Category — Salad

Are you thinking of taking the City of Ottawa’s $10 Local Food Challenge?  Yes?  Why not spend your $10 this week on some beets.  For $10, you can buy a bunch of beets and some potatoes and make two easy (and filling) dishes.  I bought two big bunches of beets at the Lansdowne farmers market this weekend: one red, one golden.  Price?  $5 per bunch.  Maybe that seems expensive for a bunch of beets.  But it’s a deal if you use the greens that come along with them.  And these beets?  They came with a lot of greens.

One of the nice things about buying beets from the market is that the greens are still in good shape for cooking.  To me, it feels nicer to cook with crisp greens, but even grocery store beets with wilty tops are perfectly fine for using in the soup recipe.  You just won’t get that satisfying “crunch choppy chop” sound from your knife slicing through the greens.

I bought beets to make the two-colour beet salad from Simple Cooking and the soup was a bit of an afterthought once I saw how many greens I came home with.  This beet greens soup seemed easy to throw together.

Simple Cooking seems to be out of print, but the Dean & Deluca website features a similar beet salad recipe.  Although, I can’t recommend hunting down a copy this book enough.  The eggplant coloured book has so many really simple, really fresh recipes with effortlessly rustic photography.  It’s staged, but not annoying rustique.  It is one of my most prized cookbooks. (I found mine at the Chapters on Slater/Bank last week).

To get started, chop the greens off the beets and give everything a good wash.  The beets get cooked in a pot of boiling water until soft.  Don’t worry about the skins, they come off later.   While the beets are boiling, you can get started on the soup.

Wash and chop your greens, dice your onions and garlic, cube your potatoes.  And whatever you do, if you use fresh hot peppers intead of dried chili flakes, use gloves.

I bought these peppers thinking they were just like a red version of a jalapeno.  WRONG.  So wrong.  I took a very tiny bit to test the hotness of the peppers and my mouth went on fire, my lips burned, I cried.  I diced no more than a heaping teaspoon to add to the soup.  And once the burning stopped, I wondered how I would use the remaining five peppers.  Twelve hours later, after having showered, washed dishes and washed my hands serveral times during the day, I stupidly rubbed my eye in the middle of the night.  3am is a really unfortunate hour to be awake with a burning eye.  Lesson learned.  This pepper is potent.

Toss the salad dressing together: olive oil, vinegar, salt pepper and mint.  Easy.   Drain your beets, cool them under cold water, peel and slice.  (Reserve a few slices for your soup.)  Pour dressing over beets, add a bit of extra mint on top.

Now, finish off your soup.  I like to blend my soup a bit with a stick blender and leave a few larger potato chunks.  I will admit, it doesn’t look creamy or velvety or even very pretty.  But it’s tasty and warming and good for you.  If you’ve used the greens and the beets for these recipes, you should also have very little waste.

Serve with some bread and you have an easy $10 local lunch.

$10 Local Food Challenge Contest details:
You can enter the contest to win one of 10 coupons valued at $50 to spend on the restaurants and retailers who are part of Savour Ottawa. Contest ends at the end of October.

Canada Food Day has come and gone.  I tried to get into the swing of the event, but between their promotional tweeting and multiple (ok dozens) of Cars movie viewings, my brain went on vacation promptly on Friday at 5pm.  Truth is, I didn’t need an organized “day” to enjoy food from Canada.  Instead of crafting a menu, I decided to share some freshly picked veggies with a neighbour.   Spread the love, you know?

I picked tomatoes, radish, onions, snow peas, carrots, beet green and lots of herbs.  I tucked everything into a couple of bowls and delivered the goodies.

The rest of the Food Day unfolded like many other Saturdays: extended jammie wearing, a trip to the fish shop, some errands on Preston Street, Lego, Diego, grilling corn and sausage on the BBQ and fizzy drinks on the side.

The highlight of Food Day ended up being our outing to Whalesbone to pick up some of their smoked octopus.  It’s Alden’s favourite.  We scooched together on a stool and snacked in the shop.  Except snacking turned into a meal.  He devoured it in minutes.

I had to buy more to take home.  The next day he was so happy to have more octopus, he broke into dance.  Well.. hopping.  Boys.

