Oh my goodness gracious is this salad ever good. I can take absolutely NO credit for creating it. But I urge you, if you enjoy pasta (the Israeli couscous) and a few grains (baby garbanzo beans and red quinoa), along with asparagus, almonds and goat cheese, to read on. Well, this recipe will make you sing! And, it’s going onto my carefully crafted “Carolyn’s Favs,” my separate page listing all of my favorites of everything I’ve ever posted.

We were at a family gathering a couple of weeks ago where someone brought this dish. After tasting it, and taking a small spoonful of seconds to try to deconstruct it, I found out our daughter-in-law’s cousin’s husband Chris brought it. I made a beeline to him, and began asking questions. After listing off the ingredients, he told me he’d found the recipe over at thekitchn.com blog (it’s part of the Apartment Therapy website).  When I did a search for some of the ingredients there, this recipe popped right up. Oh, happy day! It was uploaded to their site in 2008 by Faith Durand.

The basis of the salad is a mix produced by Trader Joe’s (called Harvest Grains Blend). But, if you don’t live in Trader Joe’s country, then you can easily substitute Israeli couscous and farro (spelt) and call it even. The two types would need to be cooked separately (the farro will take a lot longer than the couscous), but you’ll still get all the greatness of this salad using those instead.

The recipe online calls for using half farro/spelt and half of the Trader Joe’s grains mix. But I didn’t have any farro, and Chris’  salad I’d tasted didn’t have it, either. So, I’ve altered the recipe to use just this mixture.

But what MAKES the salad is the overtones of fresh lemon juice. It really doesn’t have all that much other stuff in it (fresh asparagus, toasted almonds, olive oil, walnut oil, salt and pepper plus the zest and juice of a couple of lemons. I happen to have Meyer lemons, but you can substitute any kind of fresh lemons. Remember, though, that Meyers are a bit sweeter, so regular lemons might require less juice. Taste it and see what you think.

This salad is a shoe-in for a summer dinner/barbecue/picnic. It can be made ahead – it also keeps well. I can attest to that – as I write this, it’s 5 days now since I made it and it’s every bit as good today as it was the first. Soooo, if you’ve learned to trust my judgment, and my recipes, please do print out this one and make it right away quick. OKAY? Okay! And my thanks to Chris for sharing the recipe origin.

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It’s just downright amazing how fat (bacon in this case) can make just about anything taste delicious. Oh my yes. Bacon. These potatoes are just fantastic. You need to make these the very next time you want potatoes as a side dish. This is another recipe from my class with Phillis Carey.

First you need to select the right sized potatoes – you want Yukon Gold’s that are a max of 3 inches long, about. You’ll eventually cut them in half crosswise, so you want them to be rounder rather than longer, if you get the drift. The potatoes are simmered in water (with skin) until they are just barely tender, then once cooled, you remove the skins, cut them in half and place them cut sides down in an oiled (and bacon drizzled) baking dish. Then they are baked further before sprinkling with cooked bacon, cheese, and garlic. The parsley is sprinkled on before serving. Just scrumptious. Ideally serve these with a nice roast, or filet mignon, or grilled steak. Even a roast chicken!
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A year ago: Sicilian Tuna Salad (a favorite)
Two years ago: Apple Buttermilk Scone Round

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A week or so ago I watched the chefs at America’s Test Kitchen prepare an Austrian type potato salad. It has not even a whiff of mayonnaise in it. No hard boiled eggs. No celery. It does have red onion, cornichons (those little French pickles – I used kosher dills) and a light oil, vinegar, Dijon mustard dressing with some chives too. It’s easy. And it’s delicious! We were barbecuing red bell peppers and Italian sausages (I know, it should have been something like Kielbasa or Polish Sausage, but that’s what I’d defrosted). I thought this potato dish just sounded like a perfect marriage.

Yukon Gold potatoes are peeled, quartered and chopped into 1/2 inch pieces. They’re put into a wide skillet (that has a lid) with a bit of water and chicken broth, salt, a little tiny amount of sugar and some white wine vinegar. The potatoes get cooked through, and you use the little bit of liquid remaining in the pan as part of the dressing – it’s mixed with Dijon, oil and more vinegar, and a little bit of cooked potatoes mashed up, then it’s tossed with the hot potatoes, along with some finely diced red onion, some chives, and the minced pickles. It’s seasoned well with salt and pepper and you’re done. How easy is that?

