Tuna Tuning Out Salad

All berries on the vine are eaten, July is over and done with. Save for a few tomatoes and a red bell pepper, the vegetable units in my fridge are empty. Brief time to tune out, after serving all remaining veggies in soup followed by a Tuna Salad.

Tuna Tuning Out Salad

Rucola
1 big tomato, peeled, deseeded, slices
1 red bell pepper, chopped
a few pieces of tuna
pepper
sesame seeds
pumpkin seeds

Dressing:
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tablespoon white almond paste
a bit of water
a bit of olive oil
red pepper corns, crushed
1 tablespoon tamari
clove of garlic, crushed (optional)

Whip dressing ingredients up, use enough water and olive oil to have a runny consistency.

Combine dressing with salad ingredients.

Eat and marvel what August will bring.

Oily fish salad

You would think that May is a good month to pick up some free vitamin D from the sun. Think again. A few days of sun and warm temperatures are quickly exchanged here for a drop of ten degrees and a week of overcast skies. That's when we resort to food to pick up the elusive vitamin.

A quick post, as fast as it takes to toss together these salad items: the oily fish salad, based on a can of sardines or herring or mackerel pike. In this case a can of herring in tomato sauce serves directly as salad dressing.

Oily fish salad

1 avocado
1 bell pepper
2 carrots
1 cucumber
parsley, roughly chopped
1 can of oily fish
1/2 lemon juice, squeezed
lettuce
sesame seeds

Mince the fish and mix with lemon juice. Mix in the chopped vegetable pieces, mix well so that they get covered with fish.

Lastly, add some lettuce (not pictured here), toss lightly, sprinkle sesame and pumpkin seeds on top, and serve. No extra salt or pepper needed.

In case you have a can without tomato sauce, do not necessarily use the oil or liquid from the tin, but coat the fish with some fresh olive oil. Combine with lemon juice.

Portobello Mushroom Salad

I really liked Jason Epstein's casual handling of crustaceans in his book Eating. I really like condiments to sea food on a checkered table: ketchup, hot sauce, cracked pepper, lemon juice, Rettich, whatever. As if I were eating oysters, here is a Portobello Mushroom Salad. Courtesy of The Swiss Guy (see other posts under this Label), who says: rinse mushrooms, then eat them raw. The hot sauce is my idea. I'm no mushroom lover, but this is really great.


Portobello Mushroom Salad

Two Portobello Mushroom heads
1-2 spring onions, chopped
cracked pepper
lemon juice
hot chilli sauce
dash of olive oil
some chopped chervil or parsley for garnish

Everything has to be done quickly. I know one doesn't rinse mushrooms, but being no Italian from Piemonte I do. Rinse them quickly under running water. Cut the mushroom heads in long medium thick slices.

Sprinkle with lemon juice, olive oil, season, liberally coat with the hot chilli sauce, twist the pepper mill, be careful with salt, add the chervil. Serve and eat at once. Prep shouldn't take more than 5 minutes in all.

Now chase your mushroom bias.

Grilled Radicchio Salad with Feta

August is blue. Blue, because winds turned North-West and South-West from South, saying goodbye heat and bringing back more typical weather, some rain and fresh air. Blue, because blueberries are devoured in droves. Blue, because it's a long wait for some who left the country.

Magazine Puur had a fun recipe with grilled radicchio and feta. In my cupboard I rediscovered the balsamico that one of my friends gave to me last summer. August may well also be salad month. I have to make this one again soon - my camera put new data over this salad's picture.

Grilled Radicchio Salad with Feta

Serves 1-2

1 head of radicchio, quartered
1/2-1 red onion, thinly sliced
200 g feta, crumbled
parsley
olive oil
pepper and salt
3 tablespoons balsamico vinegar

Grill the salad, about 2 minutes on each side or until the leaves are browned.

Wash and chop parsley, slice onion, crumble parsley.

Get out a lovely bowl, place salad ingredients, season, drizzle with the oil and vinegar.

I added one tomato, peeled, deseeded, sliced.

Serve and cheer up!

Why Kobe goes to Los Gatos

In an interview (Sabato, 13 June), young chef Kobe Desramaults from In de Wulf announced that he will be spending a month in restaurant Manresa of chef David Kinch, who is based in Los Gatos and who won "Best Chef Pacific 2010" from the James Beard Foundation.

Why does this young Belgian chef plan this internship? Most likely to broaden his command in the challenge of using whatever local surroundings yield in food, and to resort less to the automatic pilot that chefs ignite when buying their produce at Rungis.

