos Hint-of-Lime chips which were delicious with the leftover dip. Everyone was well satisfied when the meal was done.

A delicious accident

Today we received three bottles of flavored olive oils from LOVE emporium in the mail. James had placed the order when he discovered an olive oil emergency which would have prevented me from having exactly what I wanted for my birthday dinner (stay tuned for that post early next week). I decided to use the lemon fused oil in place of  the vegetable oil and lemon juice in this recipe for honey mustard dressing.

I did a few other adaptations as well. First I cut the recipe by a three quarters as I can't imagine how long it would take for us to eat four cups of dressing. I also added a tablespoon of Honey Serrano vinegar from said Emporium. Once the honey, olive oil, vinegar, and Dijon mustard were ready I put them in a blender on high until well emulsified. We put this very smooth dressing on top of a chicken salad I picked up from the leftovers of a meeting that took place near my office. My, but it was zesty! Just about the best honey-mustard dressing I could imagine. Where did that pep come from? While cleaning  up the kitchen after dinner I discovered the answer. I had not, in fact, used the lemon flavored olive oil, but rather the Chipotle flavored such. Well, there is no going back now.

Lots of almonds

Over the summer we purchased a few more cookbooks which sat on our shelf while we gave Deborah Madison a workout with our farm box fare. The farm box season is almost over, and our penultimate (I love that word!) delivery had the pleasant surprise of three kinds of lettuce. I decided to check out one of our unused cookbooks for a salad recipe, and couldn't resist looking in Jaqui Malouf's Booty Food: A Date-by Date, Course-by-Course, Nibble-by-Nibble Guide to Cultivating Love and Passion Through Food for an appropriate recipe to celebrate the mimosa tree that James had planted for me in our front yard. I found a recipe called Boston Bibb Salad with Almonds, Oranges, and Parisian Mustard Vinaigrette. Malouf explains that there is "no lettuce more sensual as silky as Boston Bibb." I have to say here that I have never heard of Boston Bibb lettuce, nor do I know if any of the kinds I used was Boston Bibb, but I live near Boston, so that should count for something, anyway.

I arranged the lettuce pieces onto two plates, and to each of these I added some almond slivers that had been toasted in butter for 3 minutes, and also divided one large peeled, sectioned, and de-membraned  orange between the two servings. The dressing was rather simple: 2T each of Dijon mustard, olive oil, and red wine vinegar, along with a bit of salt and pepper placed in a blender and mixed until creamy. This was drizzled over the salads.

We also prepared some date and almond pilaf from the Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home to complete the meal.

To cap off our meal we toasted our newly planted mimosa tree with some champagne mimosas. James knew I have wanted a mimosa tree ever since I was a little girl. He had to ask at quite a few nurseries before he was able to score one. He is quite romantic.

A tale of two salads

The type food we get in our farm box haul varies quite a bit as the season moves along, and changes from year to year as well. We are still occasionally getting beets, and last week also received some peaches and pears, things we had not gotten in previous years. I did some searching on allrecipes.com to find out what I could build with these ingredients and found two delicious salads.

I made some changes to the, Roasted Beet, Peach, and Goat Cheese Salad, to incorporate ingredients we already had on hand, but was pleased to be able to use the beets and the peaches in one dish. I followed the instructions to roast the beets until I could easily remove the skin. I used more than the recipe called for as ours were rather small, ditto for the peaches, which I cut into small chunks. I added these to a mix of farm greens, lettuce, and herbs from my garden. I substituted a diced onion for the shallots, and included the feta and pistachios as suggested. Rather than make the vinaigrette recommended, I simply sprinkled some of our peach balsamic vinegar from the LOVE Emporium. It was a perfect use for it. A wonderful salad with ingredients I would not have thought to put together. And it tasted great paired with a Cabernet Sauvignon from the Milbrant vineyards of  the Columbia Valley of Eastern Washington.

The pears were well used in the Curried Cashew, Pear, and Grape Salad. After toasting the cashews I mixed them with the melted butter, curry powder, brown sugar, salt, and cayenne. I did not have fresh rosemary, so a used dry, which worked out fine. Again, I used a mix of greens and added the seasoned cashews, the cooked bacon, sliced pears and grapes. I tossed it all with the honey/mustard dressing included with the recipe. This was sweet, tangy, and salty, with a rich variety of textures.

We Got the Beet

The Go Go's always had the beet! The Rockefeller Center version confirms that these young ladies are part of our generation.

Readers of this blog might already know that beets are among our biggest local-food challenges. We try to eat all of our vegetables, but the icky texture and the aggressive blandness seem to dominate anything we prepare with beets. Once again, kitchen goddess Deborah Madison came to our rescue, with a green salad based on her "Grated Beet Salad with Cumin" (itself a variation of another salad on page 155 of Vegetarian Cooking for All).

I started by preparing the lime-cumin vinaigrette (p 185), a complex and savory sauce whose flavor could not be beeten. I began by mashing one garlic clove (from our Cochester Neighborhood Farm share) with 1/8t salt in our small mortar. Then I combined this with the zest of two limes and the juice of one lime (reserving a little straight lime juice for the chef!), 2T chopped scallions (also farm box) and half a chopped jalapeño. Then I toasted 1t cumin seeds in a dry cast-iron skillet (Madison calls for 1/2t each of cumin and coriander, but I could not find the latter). I cleaned out the mortar in order to crush the toasted seeds, and mixed them in, then whisked in 1/4t dry mustard and 1/3 cup olive oil (completely forgetting that I could have used jalapeño oil from L.O.V.E. --- more on that in a future post).

Now for the star of this salad, which we improved by demoting it to a supporting role. The recipe calls for one pound of beets -- I knew we did not have that much, but I used all we had, which was four or five small beets. I peeled and shredded them (again, see last year's gratin post for shredder details) and blanched them in boiling salt water (that is, I put them in only for a minute). I then drained, blotted, and sieved them so that I would not have a wet mess. At this point, we realized that -- for the first time in our lives -- we did not have enough beets! We were actually sharing this salad with friends, so Pam had the brilliant idea of combining it with cucumbers and greens -- also from this week's farm share -- before applying the lime-cumin concoction.

The result was actually delicious -- the greens solved the texture problem and the vinaigrette provided more flavor than even beets could absorb.

A New Lunch and a New Dinner

To make up for last week, when we were on vacation and prepared no new recipes, I made two today. I noticed that we had some celery in the refrigerator, and we had just bought apples and grapes. Since we always have a supply of walnuts, I realized that we had what we needed for Waldorf salad, which I've eaten before, but never made myself. The dressing was made with 3T of mayonnaise, and 1T of fresh squeezed lemon (fortunately I found a lemon hidden in the fruit drawer as well) and a bit of fresh ground pepper. This was tossed with one chopped apple, about a dozen sliced grapes, 1/2 c. of thinly sliced celery, and 1/2 c. of toasted walnuts. Simple, crunchty and delicious.

For dinner we tried Rice Pilaf with Dates and Almonds. I still had quite a few dates from the charoset I made for our anniversary party, so this recipe from The Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home looked like a good use for them. I heated 1T each of butter and olive oil in my indispensable cast-iron skillet and sauteed 1 chopped onion, and one minced garlic clove. Then added some frozen tri-colored peppers. Spices went in next: some fresh ground allspice, 1t turmeric, and a 1/2 t. cinnamon (now the kitchen really smelled good). I cut up a handful of dates and added them to the skillet, then stirred in 3 c. cooked rice and some parsley. Finally, I added some sliced almonds and stirred until everything was heated and well mixed. Tasty and satisfying with a lot of flavor, texture, and color.

Hail, Caesar!

This week's story is about a salad so simple that it barely deserves the term "salad," yet I cheated on the recipe! When we reached the end of last week, however, we realized that we had not chosen a blog-worthy recipe, but we had a cookout invitation in hand and a full head of organic romaine lettuce from our CSA in the fridge. So we decided that this simple salad would be our featured recipe this week. Fortunately, though the salad is simple, the story is not!

