Recipe Thursday: Tot Salad

I used to think I didn't like salad. In the U.S., we mostly eat Sad Salads™. You know, a few much-too-large pieces of iceberg lettuce, a tomato slice, and a cucumber slice. If you're lucky, there might be a few carrot shavings. These salads are solely vehicles for loads and loads of dressing. Why else would you eat them?

But salad doesn't have to be like that. Salad can be flavorful. It can be crunchy, tangy, salty, sweet. Salad can be the best part of the meal.

Here is a salad worth eating.

Tot salad
several cups of baby lettuce leaves
1 cup green beans (fresh or frozen)
1 cup tater tots
1/2 cup grape tomatoes
1 tablespoon agave nectar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon mustard powder
1 tablespoon oil
salt and pepper

Cook the tater tots according to the directions on the package. If using fresh green beans, trim them and cook them in boiling water for 4 minutes, or until bright green. Shock them in ice water to stop the cooking. Alternatively, remove frozen green beans from the freezer several hours in advance to thaw.

Combine the agave nectar, mustard, and oil. Stir vigorously to combine. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Assemble the salad. This makes one large meal salad or two side salads.

Review: Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food

I'm really excited about all the great new vegan cookbooks that are coming out. Thanks to a gift certificate that showed up at just the right time, I was able to try one of them out.

Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food by Alicia Simpson delivers exactly what it promises. The recipes come together quickly and without too much mess in the kitchen. The trade-off is that some of the recipes rely on vegan convenience foods such as chik'n patties, tvp, and vegan cheeses. There are a number of new vegan cheeses that actually taste good, including sheese and cheezly. Unfortunately, these are hard to find in most of the U.S. still. And, in general, I'm not comfortable using these highly processed foods in my diet very often.

But that said, those products are in just a small number of recipes. Probably less than 10%. There are still plenty of recipes using whole food ingredients. I can tell that some of these recipes will be going on our list of foods to cook when we just don't feel like cooking.

The first thing I tried was the Fettuccine Alfredo (sauce two). It was incredibly good. Dewey and I have tried a few Alfredo recipes, and I think we've found the one we'll return to. Very occasionally, since this is definitely not health food. [No photo of this one.]

I also tried the Caesar salad dressing (sans croutons so I could have stuffing on the side). Again, Dewey and I both loved this. We've been eating salads with every meal this week.

There's an interesting recipe for tahini coffee that I couldn't resist. I have a weakness for unusual recipes. The coffee part of the recipe name is just referring to the color, NOT the taste. So don't expect coffee. It's sweetened with blackstrap molasses. I have to admit I almost never drink sweetened beverages because of my diabetes, so I wasn't as fond of this as the other recipes. But if you like tahini and molasses, you'll love this drink.

This is red beans and quinoa, a riff on red beans and rice. I really loved this. I'm a sucker for meals in bowls. The beans come together in less than ten minutes, so you can make this meal in the time it takes to make quinoa, usually about 20 minutes.

Other recipes I'm looking forward to trying out are gallo pinto (a bean dish for breakfast!), spicy soba noodles in peanut sauce, and wait for you stew.

Salad

I've been trying to make an effort to eat more raw fruits and vegetables (and more fruits of any kind really). Whenever I get a perfect piece of produce, I thumb through all my cookbooks and scour the Internet for just the right recipe. But really, fruits and vegetables are pretty awesome all on their own. Sometimes, I forget that.

This salad is exactly what it looks like. Two mandarin oranges (so easy to peel and no seeds!), an avocado, 1/4 red onion, and lemon juice and zest. That's it.

Vegan Grilling

It's barbecue season, and just because you're cutting out or cutting down on meat isn't any reason to retire your grill. Here are some tasty and healthful ideas for veggie grilling.

1. Vegetable slices. Eggplant, squash, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, and probably whatever else you can think of. For smaller vegetables, you might want to invest in a grilling basket to keep pieces from falling onto the coals. Cut the vegetables into similar sized pieces, brush with a bit of oil, and grill until crisp-tender. (Alternatively, I have a friend who makes tinfoil packets of vegetables with marinade and grills those campfire-style.)

2. Fruit. Pineapple is the quintessential fruit to grill, but peaches, pears, apples, and bananas are great, too. Keep a close eye on softer fruits as they'll get a bit mushy if they cook too long. (Bananas can be grilled in their peels with chocolate.)

3. Kebabs. Either soak bamboo sticks or use metal skewers and thread them with whatever you can imagine. Try for lots of different shapes, textures, and colors. This is a good place to use a marinade. And don't be afraid to add cubed tofu or tempeh here. Try this recipe Kim O'Donnel posted for barbecued tofu skewers.

