Stupid simple

Simple as in every summer shalt have a stupid simple recipe.
This one uses more of that half n half you bought for the Colorado Bulldog and probably did not use for the Frostbite. Because I said it sucked.

This salad is best accompanied by last summer’s stupid simple: the stupid-simple-summer-sippable taught to me by Sheila.

It looks like wine, tastes like ginger heaven.
Incidentally, a splash of the ginger juice to an iced coffee with a dash of cinnamon and a bit of sweetener is wicked delicious.

When it comes to a simple salad, everyone has preferences that are different so this is barely a recipe because I keep saying “whatever you prefer”. I do tell you what I like so you can make me a salad properly. Someday. Some summer. Suddenly?

The salad snob may want to wield a pepper grinder over this, but taste the dressing first, it packs quite the pepper punch.

My, but I’m into alliteration aujourd’hui.

I tried this salad several ways: one time constructed with slices cheese, one time tossed with Romaine with the cheese shredded. I think like the sliced better, but shredding and blending the cheese certainly made for a more creamy situation. That sounds weird.
But it looks better.

.
I got all inspired one night and did a poached egg/shredded cheese rendition.

The almost-winning combo, seen at the top of this post was verging on not so simple. Arugula for the greens. Half the cheese shredded and tossed with some dressing and the greens. The remainder sliced. Egg poached. Extra dressing on the side.
And only almost a winner because I missed the refreshing crunch of romaine.

I’ve no pictorial evidence but I put an eggs-in-a-nest on it once.

So shred, slice, poach, boil, hell, scramble if you must. But try the dressing. Make yourself a simple salad.
It’s gosh-durned good eating.

Oh, and for a little while I’m only posting once a week, unless major things happen and I feel the need to put up another post. And I may go back to twice a week at some point. But otherwise it’s going to be Wednesdays. Carry on.

Creamy Swiss Salad(adapted from the Betty Crocker published…I’m not sure when. It’s old)

A big bowl o’ salad greens, whichever you prefer. For this salad I like butter lettuce, romaine, spinach, arugula…
2 ounces cubed or sliced reduced fat Swiss cheese
1 hard-boiled egg, cut however you prefer, hopefully not sieved. I despise when they crumble the egg
OR poach that sucker
4 Tbsp. reduced fat vegan mayo
1 Tbsp. half n half
1/2 tsp. dry mustard powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
Put yet greens in a bowl or big plate. Whichever you prefer. I like a big plate.
Either toss eggs and cheese with greens or arrange them on top. I prefer on top. Whisk together mayo, half n half, mustard powder, salt and pepper. Add dressing to taste. If you are me realized you wanted to mix in some dressing first and then arrange the cheese and egg on top so you may have to take them off, toss, then rearrange.
It’s a pain in the ass to be a finicky food separatist.

I have huge melons, and I’m bitter.

Actually it’s more like I had one huge melon and some Angostura bitters. My own melons are extra petite and I like em’ just that way.

I discovered the love of bitters last summer via the classic champagne cocktail. I’ll do a post about that later. In the meantime, I was excited to see a non-alcoholic, in fact not a beverage at all, recipe using angostura bitters.
I dearly love old, housewive-y cookbooks and as such own a reprint of the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook from 1953.
This little do came from the Appetizers section in a list of Melon-Ball Cocktails. Twas delightful. Subtle. Amazing what little embelishments can do to a simple melon.

Love this recipe. Love this book. Though it is hard to entirely trust when it calls for. For instance, say, a package of pudding mix. I am betting the ones they sell these days are completely different in size and make-up than the ones in the 50’s.
This recipe did not call for pudding, but it did call for preserved ginger. The only type of preserved ginger I am aware of at my local supermarket is the dried and sugared type, and the pickled type. I went with the latter since it is prettier. And rinsed it to taper down on the pickle-y taste.
This recipe did not list amounts. Here is what I concocted:
Old-school Housewife Melon
1 cup of cubed cantaloupe
1 slice of pickled ginger, rinsed and chopped
1 dash of angostura bitters
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lime juice, mixed with a pinch of sugar
Mix it, eat it.
This was so simple and pretty much unbelievably tasty. In the future I will add even more ginger. Actually, I also just tried wrapping a melon wedge in a piece of the ginger. It was like a vegan version of those melon-prociutto things people seem to love. Yup, yup. Seems like these super-simple recipes are always the winners.

