Ever had vodka sauce over pasta? SO delicious.

Back last month when my grandson Vaughan was staying with me, he prepared an additional dinner. His signature dish. Can you imagine a 13-year old having his own “signature dish?” He’s prepared it for many sections of the family, and to family friends too. I’d not been there on any of those occasions, so he offered to make it for the two of us. He asked if I had any sausage to serve along with it – I did. You can see the Italian sausage coins in the back side of the plate above. It was not cooked with the sauce, but provided some protein for the meal.

He prepared the sauce. I had a box of Capello’s almond pasta (which is the best non-wheat pasta I’ve had) in the freezer, so I used it (in photo above). I didn’t use all the pasta, so had enough to make a second pasta dish (up soon), a Rachel Ray dish with pancetta and radicchio. Vaughan really prefers rigatoni with this (because the large tubes will hold a lot more sauce per bite); I didn’t have any, so we used penne for his.

Anyway, what I will say is that my kitchen was a big mess when we got done. Vaughan did the sauce; I cooked both of the pastas and prepared the Italian sausage. We had 4 burners going (because my pasta needed to be cooked separately from the penne). Today I discovered a splatter of vodka sauce on a container somewhat near the kitchen range – I hadn’t noticed it at the time. That sauce went everywhere.

There’s Vaughan at left – he was grating Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. I suggested to him that we get everything out and ready, so when he started making the sauce, we’d be prepared to serve when it was done. The recipe calls for a shallot, garlic, tomato paste (not tomato sauce), red pepper flakes, cream (not a lot) and the grated cheese. The sauce is prepared in a large skillet – and a warning – don’t stir too vigorously or you, too, will get sauce in various places near your stove.

The sauce comes together very quickly once you begin. First the shallot and garlic cook over a very low heat in butter (you do not want even golden browned garlic). If I were making this, I’d cook the shallot first and add the garlic during the last minute so there would be no chance of burning the garlic. Then you add the tomato paste, red pepper flakes and the vodka (only 2 T). At the last you add in the cream and some of the pasta water to thin out the sauce a little bit, and some Parm. The pasta is stirred into the sauce on the stove, but off heat (NOT poured on top on your plate), and when you serve it, add more Parm on top and if you think of it, sprinkle a few basil leaves for garnish. I had some, but didn’t realize the recipe called for it.

The sauce takes little time – Vaughan was very diligent keeping the sauce stirred frequently. That’s a ceramic pan, so nothing stuck to it at all. Thank you, Vaughan, for making dinner! So delicious!

What’s GOOD: such a flavorful sauce. The tomato paste gives it lots of character. Vaughan said he’s made it using tomato sauce and it’s definitely not as good. So be sure to use tomato paste.

What’s NOT: nothing at all. Fabulous pasta sauce.

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A vegetarian Indian entrée. Full of meaty mushrooms and sauce.

It’s not news here that I enjoy Indian food. So, lacking the ability to go visit a restaurant these days (although take-out is certainly an option), I took the problem into my own hands and tried something new in my own kitchen. As I write this (actually about 3 weeks ago) I’m having others go grocery shopping for me. My neighbor went to Costco and I asked for mushrooms. I got a one-pound box. Lots. More than I’d usually use. But instead of making a vegetable side dish and mushroom soup, I had this recipe in my head. I found the original recipe online and adapted it to my somewhat limited Indian-spiced kitchen. And oh, this was wonderful. The original was made in the instant pot. I chose not to; no particular reason. I just thought a longer, slower cooking would provide more flavor.

What I didn’t have was Kashmiri red chili powder. No-can-do. But I had New Mexican chile powder, which has really rich, deep flavor. I also didn’t have dried fenugreek leaves. My little bottle of fenugreek is likely 15 years old, and it’s not leaves anyway, so that got left out altogether. I didn’t have cashews, either, so instead of a cashew-cream to drizzle on top I used yogurt mixed with milk. And a little sour cream. Probably not authentic. Oh well. In these times of self-quarantine, we do the best we can, right?

Ghee was melted in a big pot, then onion was added and lightly sautéed until translucent. Then I added fresh ginger and garlic. The mushrooms were added then, but as expected, the mixture was quite dry. I stirred it a bit, added the turmeric, then the fairly big jar of passatta tomatoes (a kind of puree). That gave plenty of liquid. I added the chile powder, stirred, then the garam masala and salt. After cooking just slightly, I put a lid on it and put the pot in the oven for about 2 hours at a low-low temperature. I thought the mixture was too thick to cook well over the heat of a gas burner – the oven provided gentle but all-around heat.