These potatoes are supposed to be eaten within a few hours of making the salad/side dish. Don’t refrigerate it, as it changes the consistency of the mixture. The folks at ATK said serve it within 4 hours. So, you can just leave it out (covered) once it’s made. They tried many different kinds of potatoes for this, and found Yukon gold by far the best. As it happened, I had Russets, but next time I’ll make it with Yukon. I thought the salad was scrumptious. It comes together quickly – you could do some of the work ahead, even. And sitting for an hour or two likely enhances the flavor. Be sure to taste it for more salt and/or pepper. I thought it took a lot of salt to make it just right to suit me. And I’m always very heavy-handed with the pepper anyway. I’d definitely make this again! And it’s no wonder the Austrians and Germans have a great reputation when it comes to potatoes. They know a thing or two about how to prepare them. A mayo-based dressing would have ruined this combo.

And, by the way, if you haven’t looked at the America’s Test Kitchen website lately, they’ve completely revamped it, and have ALL the recipes going back as long as they’ve been producing the TV show. That is SUCH an improvement. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I’d watch a segment, go online to try to find it, only to not find the recipe. I contacted them by email and they told me that different regions of the country broadcast the shows at different times (sometimes a year later!) so the recipes were long gone. No more, with the new website! Thank you, ATK.
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My hubby, Dave, just adores beets. It used to be just the pickled canned type – before he met me, that is – and he’d open a can of beets and eat the whole thing in about 10 minutes. A bachelor’s diet, you know. He also ate pickled herring in sour cream, and almost always had a jar of it in his refrigerator with Ritz crackers in the pantry. He didn’t know how to cook much. His son was living with him (Powell was about 11 or 12 then and had moved in with Dave about 6 months before we met), so he did have to learn to cook just a few things. He could do hot dogs, dial-up pizza, and he did know how to grill a steak and chicken. And country-style ribs with a generic-brand BBQ sauce slathered on.

A few days after I met him (on a blind date on May 6th – we just celebrated the the 29th anniversary of the day we met) I invited him to my house for a brunch I was throwing for a group of friends. Afterwards he and I ended up spending the remainder of the day together, walking on the beach, taking in a “set” at a jazz restaurant that was popular in Newport Beach at that time. Then he asked if I’d like to come to his house and he’d cook dinner. I had a daughter at home, but my roommate (a gal friend) was watching her that evening so I was able to say yes.

He’d explained that his son was coming home from a weekend away and he needed to be there to fix dinner anyway. So he stopped at a meat market, bought steaks, stopped at a market and bought Idaho potatoes, sour cream, and makings for a salad. At his home he started working in the kitchen. I was so impressed (having no clue at that point that I was going to see the complete extent of his cooking repertoire within the next couple of weeks). I thought he was adept in the kitchen. I sat on a bar stool and watched as he put the potatoes in the oven, as he cut up some greens and veggies for a salad. I sat there, thinking that a man in his own kitchen probably should be left alone. Little cupids were telling me it would be so much fun to cook with this man – together in a kitchen. So, he grilled the steak (a good one, delicious) and we had meat, potato and salad with a bottled dressing that he was crazy about – Catalina dressing. It’s no longer made.

We enjoyed the dinner, I talked with his son quite a bit, and then Dave made a pot of coffee which we shared. We talked more. And talked. And talked. And found that we had more and more in common. Well, it goes on from there, and we’ve been married for 27 years.

Meanwhile, back to beets. I finally got Dave to give up canned pickled beets. I mean, he’s a Type 1 diabetic – he should never be eating pickled (sugar sweetened) beets except in very small quantities. He looks for beets at salad bars, and would probably love it if I kept a can or two in the pantry. But I’m not enamored with canned beets like he is. So he loves it when I make them for him from scratch. The other day I saw some nice young red beets at the market. And I found a recipe I thought I could adapt. Yes, I had an orange in the kitchen. Yes, I had fresh herbs. I had most of the ingredients.

So, I made this recipe. And it was good. Very good. Dave nearly licked the plate, of course. He got the few leftovers the next night, and nearly licked the refrigerator container they were in. It made me feel guilty that I don’t make them for him more often. I mean, I learned on that first dinner date that he was in love with beets. A way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Therefore, is it a way to keep your man’s heart if you make beets? You know the drill! But I forget. After 29 years of dating and 27  years of marriage you’d think I’d remember a real basic fact: my husband adores beets!

So zipping back to those early weeks of our relationship in 1981, he cooked dinner for me several times – he made country ribs. And baked potatoes. He made grilled chicken. And baked potatoes. He made steak. And baked potatoes. Again. And he made one other chicken one-pot meal with zucchini and other vegetables (that he later told me he’s just learned to make a week or so before we met). It was delicious, by the way. It’s a darned good thing that by then I’d fallen head over heels in love with him. Because that was IT. That was his entire cooking rotation. And I soon found out he really didn’t know a thing about being in the kitchen. No question he enjoyed eating – we found lots of commonality when we discussed food and ate out at good restaurants – but he knew next to nothing about how to cook. In the ensuing years, very little about that has changed (and it’s okay). He still can’t cook. Doesn’t want to cook (unless it’s as a grill-meister). And it’s worked out just fine.