Tofu: a (slight) change of heart

I actually found a use for tofu that may cause me to go out and purchase more. I know, I know. I’m a vegetarian. I am supposed to love tofu. And it does, to its credit, soak up the flavors of what it is cooked in. And you can play around with it to change its texture. But all this seems like a lot of trouble when I could cook with something that is delicious without having to be pressed, frozen, thawed, marinated, basted, tied up and smacked around. However, two words that made me reconsider: Ranch Dressing. Good lord, some fries to dip would be good right now.
Who convinced me to give tofu another shot? Chocolate-Covered Katie. Sounds kinky, but she seems pretty un-kinky, which probably means she secretly is? I dunno. Sorry Katie, I will stop contemplating your kink-factor. You seem like a very sweet girl.
Anywho, she posted this recipe for Crazy-Good Ranch Dressing that is so healthy you really could eat a bowl of it, and do no damage, unless you are sensitive to soy. Not only is this stuff healthy but I did not have to do anything to the tofu except mix it with my immersion blender aka the best unsung hero of my kitchen. Love that thing. Less clean-up than a normal blender. I digress. Make this dressing. Go tell Katie she’s awesome for inventing it. I did.
Eat it up with a spoon, if you want. I ate it with broccoli. Then celery. Then roasted beets. Then said what the hell and broke out the spoon. It was worth it.

cruddy cooks + brilliant food

=great dishes, if and only if(is there a mathematical symbol for that, Eleanor do you know?) the cook barely touches the ingredients.
Although I am pretty decent in the kitchen, when it comes to fruits and vegetables I don’t mess with them much. In fact, I love most veggies uncooked, and would rather eat salads undressed and fruits by themselves if the quality is high.
My CSA deliveries are yielding great things these days, so why mess with them? Why gild the lily? It’s like putting butter on butter. Wait, I would probably do that. I love butter. Almost as much as I love Mark Bittman, whose “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian” managed to convince me to play with a couple of the things I got delivered this week. First up was a strawberry and arugula salad. Basically just the berries, some balsamic vinegar, and salt and pepper. I played around with the proportions but got the idea from Bittman’s book. The results:

Perfection. Actually perfection to the nth degree.

Laissez les bon temps…remoulade

Ok, that was the best play on words I could come up with. But “laissez les bon temps rouler” is a New Orleans expression, and remoulade seems like a southern-ish thing…right? Anyone out there know what remoulade means? Anyway, I got a bunch of celery in my CSA delivery and decided I would make Mark Bittman’s Celery Remoulade recipe from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. This recipe is ideally made with celery root, but Mark says celery is a permissable sub, so yay that. Ideally, I also would make my own mayonaise for the remoulade, and while Mark does not say pre-made jarred vegan lowfat mayonaise is permissable as a substitute, if he ever wants to eat at my place he’s gonna have to get over that. And surely he would love to come cook dinner with me, dontcha think? I’d make a very non-lowfat and non-vegan(i.e. butter-filled) dessert! Alas. I imagine I would be low on his list of dining companions but someday…
Ok, enough blahblah, here is what I ended up making,, based on How to Cook Everything Vegetarian’s recipe:
Celery Remoulade, Ellen’s Way
Mix up:
1/2 cup vegan mayo
2 Tbsp. chopped scallions
2 Tbsp. chopped parsley(using my kitchen scissors is my new favorite way to chop herbs)
1 1/2 Tbsp. Dijon mustard
1 Tbsp. ketchup(I used the sugarfree type)
A dollop of horseradish and a pinch of cayenne
Add to this a pound of celery stalks, trimmed, strings peeled, and very thinly sliced, a sqeeze of lemon and some salt and freshly ground black pepper. If you wanna get fancy garnish with some parsley. You should get something like this: