Salad Need Not Be Boring!

My ideas about salad often revert to iceberg lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber—the salad of my youth.  So I am particularly thrilled when friends send me their salad recipes.  My friend Grace Markarian shared a recipe that I would like to pass on.  It is an inventive use of cooked and raw vegetables, quinoa and spices.

Welcome to the World of Canned Chicken

Back when the Covid-19 pandemic started, I laid in a lot of supplies.  Gradually, though, I’ve been using them up in my daily cooking.  Only one item I bought gave me pause—the 12.5-ounce cans of cooked chicken breasts.  I noticed them at my big box store because they were sitting alone on a shelf that had been stripped of everything else.

Try This Quick and Easy Salad Dressing!

Photos by Don Shirley

Homemade salad dressing is an often-overlooked addition to a home-cooked meal.  For years I always kept Good Seasons salad dressing packets in the larder and opened one up when I needed it.  We got so used to the flavor that we would lug a dozen packets back to London after visiting family.

That was long before I met Ellen Switkes, a home cook always on the lookout for something new and delicious.

I Can Make That Too: Shrimp Salad in Mom’s Kitchen vs. the Restaurant Version

Shrimp Salad from Petros

For me, eating cold shrimp has always meant Shrimp Cocktail, the classic appetizer that made dining out in the 1950’s a special treat.  I make it at home occasionally when I’m feeling nostalgic, but today shrimp for me is more of an ingredient in a stir-fry, soup or casserole.

Now thanks to a Shrimp Salad I ordered at Petros, a Greek restaurant in Manhattan Beach, CA, I have new respect for cold shrimp. 

Loving Tandoori Chicken

Photo courtesy Tuttle Publishing

One of the best meals I had in London some years ago was Tandoori Chicken.  I’d never heard of it, but restaurant critics were raving about this spicy Indian chicken baked in a tandoor oven.  I assumed it was mostly exaggeration—until I tasted it myself. 

Thus was born a new family dining-out experience.  At the time our two children were under 8, and they weren’t interested in spicy food.  On the other hand Bart and I couldn’t get enough of this newly discovered way to cook chicken—a way I could not duplicate since my oven didn’t heat to 800 degrees.

Chewing Through Memory Lane

Chopped  Vegetable and Barley Salad

For most of my adult life, I have maintained a notebook of recipes I like.  Every once in a while, when temporary amnesia sets in, I flip through it for ideas.

The Joy of Greek Salad

When I was a teenager, I spent the summer in Greece as an American Field Service Exchange Student.  I drank goat’s milk (not my favorite beverage) and picked fresh figs off trees (don’t eat too many at once because there are consequences).

The one thing I didn’t do was eat a Greek Salad.

Candied Walnuts: What Are They and How Do I Use Them?

Candied walnuts are an extra-special treat added to salads.  They provide crunch and sweetness—something a little extra that even the crispest radishes or cucumbers can’t give you.  You can also add them to cookie batter, knead them into a homemade coffee cake or press them into the icing on a cake. 

Candied walnuts are also a satisfying snack.  They’re easy to make, and they keep for months in the fridge.  If you don't have any walnuts, pecans are a good substitute.

Peas in a Summer Salad?

Salads often feature the color green, be it lettuce, cucumber, arugula, kale, fresh spinach or bell pepper.  Here’s another green vegetable to add: peas. 

I toss frozen peas into numerous rice dishes, mostly for a bit of color.  But I never considered them to be the basis for a salad until my neighbor Mary brought her Summer Pea Salad over for a recent barbecue.

Sour Cream: What Is It and How Do I Use It?

I grew up with tubs of sour cream in the fridge.  My mother sometimes served individual bowls of it for lunch.  She’d cut up a cucumber, some radishes and a few tomatoes, mix it all together and Voila!  I guess it was a forerunner to today’s vegetable yogurts.

Out of habit, I too keep a tub of sour cream in the fridge.  But I don’t eat it with cut-up vegetables.  I use it to make Baked Stuffed Potatoes, Chocolate Icing and Chocolate Cheesecake.  I put dollops of it in Salmon Chowder, Hungarian Goulash, Ground Turkey Stroganoff and Shrimp Florentine.   

How Far Can You Stray From a Classic Recipe?

I’ve been aware of Gado Gado, an Indonesian salad, for years.  I’ve admired pictures of it and even considered making it at one point.  But I never did because 1) it looked like too much work, and 2) it didn’t appear filling enough to be a main course.

Sunset Magazine’s July issue carried a recipe for this salad, and I finally decided to try it.  ‘Too much work’ and ‘not filling enough’ still seemed valid concerns, so I decided to add a few of my own touches and subtract one of theirs--the bean sprouts, because there were enough cold vegetables already on the platter.

Meat and Salad in One Bowl = Strange Bedfellows

I don’t usually have meat in my salad – or salad on my meat.  In fact, when I was growing up, my mother set out “salad plates” so that her salad wouldn’t mingle with other dinner items.  No gravy ever touched a lettuce leaf in our house.