Nothing wrong with Rungis - food mecca second to none, but chefs like Kobe Desramaults, in the wake of René Redzepi of Copenhagen's Noma, who have seen every new device under the stars, really want to work with impediments. They really are the new hunters and gatherers. And that's why Kobe goes to Los Gatos.

For this is what I imagine chef Kinch does: he visits the Love Apple Farm, his royal purveyor, a place where in another life I'd work, or in another life I'd try to recreate, and gathers the yield of the day for his kitchen.

Now here's what baffled me as well. Desramaults isn't using tomatoes until July. He has a Tomato Criterion.

Unlike last year, this winter I have continued eating tomatoes, solely on account of an extremely local producer (7 km) churning out baskets of cherry tomatoes out of his greenhouse. And in the past weeks, I've been eating this bounty from Holland (or the US?):
In short, conditions were such that I succumbed. Because organic seems to defy any season. Because organic goes colorful. I prepared this quick salad in a state of bewilderment, because it suddenly felt like cheating.

Green tomato salad

Green tomatoes (or if you have them, tomatillos)
1 avocado in its prime
cold cooked chicken breast
fresh tarragon leaves
olive oil
dash of lemon juice (optional)
generous sprinkling of sesame seeds
pepper (salt optional)

Lightly heat the oil over low heat and suffuse with fresh tarragon leaves. Pour leaves and oil over the ingredients, combine everything, serve.

Now start ruminating the Tomato Criterion.

An Easter Color: Red cabbage slaw

Isn't deep purple perfect for Easter? Red cabbage slaw which needs a few hours of macerating is good food to make on another day of chores. There is a real prospect here on a double level: the chores and the food.

Red cabbage slaw

Salad from a movement called Mazdaznan, in Greet Buchner, Wegen naar gezondheid (Ways to Health).

1/2 red cabbage, sliced, and washed (the color of the water turns blue)
3 tablespoons oil
1 teaspoon (or less) salt
curry powder
1 teaspoon of sugar (omitted here *)
1 onion, chopped
1/2 lemon, juiced

Combine all the ingredients, and mix well.

I did not use the onion today, but 3 spring onions and a bunch of chopped chives.

*When stark sober, not ill, not craving sunshine, and not faced with Dutch licorice in a gas station, this blog writer doesn't buy the teaspoon of sugar in food.

Getting chummy with young herring

The week before an early Easter: fresh fava beans and green peas, daylight saving time, Spring cleaning, eggs, tulips, and fish with an MSC label - Marine Stewardship Council. The supermarket had MSC labelled young herring -maatje in Dutch- so this fish was game for lunch. Good fuel for the afternoon chores.

Young Herring (Maatje) Salad

Taking the three main ingredients from a salad by Michael van Straeten in his book Super Salads -chickpea, red bell pepper and herring- then doing my own thing.

1 yellow bell pepper, chopped
1 red onion, chopped
2 young herring fillets (2 maatjes), cut in pieces
1/2 can of chickpeas, rinsed well
1/2 cucumber, chopped
sesame seeds
pumpkin seeds
A few salad leaves
chives, chopped
argan oil (for its nutty taste)
pepper
a dash of chipotle chili powder (for oomph)

Arrange the salad leaves on a plate, and fill with the chopped vegetables, seeds and onion, which all have been mixed and coated with argan oil. End with the herring on top.

Devour, then continue working.

Goat Cheese and Fresh Peas in Spring

Wholeheartedly Yes to impermanence! Thanks to impermanence I never have to experience this past week again. So full, days so long, that everything in my home reached the state of disuse. Fresh peas opened my tired eyes, and I could still muster this Spring salad.

Shell and cook fresh peas long enough.
Combine radishes with cucumber and chopped parsley.
Make a vinaigrette with finely chopped red onion.
Peel a tomato and dice or slice.
Put fresh goat cheese in the middle of a plate.

Combine.

Chew.

Slow down.

Deep Purple: Red Cabbage Salad

Cabbage is king in winter, and winter is finally here, with temperatures suddenly reaching below zero, ouch! We're having cold and sunny days, with the promise of a little snow later this week. When you wash shredded red cabbage, the water turns the color of blue ink, but the salad macerating in dressing gives way to vivid reds and purple.

We took off from Michael van Straten's book Super Salads in which he combines three different kinds of cabbage.

My friends don't know yet, but I'm serving this in midget portions as an hors d'oeuvre next Saturday.