Meanwhile, I made a small pot of rice in my instant pot. I’ve read that if you slightly undercook rice, it doesn’t get absorbed so much as a carb. And that if you make it ahead and refrigerate overnight, it also allows less absorption. Sounds good to me. Making rice in the instant pot is so incredibly easy – if nothing else, I want you to remember this part:

Instant Pot Rice: add 1 cup rice (I used basmati), 1 1/4 cups water or broth, a tablespoon of fat (combo of butter and EVOO) and a big pinch of salt to the Instant Pot. Cook on pressure for 3 minutes. Vent immediately, remove lid and allow to cool.

I made this masala the day before I ate it  – kind of like soup – always better if allowed to chill overnight. I have nothing but time on my hands these days, so that was no big deal. The next day it was so simple to scoop out a bit of rice into a bowl, spoon an ample portion of the mushroom masala on top, then heat in the microwave for 2 minutes on high. Meanwhile I made the yogurt cream to drizzle and chopped up the cilantro. Done. As I write this, it’s been my lunch for 3 days in a row and I’m not at all tired of it.

What’s GOOD: oh, the flavor for sure. Mushrooms have umami, one of those enhanced flavor profiles, and it comes through in spades here. Very satisfying. The rice (made as paragraphed above) was still just slightly chewy which I liked, and the mushroom mixture was just so good. Altogether delicious.

What’s NOT: nothing at all. A bunch of cutting of mushrooms, but that’s all.

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This recipe has such an interesting story. I hope you’ll read it to learn why it’s called “Stop Trying So Hard” Broccoli Spaghetti.

Reading other blogs is a favorite pastime for me. And Food52 is one of them, with the staff there posting sometimes 4-6 stories a day. And perhaps because I had so much time on my hands the day I read this story, I read more of them than usual. I might have breezed by it just because I don’t eat much pasta. But I did click through (and am so glad I did, as the story is just so fun) and read the short saga of a young chef, James Park, who moved away from his home in South Korea to New York City. Some years had past and he hadn’t made the time to fly home to visit his family. Finally, his family decided to visit him. He went into semi-panic mode. He lives in a tiny, tiny Manhattan apartment and he needed to house them (his mother, father and brother) in the space. And he needed to cook for them. As the arrival became closer he mapped out what he would do with them, partly being tourists and he thought he’d take them to some of his favorite restaurant haunts, assuming they’d be impressed not only with the food, but with his now-prodigious knowledge of food. Uh, no. It didn’t happen that way. They didn’t want American food at all. They wanted to eat Korean food.

The chef never mentioned how difficult it must have been to sleep everyone in his small home space, but he did mention the various restaurants he took his family to, encouraging them to order particular dishes that were his favorites.

But I’ll back up. Arriving at his apartment from the airport with his family in tow:

“. . .per my mother’s request for pasta, I made my signature dish of penne, rosemary-infused oil, charred Italian sausage, and lots of Parmesan cheese—a weeknight go-to for me. This pasta was, in many ways, a reflection of various flavor-building techniques I had learned in culinary school. I wanted them to taste it, to see what their new chef son had learned during our years apart. Aiming to impress, I plated the pasta with extra Parm and garnished with fried rosemary, a flourish of freshly cracked black pepper.”

Her response (he obviously wanted, desperately, to impress his mother) was that this certainly wasn’t what she had been hoping for. She took a bite and said this is good, but she wanted that “other thing.” The one that was white and creamy. She said, you were eating it once when we were FaceTiming.

“. . . To many older Koreans, especially those of my mom’s generation, “pasta” is a dish with long noodles, pretty much always spaghetti, drenched in either tomato or cream sauce. Koreans love their cream pastas. Now that I think back on it, oil-based pastas, like the one I had just made, were not something my family would’ve ever associated with pasta.”

So, on their last morning there, he dug into his memory and tried to recall what he might have been eating during that long-ago phone call and pulled ingredients from his pantry and frig. His mother took a bite and made a satisfying sound of contentment. Yes, this is it, she said. It rated a 10 out of 10 in his mother’s eye. So Chef Park named this Simple Stop-Trying-So-Hard Broccoli Spaghetti, obviously referring to his wanting so hard to impress his family (mother) and finally resorting to something he threw together.