Moral of the story: cook more beets (insert words for your significant other’s favorite food)!
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A year ago: Skirt Steak Salad with Tomatoes & Croutons
Two years ago: Green Salad with Chevre Dressing
Three years ago: Cauliflower, Bacon & Mushrooms

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With a half a head of cabbage in the refrigerator I searched for something to do with it besides more cole slaw. I’d made a cole slaw last week (from another blogger’s recipe) and was so disappointed in it. I followed the recipe faithfully, but it just didn’t float my boat, so most of it was thrown out. So I found another recipe using cabbage (the one I adapted actually called for Savoy cabbage, which I didn’t have, of course), but I took big tangents with the flavors. I found several variations on this theme on several websites. Some people eat this as a main course. It could be vegetarian except for the bacon. But for me it made a nice side dish.

I wouldn’t rate this recipe as anything like over the top, but it was good. Something different to do with cabbage. And it made a nice, hearty side dish to go with grilled meat. I liked the combination of textures – the cabbage that still had just a little bit of crispiness to it, and the soft, succulent white beans. It’s both a vegetable and a carb, which makes for an easy side dish. I kept tasting it as I went along, adding things, and more things to it. The chili flakes add a nice zippy afterthought too if you’re agreeable to the heat. This could be served on top of thin spaghetti too, I’d suppose. I may use the leftovers (of which there was a LOT, and I made only half of the below recipe) in a soup, with some pork, perhaps. Or, this would be very nice with some chicken or Italian sausages too.

Anyway, this is a kind of stir-fry dish. It helps to have most of the ingredients all ready once you start cooking the bacon. If so, it comes together in nothing flat. If you want more flavor, add more bacon. The bacon I used was almost all meat, so I had very little drippings in the pan – hardly enough to sauté the leeks, but I managed. Use some minced dried apricots if you don’t have raisins. I used more sage and not enough chives (my poor chives in my garden are looking pretty tired), but you can vary the proportions to suit your taste or your garden.
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A year ago: Black Bean Layered Dip
Two years ago: Lemon Rice Pilaf
Three years ago: Cold Cream of Pea Soup (green peas, not split peas)

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You may think you don’t like Brussels sprouts. Once you taste these, you might just change your mind. As it was, all of us eating these just happen to love Brussels sprouts, so it was never even a whisper in our minds we might not like this preparation. We all loved it. Absolutely loved it. Was it hard? No. Time consuming? No. The payoff was huge. I might even eat these cold, they were so good.

The recipe I read over on Charmian Christie’s blog, Charmian’s Corner. And she said just about the same thing as I wrote above. Her recipe is called “Brussels Meet Brandy,” because the recipe came from a cookbook called Kitchen Scraps. By Pierre Lamielle.

So what’s involved? Simmer at high heat halved Brussels in a little bit of water with a pat of butter added. You boil it until the water is nearly all gone (and the Brussels are nearly cooked through). Then you add brandy. Now I diverged just a little at that juncture. I couldn’t find the brandy bottle, but I found Gran Gala, an orange-based brandy liqueur sitting unopened on my booze shelf. I didn’t flambé the Brussels as the recipe indicated; I just boiled off the liquor. Then you add fresh orange zest, the juice from the orange, a minced shallot, some fresh thyme and dried cranberries. That’s it. Oh yes, just a bit more butter too. You cook it for a few minutes, turning and stirring until the Brussels are done and the orange juice has boiled down to a syrup. Serve while they’re hot. The preparation was really VERY easy. The recipe below is pretty-much Lamielle’s version except for the type of liquor, the fact that I didn’t flambé it, and I added fewer dried cranberries. And trust me, you’ll like them.
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One year ago: French Green Beans with Pears and Parmesan
Two years ago: Armenian Rice Noodle Pilaf (oh, is this ever delicious!)
Three years ago: Beer Margaritas (I don’t like beer, but I like these)

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This is a kind of a salad. Well, or a side dish. What do you call a pasta dish that’s served at room temperature? In any case, this was a very easy one to make and had lovely fragrances (saffron and basil). I think the clipping I have is from an ancient Gourmet article, but I’m not sure. I’ve changed it some anyway. Not a lot, but a little. And the best part is that you can make this ahead. We were entertaining the night before Easter, and I needed to take a carb for Easter dinner too. So I made a big portion and divided it in half. Just remember to add the garnishes (almonds, green onions and basil) just before serving. I had some extra fresh squeeze orange juice, so I drizzled that into the salad just before serving.
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A year ago: Pork Tenderloin with Pears and Mustard and Port Wine Sauce
Two years ago: Coffee Walnut Cookies

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Just yesterday I mentioned that I have a bunch of posts for which I need to take my own photos. I’m ticking them off my list one by one. This pasta dish is a favorite. Not only because it is fabulous tasting, but it’s also incredibly EASY. The photo above shows, probably, a bit more basil than is realistic. I posted this recipe way back in 2007 and haven’t talked about it since. Have made it a time or two (but forgot I needed to take pictures of it). So that got rectified the other night. We had this with hamburgers – delicious.