Deep Purple: Red Cabbage Salad

1/2 red cabbage, finely shredded
2-3 tablespoons raisins
1 apple
handful of pecans or walnuts
generous sprinkling of sesame seeds
Dressing:
1 teaspoon mustard,
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon cottage cheese
sesame oil,
pepper

Shred the cabbage really finely (finely is key). Combine all salad ingredients. Combine all dressing ingredients really well, and pour over the salad. Preferably let macerate for a few hours before eating.

Yummy dressing and a few useful cupboard items

White almond paste, white sesame paste (tahini), and peanut butter are my favorite items to make a salad dressing or to be used on a slice of bread.

I've made this potato and red bell pepper salad with pine nuts before, see link here, but I prepared it again with a dressing for which you need white almond paste. Almond paste makes for a slightly and naturally sweet dressing without use of something sweet such as vinegar.

Here's the recipe for sauce amandine from Taty Lauwers' book Cuisine nature à toute vapeur which I recommend (old ISBN number 2-9520338-1-1).

Yummy dressing: Sauce amandine

2 tablespoons almond paste
3-4 tablespoons tepid water
1/2 pressed clove of garlic
1 tablespoon parsley
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 shallot
some salt or soy sauce or tamari

Chop the shallot very finely, stir the water into the almond paste, then further combine all ingredients, stir well.

Marie-Rose Somme's Young dandelion leaf Salad (Fall version)

It's always good to leave sweet dishes behind, and gasp to return to savory plenitude. Salad of young dandelion leaves is a Springtime dish out of De keuken van ons moeder - The kitchen of our Mom cookbook. Salade van molsla stems from a 60-year old Mom from the Ardennes who picks young dandelion leaves in late February, early March. As meal salad, it is redolent of the the famous Salade liégeoise with green beans. Here, I used chard. This Mom advises to use green endive in other seasons. Beware: saturized fat content.

Marie-Rose Somme's Young dandelion leaf Salad (Fall version)

Serves 4

2 kg potatoes
100 g young dandelion leaf salad (Spring), substituted with kale leaves (Fall)
4 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
12 bacon strips
2 scallions, finely chopped
butter, vinegar, pepper, salt, nutmeg, olive oil

Cut the potatoes in cubes, and cook them.

Finely chop the dandelion leaf and divide with the eggs on the plates. (Braise the kale e.g. with garlic).

Fry the bacon on butter, and divide over the potatoes.

Quench the pan with vinegar, and pour this over the salad. Season, and drizzle over some olive oil. Eat at once.

Note: I left out the eggs.

Enamor them with lunch

Preparing copious lunch salads is always a treat, and double portions come in handy when visitors surprize you unannounced. Although this Bean Salad from my favorite book Super Salads (Dutch ISBN 90-5920 164 7) by Michael van Straten can also serve as a small appetizer before a meal, as main dish it managed to captivate my guest on a sunny high noon in October.

Bean Salad with Eggs and Curry

4 hard boiled eggs
1 can (300 g) of green flageolet beans
1 can (300g) of white beans
2 tablespoons curry powder
6 tablespoons of mayonaise
1 red onion
2 tablespoons of chopped cilantro

Prepare and combine all ingredients.

Note: I used parsley instead of cilantro, and only white beans. Generous amounts of curry powder give this dish pizzazz. I used Budwig mayo instead of real one (with linseed oil and cottage cheese). The salad is said to stimulate blood circulation.

Salad, fragrant with flowers and herbs

Tropaeolum majus "Vesuvius" or Nasturtium (Indian cress) are currently threspassing one of my garden patches in droves, slowly creeping towards my neighbors' garden. The flowers are edible, they told me.

Meanwhile, we were also having a Saturday in September that could pretend as if it were a Saturday in the middle of summer. I hardly left my patio, making the most of meals and reading outdoors. One of Michael van Straten's "super salads" was just the ticket: the one fragrant with lots of finely cut fresh herbs.

My purveyor of herbs, Duizendblad (achillea millefolium), probably does this every week, but finally here's my own take on earth's own goodies.

Salad, fragrant with flowers and herbs

Salad ingredients: oak leaf lettuce, parsley, radicchio
A handful of toasted, tamari-coated cashew nuts
A few nasturtium flowers
radishes, sliced

Dressing, made with very finely cut fresh herbs: lemon verbena, pineapple sage, sorrel, thyme, oregano, rosemary, chives, mint, sage, parsley, lavas, to which are added a small pressed clove of garlic, juice of 1/2 lime, salt, pepper, olive oil (or other oils of choice).

Instant mood lifter, this dressing, as if one's mood needs lifting at all one late summer evening.