Quinoa and Currant Salad

I didn’t expect this to really be a standout so I never bothered to take a picture of it. My husband chided me as he wolfed the last bits of it. When will I ever learn?

3 cups of beef broth
1.5 cup uncooked quinoa
½ cup currants
2 tbs of minced mint
Juice of ½ a lime
A good bit of pepper
Salt to taste


Bring broth to broil and throw in qinoa and currants, let cook to package instructions (mine called for 12 minutes), let cool. Add mint, lime, salt and pepper. Let stand in the refrigerator for 45 minutes to an hour.

Beet and Blue Cheese Salad

I have gotten a bit behind on the blogging of late. If it gives you any clue this is something I made January 18th. This is a really simple salad and quite pretty. I used a simple olive oil and lemon dressing, but any vinaigrettes would work.

This made four salads:

1 large beet, boil until tender and pop the skin, let cool then grate
¾ c. blue cheese
½ c. toasted walnuts
4 cups lettuce or mixed greens
thinly sliced onion

On four plates put on cup of lettuce or greens. Top with ¼ (for each plate) blue cheese and walnuts. Add onion to taste. Put ¼ of the shredded beets and top with dressing. Do not toss.

Orange and Goat Cheese Salad

I hope everyone had a great holiday and enjoyed time with friends and family. This year for Christmas Eve dinner I did a seafood lasagna. I am quite sure some of you might desert me if I write up one more thing containing orange or orange zest. I love citrus though. I believe citrus is the most underutilized powerhouse of the kitchen. Don’t believe me? Next dish you make, sweet or savory either squeeze some fresh lemon, lime or orange unto it or use a little fresh zest from one of these beauties. It just picks up a dish. It adds a layer of flavor that makes all the difference in the world. The only key with citrus is to add it at the very end. It gets bitter if cooked too long.

This is just a simple salad. It contains only lettuce (your choice), onion, toasted walnuts (pine nuts would be great too), orange and goat cheese or feta. I made this salad twice. The first time I simply used a very good EVOO and a ton of fresh pepper. For Christmas Eve dinner I used a bit of vinegar, EVOO and again a ton of fresh pepper. It was the perfect salad for a seafood meal and pretty as well.

Goat Cheese and Pine Nut Spinach

1 tbs olive oil
1 bag spinach
¼ c. soft goat cheese
2tbs pine nuts
Salt and pepper

Heat oil in skillet. Add spinach, turning often. After about 2 minutes. Add goat cheese and nuts and cook for about 1 more minute. T

The doneness of this is based on your preference. I like my spinach, just wilted. However, you might like it cooked through. I will say, if you like it a bit less done, take it off the stove before you think it is done because it will keep cooking. A good rule of thumb is about the moment you think, “One more minute and this will be done.” Take it off.

Another way of doing wilted spinach and a favorite of mine as well is:
2tbs olive oil
2 tbs balsamic vinegar
¼ blue cheese
¼ c toasted walnuts

Heat oil and vinegar in skillet. Add spinach turning often. After about 2 minutes add cheese and nuts and cook for about one more minute.

Cilantro Salad/Tabouli

1 c. bulgur
2 c. boiling water
¼ onion
2 medium tomatoes
1 bunch cilantro chopped
¼ c. lemon juice
2 tbs olive oil
Salt, pepper
Put bulgur in boil and cover with boiling water. Stir and cover bowl. Let stand about ½ hour or until water absorbed. Add remaining ingredients and refrigerate for about an hour or moor until cool.
I owe this recipe to my cousin. I was a tabouli purist. Then one time I went to visit her and she had put corn and carrots in her tabouli. How odd, I thought. It was so good. From then on I got much more experimental with what I added to my bulgur. However, I realized the other day… I always used parsley. Why… why not cilantro. I have to say, if you like cilantro…and I do, try it. You will wonder why you didn’t before.