The photo just above is the sauce. The one on the left is the just mixed sauce. Once it sits for awhile (and you stir it a time or two) the cheese begins to blend into the tomatoes as in the right photo. This sauce is nothing more than a chunk of cream cheese, canned tomatoes, fresh garlic, red wine vinegar, olive oil, slices of fresh basil and freshly grated Parmesan cheese. You make the sauce and let it sit out at room temp (the health police will be after me, but this is the way it was made for me the first time and nothing’s ever happened to me in the dozen or so times since then that I’ve made this). It can sit for several hours. Then you make pasta (preferably penne) and pile it in on top of the sauce, stir, add more basil and the grated cheese. That’s IT. Takes about 5 minutes to make the sauce. 10-12 minutes of boiling the pasta and you’re done. Trust me on this one, okay? I’m not going to re-insert the whole recipe here – go look at the 2007 post about it.

A year ago: Spanish Pork Braise (a soup)
Two years ago: Pork Tenderloin with Maple Mustard Glaze/Sauce

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There’s nothing quite like a big mound of mashed potatoes with a little pool of melted butter in the middle. I only melted that little bit for the purpose of the photo – normally I don’t add more butter – there was butter in the potatoes already, although not much. But doesn’t that make you want to dip your spoon there and take a big mound – and snag a little bit of butter? Good stuff, this.

Fresh spinach hadn’t quite gotten used up, so I hunted for a recipe that included it. Sure enough, found one in one of my holiday cookbooks, Welcome Home for the Holidays (Gooseberry Patch) . The one that generally doesn’t get looked at except . . .during, . . . well, the holidays. But I figured there might be a plentitude of mashed potato recipes. Sure enough, there were. The book gave me an idea, but really I did my own thing here, adding buttermilk (instead of canned evaporated milk, yuk), and my own concoction of herbs (fresh rosemary, chives and Italian parsley from our garden) and a few ounces of Boursin cheese. Lots of salt and pepper, plus a couple of tablespoons of butter. Then I added in the baby spinach that I’d chopped up. It didn’t require cooking, just residing in that hot mass was enough to cook baby spinach. If you use regular spinach you might have to cook it a bit. Or, easier yet, use a box of frozen chopped spinach. And I used Yukon Gold potatoes – my go-to favorite because they’re already almost buttery-tasting.

This would be a great way to serve potatoes, which everybody likes, but make it more healthy with the addition of spinach. You could easily add even more spinach – I used half a pound. It would serve as a really nice bed for chicken, or steak, or a pork chop. Or even fish too. So, it’s very versatile. Nothing fancy. Just plain cookin’ and delicious.
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A year ago: Hazelnut Chocolate Chip Cookies with Rum
Two years ago: Beef Tenderloin in Puff Pastry

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Greek cooking isn’t a cuisine I turn to very often. Not that I don’t enjoy it – I do – but I just don’t think of Greek food first. Other types of culinary culture pop up in my mind first (like Italian or French). But we were making a Greek rotisseried leg of lam for a dinner party we had the other night. I needed a side dish to go with it and the grilled vegetable salad, the Syrian pita bread salad, and the Lemon Upside Down cake I’d planned.

I don’t even own a Greek cookbook, but found this recipe in my ancient Woman’s Day Encyclopedia of Cookery. It’s a set of 12 cookbooks (you can buy them used – wow, they’re worth $86!). The set was a gift from my then father-in-law in 1966. They offer a treasure-trove of information. I turn to it every now and again and always learn something.  Although they aren’t in-depth about any one thing, there are stories and cultural tales throughout, in addition to thousands of recipes and factual and historical information. Not only can you look up specific ingredients or cooking methods (like horseradish, turnips, frog’s legs, fricassee, [how] to fold or flapjacks) but you can research cuisines (like Chinese, Turkish, German). So, I turned to the G volume for Greek, and spotted this recipe. I did change it just a bit – I didn’t sauté the rice (like for a pilaf) because I just didn’t take the time. I also added chicken broth instead of plain water. But otherwise, the recipe is the same.

And it was perfect for this meal. I made the rice in my Zojirushi Rice Cooker, which made it ever-so easy and it sat there awhile on low until the dinner was done and I was ready to serve. The rice: VERY good, considering that it’s a very simple side dish of rice, onion and spinach. The spinach is added in at the last – I used baby spinach so it took only a minute or two to cook through.

A year ago: An essay about food trends for 2009
Two years ago: Spinach and Berries Salad (that’s the salad that’s up there at top – my Tasting Spoons photo)

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