4. Pizza. Go easy with the toppings here, and feel free to precook vegetables that might need a bit more time to get soft. Here are Heidi Swanson's instructions for grilling pizza.

5. Burgers and sausages. Let's face it, vegetarian hot dogs aren't very good. But there are some excellent vegan sausages out there. I really like Tofurkey and Field Roast sausages. They're flavorful and grill up nicely. There are a million veggie burgers out there, so I'll leave that one up to you.

If you're up for making your own vegan sausages, try this recipe from Everyday Dish. It's really versatile. I've seen everything from chorizo to pepperoni to boudin come out of this basic recipe.

6. Portobello mushrooms. This is a great option if you're looking for something on a bun but you're not into veggie burgers. Marinate or brush with oil before cooking.

7. Corn on the cob. Remove the silk but leave the husks on. Soak the ears (with husks) in water. The wet husks help steam the corn. Turn the ears occasionally as they cook. More complete instructions are here.

8. Salad. I know, I know. But really, you can grill a head of romaine.

9. Polenta. Recipe from the NYT's great new "Recipes for Health" column. (Obviously sub Earth Balance or olive oil for the butter if you're cooking for vegans.)

10. Bread. Recipe from the Food Network.

11. Grill and mix. Use grilled vegetables to make fajitas, sandwiches, wraps, or pasta.

Taco Salad

In college every week, a lot of the Jewish students met up for a Shabbos lunch. Someone made this taco salad once, and for months after it showed up at every meal. There are so many variations though that no one ever got bored.

Taco Salad

lettuce
broken tortilla chips

toppings (choose several)
red, green, or yellow bell peppers, chopped
tomato, chopped (or canned in the winter)
corn (frozen is fine, it will thaw as you chop your vegetables)
peas (frozen is fine)
black beans
kidney beans
pinto beans
red onion, chopped
green onions, chopped
cilantro, chopped
pumpkin seeds
sunflower seeds
avocado, chopped
veggie pepperoni
veggie taco meat (the recipe from Yellow Rose Recipes is great)
other vegetables, to taste

dressing
salsa
vegenaise, or your favorite egg-free mayo

Tear your lettuce into salad-sized pieces. Don't worry about filling your salad bowl too full, the toppings will press the lettuce down some. Prepare all your toppings in bite-sized pieces. Be sure to choose a variety of colors. Spread your toppings on top of the lettuce, one topping at a time so you get a layered effect.

Prepare the dressing, mixing 4 parts salsa to one part vegenaise. (For a whole foods approach, just use plain salsa.) Just before serving, add the broken tortilla chip pieces to the salad. Don't add them too early or they'll get soggy. Serve the salad with the dressing on the side.

Cornbread salad

I was sick last week and then my boyfriend came for a visit, so my fridge is all out whack right now. Tonight's dinner mission: use up as much of the food as possible before it goes bad. There was half a pan of cornbread and my boyfriend bought me THREE avocados that were too hard to use until today, so this is what I came up with. Since I made this up by the fly of my pants, substitute away.

Cornbread salad with avocado-lime dressing

cornbread pieces, about two cups
tomato, chopped
1/2 red bell pepper, chopped
2 scallions, green and white parts, chopped
an avocado, chopped
juice from a lime
jalapeno, chopped
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
salt
water

Mix together cornbread, tomatoes, bell pepper, scallions, and half the avocado. In a food processor, mix together the rest of the avocado, the lime juice, jalapeno, and cilantro. Thin the mixture with water until it's to your preference. I probably used two teaspoons water. Salt to taste. Dress the cornbread salad with the avocado-lime dressing.

Quinoa Salad with Spinach, Lemon, and Poppyseeds

First of all, thanks E's parents for sending me the camera! Second, Mark Bittman has a new vegetarian cookbook. This can't be good for my obsession. Expect lots of new recipes from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. Here's one to start out. The recipe says that it's "Quinoa Salad with Spinach, Lemon, and Poppyseeds." Already you can see one problem. This is a spinach salad with quinoa, not the other way around. But it was still good. What you can't see in the photo is that there are lemon segments in the salad. Or at least small pieces of lemon. It turns out that peeling a lemon is really hard to do. So I ended up cutting off the peel. The whole time I was doing it, I kept imagining me slicing my hand open and all the lemon juice stinging to high hell. But I actually didn't cut myself. Next time I make this, it will probably be "Spinach Salad with Quinoa, Satsuma, and Poppyseed." Satsuma's are really easy to peel, and I can probably just steal them from a neighbor's tree.