In college I discovered Chef’s Salad: hard-boiled eggs, strips of ham and/or turkey or roast beef, tomatoes, cucumber and grated cheese, mixed into chopped iceberg lettuce and covered with Thousand Island Dressing.  It made a great dinner on the run.

Chickpeas: What Are They and How Do I Use Them?

Dried Chickpeas

I first heard the word “chickpeas” when I asked somebody what hummus was?  Growing up in a small town in Western Pennsylvania, I didn’t encounter a wide variety of Middle Eastern food until I moved to Manhattan and had dinner at Cedars of Lebanon.  That restaurant is now closed, but I’ve never forgotten the sampler plate I ordered.

Roast Chicken Leftovers – How Do I Love Thee!

Basic Chicken Salad

Let me count the ways. 

If you like the burn of red pepper flakes, add Chicken Arrabiata to your menu.  A spicy tomato sauce with small pieces of leftover chicken, thin strips of salami and sliced mushrooms make a perfect topping on a bed of penne.

Crazy Combinations That Work

I discovered my first crazy food combo in middle school when I ate a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.  For some unknown reason my parents did not eat peanut butter, so the peanut butter itself was quite eye-opening.  Mixing it with chocolate seemed heavenly.

My second crazy food combo also involved peanut butter--a plate of sliced bananas with a layer of peanut butter in between the slices.  They looked like sticky hors d’oeuvres.  I never got to taste them because the little kid who invented this combo in my kitchen was 4 years old and very possessive of his food.  He left me nothing to taste.

Hoisin Sauce: What Is It and How Do I Cook with It?

Thai Pasta Salad

Hoisin sauce is an Asian condiment, in some ways similar to ketchup.  I first came across it when I ordered Peking Duck at a restaurant.  This sauce, which is a deep, rich brown, appeared in a bowl when the duck was served.  The waiter advised spreading some on the accompanying pancakes and then adding slices of duck .  I was enchanted with the flavor of the sauce and assumed it was part of the Peking Duck recipe.

Years went by before I tasted hoisin sauce again.  Then I discovered it’s a key ingredient in Thai Chicken Pizza, one of the offerings at the California Pizza Kitchen chain.  In that instance hoisin sauce is mixed with peanut butter to make the ‘pizza’ sauce.

I Can Make That Too: Crab Salad Appetizer in Mom’s Kitchen vs. the Restaurant Version

Crab Salad from Chez Fernand

I’m always looking for the easiest possible dish to put on the table.  It helps if the dish also looks appetizing and even better if it offers a hint of sophistication.  Ultimately, though, it has to taste good.  Beautiful pictures of beautiful food are delightful, but if the actual food is simply fodder--or worse--what’s the point?

I was surprised to find this Crab Salad Appetizer on the menu at a small restaurant called Chez Fernand on Paris’ Left Bank.  It was simple, attractively presented and, best of all, delicious.

I vowed to make it myself and came up with this very easy recipe.

Why Is Cabbage One of the Most Hated Foods on the Planet?

Asian Chicken Slaw

The stuffed cabbage I grew up with was loathsome, although I now realize it was the fatty ground beef stuffing that made it so. My kids still talk about the dinner ladies and the smell of overcooked cabbage at their London elementary school.

Fish Taco with Cabbage and Salsa

So what prompted me to buy a cabbage the other day?  I was making fish tacos, and raw shredded cabbage is a perfect accompaniment.  But cabbages are big and they’re dense.  After making the tacos, I had about three-quarters of the cabbage left.  What was I going to do with it?

Spelling Appetizer Is Easier Than Spelling Hors d’oeuvre

Roasted Beets, Feta Cheese and Candied Walnuts with Mixed Greens (photo by Andy Mills)

I first heard the word ‘appetizer’ when I was a kid, helping my mother set up a card table in the living room.  We’d put out a pitcher of tomato juice and a plate of Ritz Crackers.  The red and gold color combo worked for me.  I felt very grown up with my glass of TJ and a cracker, waiting for dinner to be served.

My next encounter with appetizers came a few years later on New Year’s Eve.  My friend Lynne was visiting, and our task was making appetizers for my parents’ friends.  We used a gadget that looked like a miniature cookie press—a 2-inch-long metal tube with a plunger at one end.

Enjoying Someone Else’s Pantry Leftovers

Tabouli Salad (photo by Andy Mills)

Some of my most exciting new food finds arrive on my doorstep when friends move away and give me their pantry leftovers. I love using up their harissa paste, balsamic vinegar and exotic dried mushrooms because I’m forced to be creative. 

Thanks to my friend Lucien, who has a very healthy diet, I now know about organic freekeh. It’s an ancient toasted grain with a nutty flavor and lots of protein. It’s also fun to say. Before Lucien returned to London, he gave me a bag of freekeh, along with some spelt spaghetti, red bulgur wheat, low sodium garbanzo beans in a box, Vietnamese cinnamon and Madagascar chocolate.