With that kind of story, the recipe had been percolating in my head for the last 2 weeks or so. I had a big bunch of broccoli. I had some thin linguine (my fav). I had milk. And I had lemons. (My Meyer lemon tree is absolutely drooping from the weight of so many lemons.) This recipe is kind of incongruous – adding milk into a pot full of broccoli and onion? Doesn’t even sound good (oh, but it is).

Really, the only change I made was to double the amount of broccoli, and I also cut some of the stem to add in as well. So mine had more broccoli per serving. Not a bad thing.

What’s GOOD: how easy it is to make as long as you have broccoli. This is a dish you could throw together in less than 30 minutes. I don’t buy frozen broccoli, but I’m sure you could make it with that as well. Good flavor, although it’s somewhat bland (just know that if you make this) – with the only highlight the red chili flakes that give this a little zip. I think I’d try to make more “sauce” if you can call it that. When you add in a bit of the pasta water, usually it helps thicken some of the liquid, but mine didn’t do that very well. Since I’m into comfort food these days, this definitely filled the bill, so to speak. The milky consistency was actually quite good. Next time I might add just a tetch of chicken broth granules to the milky broth, but it wouldn’t be a necessary thing. It’s good just the way it is.

What’s NOT: not a thing as long as you have broccoli, pasta, lemon zest and milk. Everything else will likely be in your pantry already (onion, red chili flakes, Parm, garlic powder, butter, oil, fresh garlic). I noticed the leftover pasta had soaked up all the remaining milk, so I may need to add a bit more for reheating.

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A great combo of flavors – all tasty by themselves, but tossed with a light balsamic dressing, it takes it to a tastier level.

When this veggie bowl was served to me I was certain I wasn’t going to care for it. I was at a cooking class, and often this instructor includes a vegetarian entrée at her classes. Then I took a bite, and decided it was really quite wonderful. I don’t eat very many beans (carbs) and I definitely don’t eat hardly any potatoes, either (more carbs) so I ate a bite or two of those things and devoured the rest of the bowl. It’s the dressing that pulls it all together.

Truly, I love sheetpan dinners – and this one is very easy – it’s just done in stages – pine nuts first (and removed), then potatoes and garlic, and zucchini last. Meanwhile, you make up the dressing – adding the roasted garlic to it once you take the sheetpan out of the oven. The arugula adds a lovely texture to this – making it equally a salad rather than just roasted vegetables, and as I mentioned, the dressing just enhances it all. When I make it myself, I’ll probably use sweet potatoes since they are healthier for me.

I’ve adjusted the recipe to use fewer potatoes (and added the sweet potato option). Do chop up the arugula – if it’s mature arugula it can be quite unruly to eat – easier to eat if chopped. The cold halved tomatoes also add a nice textural contrast. Making it for myself I’d add more zucchini and fewer beans, but that’s totally up to you. I don’t think you can buy half cans of cannellini beans!

What’s GOOD: for me the dressing brought all the various ingredients together and made it more of a salad than a sheetpan dinner, exactly. Loved the dressing element. Liked the contrast using chopped arugula and fresh tomatoes.

What’s NOT: only that it helps to have everything out and ready when you start – you make this in stages, but still, all on one pan. Yeah!

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Montluçon just means this pie’s origins are French. This is a marvelous brunch dish, or hearty entrée for a holiday breakfast. Or a light Sunday supper, even.

Having made this about 4-5 months ago and having taken pictures of it, I was finally getting around to doing something with the photos. I thought I’d posted this recipe years and years ago – because I’ve been making this forever (I believe I made this the first time in 1981), and I was going to update the photos. But I certainly can’t find any post on my blog about it. I served it to a group of friends who came to my house to watch a movie. It was a fund-raising event I did for my P.E.O. chapter in which they bid on coming to my home to watch The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society movie. Our book group had read it a few years ago, and the movie is available on amazon prime (I think that’s where I found it) and I’d serve lunch. So, I prepared a meal suitable for the movie title – potato pie.

The recipe came from an ancient French cookbook I had (or still have somewhere) from Sunset Magazine. How many times have I made it? Probably 15-20 times. It was a frequent entrée I served over the years when Dave and I did brunch on our boat. We’d invite a group of friends (4 guests plus us) for an early morning sail on a Saturday or Sunday (after church), we’d brew up a big pot of strong coffee, I’d have fresh fruit, maybe sausages, maybe a green salad, and after we’d enjoyed a late morning brunch I’d serve some kind of dessert. And champagne would be a featured item on the menu. Normally I prepared the pie the night before, let it sit out on the kitchen counter overnight to cool, took it to the boat and reheated it in the small oven onboard. Once heated I’d pour in the additional cream through the little window in the piecrust that was called for in the recipe, let the cream soak in a bit, then slice it and serve.