Caesar salad is my favorite salad -- plenty of cool romaine, shredded or shaved Parmesan, croutons (which I love on any salad) and decadent dressing. I repeatedly delude myself into thinking that the fiber and vitamins from the lettuce offset the saturated fats of the dressing. Many restaurants offer a grilled chicken version that I will sometimes order as a main course, but usually I have just the salad. I remember at least one restaurant that offered a "half" version. When I inquired, I learned that this meant "only" a half a head of romaine was used! I also found a restaurant that did not include any form of Parmesan cheese, which is just wrong.

My friend Rob enjoyed the salad I prepared yesterday, but insists that it was not "real" because it did not include anchovies. According to Susan Stamberg's Roots of Caesar Salad story, however, anchovies were a later addition to the Prohibition-era dish. Actually, anchovies are almost always present in almost homeopathic concentrations, because anchovies are an ingredient in Worcestershire sauce, and that sauce (a.k.a. "Woostah-shur") is present in Caesar dressing.

Helen & Cesar Chavez with RFK
read more at Latino Like Me

But I've gotten a bit ahead of the story. Caesar is not only a favorite salad; it is a treasured word in our house. My middle name is Kezar, a Maine variant of the German variant Kaiser (Wilhelm II probably having something to do with my family's creative spelling). It can also be spelled Cesar, as in the great labor leader Cesar Chavez (see also RFK/Cesar connection).

Because we had determined not to name a child James Kezar V,  in fact, we had decided that if ever we had a son, "Cesar" would have been his name.

What does Prohibition have to do with this salad? Quite simply, Tijuana was an easy get away for Los Angeles film stars at the time, and a group that dropped in on chef Caesar Cardini in 1924 were looking for something filling to go with their booze. Cardini scrambled to put together something from what he had on hand, which explains the odd combination ingredients that are found in the salad to this day. Apparently the name of the salad (connoting an emperor) and the lettuce (connoting his empire) are just coincidental!

The Tijuana connections are interesting for me as well. My first foray into Mexico was in Tijuana in the 1980s, and it is the scene of much of Kerouac's On the Road. The stereotypes -- some well earned -- arising from its various vices are sent up in Manu Chao's amazing and satrical Welcome to Tijuana, an essential element in my teaching. I am looking forward to seeing a new documentary film of the same name.

Finally, just a bit about the salad at hand. Despite the fact that I had already purchased Newman's Own Creamy Caesar Dressing, making this the simplest possible salad, I lacked confidence at the last moment. Should I cut or tear the romaine, for example? Our usual mainstay, author Deborah Madison, was of no help, apparently considering this too simple even for her book of basic recipes. Or maybe she does not consider this salad vegetarian, given the fishiness of the dressing.

Based on the Caesar Salad I recipe on AllRecipes.com, I decided to rinse and then tear the entire head of romaine (after chopping off the hardest part of the heart), toss it with about 1/3 cup of the dressing, a generous handful of freshly-shredded Parmesan, and nearly an entire bag of croutons (specifically sold as Caesar).

Lemon-Pepper Shrimp and Strawberry Salad

In honor of our 24th wedding anniversary last Monday, James and I revisited our Intercourses cookbook. This spicy/sweet recipe was perfect for the warm spring day. The shrimp was grilled with lemon-pepper seasoning and then served on a bed of mixed greens, then topped with a sauce made from fresh strawberries, canola oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper and a dash of sugar. I mixed the dressing in my blender and it came out smooth and creamy, then poppy seeds were added. Served with the bewitching Sweet Tooth Mead from Isaaks of Salem,  purchased in Salem earlier in the day, this was a perfectly romantic meal.

Plus, after I was so successful at making the strawberry dressing in the blender, I tried my hand at honey mustard, and again, I was not disappointed. I may never buy dressing again.