Wild Rice Salad

My Aunt, god bless her, goes with her husband on these remote camping trips in Alaska. While I imagine lovely, as I have stated before, not my cup of tea. Lucky for me she brings back this great wild rice and I don‘t have to suffer a life without bathrooms to have it. The type she normally gets takes quite some time to cook. The type she brought back this time cooked in much less time. So good. This really came out good and is totally guilt free. If you don’t have the bulgur, brown rice would work. If you don’t have the wild rice, try the wild rice packages, just leave off the seasoning.
1/3 c. bulgur
1/3 c. wild rice
1 celery stalk chopped
2 TBS onion chopped
¼ large cucumber chopped
1 carrot chopped
Juice of one lime
1 TBS olive oil
Salt Pepper
1 tsp dill
Cook bulgur and rice and let cool. Combine and add celery, onion, cucumber and carrot. Mix. In a bowl combine lime, dill and oil. Mix and poor over rice. Salt and Pepper to taste. This doesn’t make a ton, so if you are making this for more than four adults or trying to use it for more than just a side, make double.

Fig Salad

I don’t know where you are but here it is fresh fig season. The figs that are grown locally, are not super flavorful, which is the reason for “drying” them in the oven to concentrate the flavor. The dressing is the most complicated part of this simple salad. It is really good, and very pretty. If you don’t like goats cheese, use feta.

Dressing
10 figs sliced
½ c. balsamic vinegar
¼ c, oil
2 tbs raisins
1 tsp brown sugar

Heat oven to 250. (note below this is a good time to toast walnuts) Line a baking sheet with sliced figs and cook for 1 hour. You still want them moist, you are just trying to concentrate the flavor. Put into blender of food processor. Add all other ingredients and mix until fairly smooth. This will be a thick dressing.

Salad
Bag of spinach
¼ of onion thinly sliced
¼ c. walnuts
½ c. goat cheese
3 fresh figs

Toast walnuts in oven for about 10 minutes. Set aside. Combine spinach, onion, goat cheese in a bowl. Top with walnuts and garnish with slices of the fresh fig. I would serve into bowls and put a dollop of dressing in the middle of each salad.

Sautéed Turnips

Okay this is nothing sexy other than it is new for me. I have to admit, I Vanessa, have never had a turnip. Turnip greens yes, turnip no. So I was at the store the other day and I saw these beautiful vegetables. They were this creamy white topped in a beautiful purple. They were not the size I think of turnips as being. I think of a turnip as being about the size of a baseball. These were between the size of a Clementine and a tennis ball. They were just so pretty, so I thought to myself, could something so lovely, really deserve the terrible reputation it has received? Why not try them, it is only food after all. So I did. So I got these lovely little globes at home and then realized I had NO idea what to do with them. I began to look through recipes with very, very mixed reviews. So then I thought to myself, “ now how are you going to know which recipe you would be interested in if you don’t even know what they taste like. “ So I tried a thin slice raw. Wow, this was good, but packed some heat. Imagine, radish meets horseradish. (I plan a salad with them in my future). However, people always cook them I thought, so lets see what this tastes like cooked. I sliced it thin and in the pan it went with a wee bit of olive oil. I sautéed it for about 3-4 minutes and tried it.. These were good, a bit sweet. Really a lot like sweet onion. So that is where this recipe was born. So many recipes a I read talk about the turnip overpowering the dish. I always was told it was ammonia-y. I did not find this to be the case at all, however, they were very small turnips and looked very fresh. Maybe that was the difference? But man am I glad I tried them!!
1 whole sweet onion sliced
3 small turnips
2 tbs butter
Salt/pepper
1 tbs lemon juice
Slice onions and start in skillet with half the butter and cook medium low. Meanwhile slice turnips as thin as you can and once sliced throw in skillet with the rest of the butter. Cook medium low for 5 minutes and reduce to low and cook until soft. Once done, season to taste. Sprinkle with lemon, toss to coat and serve.