There’s nothing all that unusual about it – a rich, buttery pie crust is made. You can use the most recent pie crust recipe I posted in 2018 that uses some cornstarch. It was a winner of a recipe. You’ll need to double the recipe to get enough for a top crust too. The top crust is important – it holds in the moisture so the potatoes steam-cook. Do notice, there is no cheese in this recipe.

The potatoes are thinly sliced (use the food processor so they’re evenly sliced, or a hand-held slicer), layered with salt and pepper, then the top crust is affixed. Cut a hole in the center so the steam can escape and pour in most of the cream. Bake until golden brown, then when you’ve removed it from the oven you add the extra cream, as I mentioned. Be sure to use enough salt – potatoes require a LOT of it.

What’s GOOD: can be made ahead and reheated. Wonderful flavor. Rich. Hearty. Different.

What’s NOT: only if you’re on a carb-restricted diet, it wouldn’t be so good for you! This is a tried and true recipe. Surprisingly it doesn’t have all that many calories – moderate fat grams, however.

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You know about shirataki noodles? They’re a pseudo-pasta. They contain zip-zero-nada carbs.

Many years ago when shirataki noodles became more widely available, I bought some for my DH and me to try. Since he was a Type 1 diabetic, any suggestions on how to reduce carbs was a good thing in his world (and hence, mine). We prepared them according to the package directions, and I served them with some kind of sauce (don’t remember what). We thought they tasted awful. They had a kind of musty taste and the texture was mushy. Yuk. Well, since then, since I’ve gone on the Gundry (Plant Paradox) diet, I’ve learned more about these shirataki noodles (Gundry calls them fool-dles) and have followed his method of preparation (which isn’t much more work, but there are 3 steps to it – rinsing, cooking, drying). I decided to give them another try, and was very surprised at how good they tasted this time. You can find them in most mainstream grocery stores, usually in the refrigerated Asian section – they come in a flat pack, clear. There are a few brands out there – I used Miracle Noodles. They also come in a spaghetti shape and rice shape. What’s nice, is that the noodle becomes zero calories (they are made from an Asian yam and apparently they just slip through your digestive track without metabolizing, hence zero calories).

Now, you need to know, I love mushrooms. I’ll eat them just about anytime, although I rarely eat them raw (like in a salad). But cook them in a little oil and butter, salt and pepper, and I’m a happy camper. I love mushroom soup, and this came about because I had about a cup of mushroom soup without cream in my refrigerator. So I started with that and enhanced the mixture with more ingredients, and this soup was created. Since you won’t want to prepare a whole recipe of that soup, I’ve re-arranged it here with all the ingredients from the soup, plus the enhancements I added.

When I made it, it served two and I was tickled to have a second portion to have as leftovers. But here, I’ve started you off with 2 packages of shirataki noodles (I used the fettuccine shape) so it will make 4 portions, I believe. If you’re feeding a starving teenager, then this amount of shirataki may not satisfy. You can easily make this with regular pasta. I’m just telling you how I’m able to eat it with this carb-free diet I’m on.

This sauce comes together in a hurry – although you DO want to utilize some dried mushrooms in this (they have a LOT of flavor, believe it or not), and they need to be soaked in warm water for at least half an hour. But the rest of the preparation is just chopping and slicing the various ingredients. And then combining them at the right time. You don’t have to use asparagus, but I had some in my refrigerator and thought they added a lovely texture and flavor to the dish.

What’s GOOD: the mushroom flavor is very prominent (a good thing for me anyway), and I loved all the different textures of the different mushrooms. And the asparagus. And the shirataki. As long as you don’t overcook the shirataki, they also have good texture. Overcook them, and they become mushy. Obviously, don’t do that!

What’s NOT: there is a bit of prepping – all the slicing and dicing, but truly it’s not that time consuming.

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No, it’s not pizza. Sort of looks like it, with some arugula on top. It’s a grain type crust with a filling that contains caramelized onions, sweet potatoes, Feta cheese and Swiss chard.

When I was served this tart, I’d only heard the name teff. Knew nothing about it. Had never tasted it. It bakes up kind of dark (see the crust at the back edge?) and it’s crunchy. Even though the grains are tiny, they don’t dissolve, but they remain crunchy through the baking. I liked that part. Teff is an ancient grain and is full of iron, in case you need some in your diet. It’s a carb, of course. You can buy both the grains (whole, tiny little things) or you can buy teff flour. In this recipe, don’t use teff flour, only the grains.