Brown rice pilaf AKA “it’s just too cold to go out to grocery shop, so let’s make something using up stuff in the pantry.”  It’s -37 with the windchill today and the thought of stepping out any farther than our mailbox is out of the question. So, today I decided to whip on the brown rice pilaf from the Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way cookbook.

This cookbook is a super reference is you happen to buy a lot of your pantry staples in bulk (like we do).  This book has great recipes and covers the basics of how to cook all types of whole grains – because who can remember the proportions of water for brown rice or quinoa?  Not me.

The recipe sounded really interesting – toasted spicy walnuts, dried cranberries and a hint of Marsala wine to pull it all together.  It didn’t sound like your basic ho-hum pilaf.  This recipe turned out even tastier than I imagined.  The nuts and spices make it a hardy side dish or a light meal.  The marsala wine adds a touch of sweetness that contrasts the nutty flavour of the rice.  And the balance between the sweet dried cranberries and the salty/spicy nuts hit the spot.

Boyfriendly rating: Total winner.  A balance of sweet and salty with a healthy dose of fiber.

Nuts:

• 1 Tbsp butter or olive oil
• 1/2 cup of walnuts (I used walnuts and an extra handful of almonds)
• 1/8 tsp cinnamon and a dash of allspice and nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp salt (the original recipe calls for more, but I found it a touch salty)

Rice:

• 3 cups of cooked brown rice (1 cup of rice to 2 cups of water – cook on low heat for 40 minutes).
• 3 Tbsp Marsala wine
• 3 Tbsp dried cranberries

Method:

Cook the brown rice.  You can do this ahead of time since it takes about 40 minutes for it to cook.

Prepare the nuts in a frying pan – they should toast up in a couple of minutes.  Keep your eye on them.

Toss cranberries and wine into the rice – allow it to cook for a few minutes until the wine is absorbed.  Stir in the nut mixture.   Serve!

Wow.  Cooking when you have a baby is mega tricky.  The best recipes are the ones when you can stop cooking in the middle of a recipe to attend to diapers, crying or a hungry cat.  So far, this easy meal salad is my new staple recipe.  I should have taken a photo, but well… there is no photo.  Please use your imagination until I get around to taking a photo.  I’ll get to it eventually since I’ve made this recipe already twice in a week.  For those who know me, it’s pretty unusual for me to cook with tuna, but even ME (the tuna hater) loves this recipe.

Mom’s Can-do Tuna Couscous 

• 1 cup whole wheat couscous
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 1 can tuna (I use whole tuna packed in water)
• cherry tomatoes (as many as you like)
• sliced olives (I like a mixture of black and green)
• sprigs of parsley

Dressing:

• 2 Tbsp lemon juice (or more)
• 5 Tbsp olive oil
• 2 Tbsp honey
• salt and pepper to taste

How to:

• Boil the chicken broth and remove from heat.  Stir in couscous and let sit until fluffy.
• Add salad ingredients: tuna, tomatoes, olives.
• Stir in dressing.
• Serve warm or cold.  If you’re a mom, you won’t care if it’s warm or cold… as long as you can eat it uninterrupted.
• Top with some parsley if you’re feeling gourmet.

About three o’clock this afternoon, the bacon alarm went off.  I knew I wanted some sort of salad with bacon.  Enter Google.  I typed in some keywords: bacon, salad and beans.  Most of the results featured green beans… blah!  I wanted real beans… the kind that don’t taste like freshly mowed grass.  (I am not fond of green beans!)

This recipe from Cooking Light came up – not only did it feature white beans, bacon! and spinach, but maple syrup and mustard.  Swoon.  Could it be love? It could.  I added some tomato to the recipe since I had it on hand and gobbled up two servings for dinner with a fresh baguette from the Boko bakery.  The dressing was so good, I’ll probably add it as one of my go-to salad dressing recipes.

Note: their instructions say to heat up the dressing and the beans, but why?  Like it’s not hot enough here in Ottawa these days?  A girl does not need hot beans on her salad.  I omitted any instructions that would add more heat to the apartment.

Boyfriendly rating: 5/5  “loved the bacon- with the beans and greens!”  (I also heard the boy say, “it was yummy” but he’ll be embarrassed that I typed ‘yummy’ on the blog.)