Browned Butter Brussels Sprout

Say that ten times fast! These are good and a different way of having Brussels Sprouts.
4 tbs butter, browned
1 lb Brussels sprouts
Salt/pepper
1tsp lemon juice

Using the slicing side of the grater, grate Brussels Sprouts. If you don’t have a grater, starting at top and working to bottom core slice. It should resemble a coarse cole slaw. Set aside. Put butter in pan and over medium heat melt butter and keep on heat until it browns a bit. This gives a very distinctive nutty flavor to the butter, if you are not sure, under brown, over browning will just burn it. Add about a ½ tsp of salt to butter, then add sprouts and pepper and stir to coat. Cover and cook about 10 minutes or until it reaches the doneness right for you. Sprinkle with lemon juice, stir to coat and serve.

Curried Peas

2 c. frozen peas defrosted (don’t boil)
¼ c sour cream
1.5 TBS sweet curry powder
1 tsp lemon
Salt

Mixed together serve chilled.

None of That Mushy Stuff Please

I am lucky because I love vegetables. Rutabaga, you bet! Brussels Sprouts, bring it on! Kohlrabi ..alrighty. Collards….not so much. However, I spent the vast majority of my life here in Richmond and so every encounter I had with a collard was... well… like a bad blind date…lifeless and I saw no potential. Then one day someone was talking about how much they loved collards. This is a person I was confident was not a mushy veggie eater. So, I asked how she cooked them, and a convert was born. If you have never had them, I suspect if you like wilted spinach or broccoli rabe you would like collards. They are far, far more course, which is one thing I adore about them. I think they are actually less bitter then wilted spinach. We are having them tonight with some leftover pork. I can’t wait.

1 Bunch of Collards
3 Heaping tablespoons a minced garlic
2 TBS Olive Oil
Dash of ground red pepper (optional, I like the wee kick)
Salt and pepper.

Okay collards can vary greatly. Some places you get them the greens will have NO grime in them and some places the greens are chocked full of grime/sand. To be sure, fill you sink with cool water, and soak them. Change water a couple of times. Honestly, I think the best source of collards is actually Food Lion. Once they are clean chop them up (I personally like mine sliced to form almost like a fettuccini noodle, but that is just my deal). I also like a good part of the stem, however, I would tell you if it is your first time using them, skip the stem. Heat ½ of olive oil and a couple of tablespoons of garlic. If you are making the whole bunch (as I do, they really cook down and are great leftover), you will not be able to get all into your pan. Fit what you can in there and loosely put a cover over you pan if you can, after a minute or so, stir and add more. Keep working in batches and once you have ¾ of the collards in the pan, put in the rest of the oil and garlic. Cook until all of the greens are wilted (some will be a bit more wilted, but again collards are so course they really can stand the longer cooking time). When they are done, really depends on you. Season to taste. You will be a convert.

Cellophane Salad

1 package of cellophane noodles or vermicelli
2 sliced carrots
1 sliced summer squash
½ sliced onion
½ bunch cilantro diced
1 can water chestnuts

Dressing
1/3 c soy sauce
2 TBS sesame oil
Juice of one lime
Mix salad together toss with dressing and serve cold. This would be good with any vegetables you like, snow peas, cabbage, broccoli.

Summer Squash and Herbs

There is nothing like West Virginia cuisine. Really. It is so good, down home and hearty. I enjoyed my pork tenderloin biscuit in the mornings so very much. However, after a few days of biscuits and hot dogs this dish was long overdue.

2 squash
2 zucchini
½ large onion
4 mint leaves
2 TBS parsley
1 TBS oregano
2 TBS olive oil
2 TBS rice wine vinegar
Sautee the onion, squash and zucchini in oil, just until done or still a bit firm. Let cool for about 10 minutes. Add herbs that have been chopped well. Add vinegar and let cool to room temperature. I am certain this would be good cool too.