There at right you can see a photo of the grains. It’s hard to get a perspective with the photo – but those grains are about the size of poppy seeds. Golden brown, obviously.

So the crust you make here contains regular flour too, along with salt, butter and ice water to bring it together. You make it, then chill it for a bit, to make it easier to roll out and get into a tart pan. Use a tart pan with a removable bottom. You can press the pastry some to get it up into the edges. It’s chilled for a bit again, then you pre-bake it, blind bake with foil inside and filled with pie weights or dried beans. The only caution with this tart has to do with the baking . . . After baking for about 10 minutes, lift a corner of the foil. If any of the tart shell sticks to the foil, bake another 1-2 minutes and check again. It shouldn’t take much more than that. If it sticks, the shell isn’t quite cooked through and will get soggy.

Meanwhile you will have started on the filling. Sweet potatoes need to be baked, then cooled, peeled and chopped into small pieces. Red onions need to be rendered and caramelized, which takes awhile. Balsamic vinegar is added to the sweet potato mixture and another little jot added to the Swiss chard mixture. Some Feta is crumbled up and you use eggs to hold the filling together. Those things are layered in a particular order, then the tart is baked for 25-30 minutes, then the caramelized onions are added on top. They warm up just from the temperature of the tart coming out of the oven. Garnish the top with some arugula and serve warm. Or it can be served at room temp, but I’d recommend the warm version. The recipe came from Tarla Fallgatter, at a recent cooking class.

What’s GOOD: the crunch of the teff, for sure. Liked the combination of sweet potatoes and Swiss chard, plus the little bit of Feta. And the super-sweet caramelized onion add a lovely flavor. Altogether delish.

What’s NOT: this takes a bit of work on all counts – baking the potatoes, making the crust and blind-baking it, chopping  up all the other ingredients and cooking both the Swiss chard part separately from the sweet potato part. Just more work than you might think.

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Tender little pancake-shaped fritters of shredded zucchini, onion, Feta and topped with a dollop of yogurt. Make sure you add the dill!

Some years ago I made a version of this, Turkish Zucchini Pancakes, and liked them. Those, that I made in 2008 contained tons of green onions instead of white onion, and had 4 eggs in the batch and included chopped walnuts too. I don’t know why I don’t make some version of these more often, because I love them. They could easily (for me anyway) be dinner. I’d have about 4 of them, I suppose. These are quite thin, and they’re fragile-tender. They’re full of flavor (from the onions, dill, the spice rub and Italian parsley), and once cooked, they have a lovely (but tender) texture. There is a bit of flour added to help hold them together (plus an egg and egg yolk).

Do start an hour or so ahead as you need to salt the grated zucchini and let it sit a bit, to give off some of their water before you start to mix up the batter. The onions (chopped) need to be squeezed of their extra fluid also. Then you can mix up everything, including about 1/2 cup of Feta. Speaking of Feta, Tarla Fallgatter, the cooking instructor who made these recently, recommended Bulgarian Feta. She buys it at a local ethnic market, and prefers it because it’s lower in sodium and she likes the flavor of Bulgarian over others. So, the batter is formed into thin patties, and you can work as you go – do some for the first batch and while they’re frying, form more rounds of them.

Into a big frying pan they go with some olive oil (you’ll likely need to add more olive oil with each subsequent batch you fry). This recipe makes 16-18 of the pancakes, but they’re thin, so surely you’d have 2 per person, or more. For an entrée you’d have 4-5 per person, I’d guess. Maybe more if your crowd is really hungry. Anyway, they take about 5 minutes per side to get golden brown. Transfer them to paper towels to drain. If you make as you go, you’d be serving them immediately. Otherwise, put them on a paper-lined rack on a tray and keep them in a 250°F oven while you finish preparing them all. Because they are thin pancakes, they’ll cool off way too fast.

Meanwhile you chop up some fresh dill for the pretty-factor. DILL is essential in these – there are just food combinations that are made in heaven – zucchini-yogurt-dill is one. To serve, make them pretty with a dollop of the yogurt and garnish with a little sprig of dill on top. My mouth is watering . . . . .

What’s GOOD: the pancakes are delicate and tender. Full of flavor and satisfying. I would think these could be prepared and frozen too, then reheated in a toaster oven easily enough. If you have a bumper crop of zucchini this could be a great make-ahead dish. This would go nicely with a roast (lamb or pork I’m thinking), or all by itself.