Ingredients: 

• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 3 tablespoons cider vinegar
• 1 tablespoon extravirgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1  can navy beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 tomato diced
• 1/2 cup thinly sliced green onions
• 1/2 cup finely chopped red bell pepper
• 5 bacon slices, cooked and crumbled
• fresh baby spinach

I shouldn’t have rushed so much taking this photo, but I was sooooo hungry. It’s a variation on a recipe that I saw in Australian Women’s Weekly “Main Course Salads”. (I highly recommend this series of cookbooks – great photos and simple recipes.) The original recipe called for a truckload of couscous and chicken sausage. Finding turkey or chicken sausage at our local grocery store is pretty hit or miss. It seems like they only get a few packages in a week or someone in Centretown is hoarding sausage. Both options are totally possible.

At any rate, we substituted chorizo for the chicken and halved the amount of couscous that the original version called for. The result was this really nice Mediterranean flavoured salad that was a hearty side dish to our personal pizzas.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup couscous
• 3/4 cup chicken stock
• 1 cup sliced green olives
• 4-5 sliced green onions
• mild chorizo (approximately 125g or half a package of the President’s Choice brand chorizo)
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• lemon zest
• 1 can of chickpeas (washed and drained)
• 1/4 cup (or more) chopped cilantro

Bring the chicken stock to a boil – add the couscous and remove from heat.  Let sit for five minutes and fluff with a fork.  Meanwhile – slice the chorizo into bite size pieces and toss in a frying pan to crisp up the edges.  Use as much chorizo as you like.  Toss everything into a mixing bowl: couscous, olives, oil, lemon juice, zest, onions, chickpeas and cilantro.  Serve!

Boyfriendly rating: 5/5

The prerequisites that led up to this salad: must have grilled veggies, shaved parmesan cheese and arugula.  I think I was feeling particularly inspired after flipping through Jamie at Home and he did a similar salad (minus the arugula).

After a rare trip to the Byward Market on Sunday, we came home with more than just herbs for planting.  We ended up with wild garlic, asparagus and some extremely cute baby eggplants.  (PS: it’s the last week for wild garlic!)

I “fired up” the Mario Batalli grill, tossed the eggplant slices in a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper and set them grilling for about 15 minutes.  Once they were done, in went the asparagus for another 10-15 minutes.

Serving this salad couldn’t be easier – toss some arugula on the plate, load up with veggies, add cheese and finish with a does of olive oil, salt and pepper.  Maybe even a squeeze of lemon.  Easy.

This week’s veggie box also included arugula and some *really* delicious tangerines.  Arugula is another super leaf – Wikipedia tells me it’s high in vitamin C and iron.  It’s peppery taste was also considered an aphrodisiac in Roman times.  Ahem.

Moving on.  What to do? Salad time.

Boyfriendly arugula and tangerine salad

• 2 cups torn arugula leaves
• 2 cups Mesculin mix
• 2 tangerines
• 1/3 cup toasted walnuts

Dressing:

• 1 Tbsp. raspberry vinegar
• 2 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
• 1 Tbsp. dijon mustard (we used the coarse kind)
• 5 Tbsp. olive oil
• pinch sugar
• salt & pepper to taste

(This recipe makes twice as much dressing as you need – so you’ll need to make the salad part fresh again the next day.)
Boyfriendly rating: 5/5. Another winner! And probable dinner party salad.

This week’s veggie box had a kohlrabi bulb – a new vegetable to me. After some Googling, I came across this salad recipe from ABC in Western Australia and thought I’d give it a try.

It was interesting and tasty and would be great in the summer. The ginger is a nice touch – it makes it feel less like coleslaw.

Boyfriendly rating: 4/5 “love the ginger”

You need:
1 large kohlrabi, finely grated
1 apple, grated
1 clove of garlic
2 small carrots, finely grated
1/2 red onion, cut in cubes
1 tablespoon of grated ginger (I used candied ginger)
2 tablespoons of cider vinegar
2 tablespoons of toasted cashew nuts (I didn’t toast the nuts!)
Sea salt to taste
Black pepper to taste
3 tablespoons of flaxseed oil

Mix the vinegar, salt and pepper in a salad bowl and whisk in the oil slowly. Add the vegetables, toss and decorate with the toasted cashews.