What’s NOT: really nothing except that you do need to drain the zucchini and onion so start a bit ahead of when you’re going to prepare them.

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The kind of salad you could make as  your dinner – it’s definitely filling enough and satisfying, though it doesn’t have any meat in it!

Do you buy Delicata squash very often? I don’t – although my local Trader Joe’s has them – they do have a season and now’s the time. It has a delicate (hence the name Delicata?) rind (meaning that it’s not tough and thick, like the skin on a butternut squash, which you have to remove). In this case, you get to eat the rind – where a lot of the nutrition lies.

The squashes are cut into rings and halved then roasted in a hot oven for about 20 minutes. It’s easier to remove the seeds then – after they’ve cooled for 10 minutes or so. Mix up the vinaigrette while you’re baking the squash, and get out the blue cheese.

This recipe came from a cooking class with Tarla Fallgatter, and she had purchased some German blue cheese – called Grand Blue (currently available at Trader Joe’s). This cheese is not the mouth-stinging, deep flavored type, but it’s mild, without any tannins. It’s not of the soft blue style (like Brie) either, as it’s the normal crumbly type, but I liked it a LOT. I can’t eat regular blue straight – it’s just too strong for me, which makes it perfect, to my way of thinking for a salad. I love blue cheese in a salad, though. I’m just not fond of the ultra-strong flavored type unless it’s “cut” with a toasted baguette slice or fruit or something else with it.

When Tarla served it, the squash was still slightly warm. She tossed the arugula salad with the salad dressing, added the dried cranberries and pecans, then plated each salad with 2-3 half-rings of the squash and a lovely wedge of the Grand Blue. If you wanted to take this to a gathering, I’d chop the squash into smaller pieces, as well as the cheese and toss it all together in a large bowl. The only difficulty with that is that some people won’t get a full portion of the squash or the cheese.

What’s GOOD: the mild flavor of the squash was perfect with the arugula salad. Loved the addition of dried cranberries and pecans. I particularly liked the mild blue cheese with it also. Very pretty to look at, would make a lovely holiday salad. It’s also quite filling, so would be (for me, anyway) a perfect dinner all by itself.

What’s NOT: nothing, other than having to roast the squash and mess with removing seeds and strings, etc.

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That photo just doesn’t do justice to this rice salad. Even though I use Photoshop to crop and work with my photos, sometimes you just can’t make brown food look wonderful. 

Behind the scenes of any blog, or maybe I should say a food blog with recipes, is a whole lot of file administration. You might not think so, but there are many, many steps to getting a story written, photos worked on, sized correctly, inserted in the right places, recipe itself prepared, stripped of formatting, uploaded and then put into a finished format on the blog. It’s not seamless. And all that is to say that this recipe that I made months ago somehow got lost in the mix. At least it didn’t get deleted. I can’t even remember when I made this (photo properties says I took the photo on August 5th), or for what family occasion (it was probably our group family birthday we do about that time of year). I wouldn’t have made it just for myself; that I know. But as soon as I glanced at the photo, I remembered eating it, and my mouth was watering.

The recipe came from cooks.com and has no attribution. But I used some white rice in it too, so am not sure where I found the recipe, or if I adapted it myself. In years past, I’ve made the Silver Palate’s wild rice salad numerous times (but never written up here), and I have another one here on my blog from a museum restaurant in D.C. The Mitsitam. And yet another one that’s a copycat one from a local restaurant here in my neck of the woods that contained fresh corn. But this one is just a simple-enough wild rice and white rice salad enhanced with pecans, golden raisins, green onions, orange juice and zest. And it’s downright delicious.

I won’t tell you that this salad is cinchy quick – it has several steps, and you have to watch the rice carefully that it doesn’t overcook. That would be a crime, since you want the wild rice to still have some tooth. But once the rice is made, the other ingredients are straight forward and easy. A lovely honey vinaigrette is added and it can sit for awhile. You can eat it warm or cold, and leftovers are still good, although the pecans sometimes get a bit soft. But worth making? Yes.

What’s GOOD: a great salad for a crowd. Can be made ahead. Delicious warm or cold, or room temp. Leftovers still taste good, too. Of all my wild rice salads I’ve made, this probably wasn’t my favorite, but I liked the orange zest and juice in it. And the green onions.

What’s NOT: a few steps to make, but not hard at all.

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