Something totally different – Moroccan marinated lamb with a fantastic yogurt sauce that contains harissa (a spicy pepper condiment), cumin and coriander. And garlic. I swear I could eat it with a spoon, but it’s ever so much better with a little bit of lamb, or chicken or fish with it. Or pita bread.

Many cultures have some kind of hot sauce associated with it – like salsa, or sambal oelek, that really hot chile pepper mixture from Indonesia. The Vietnamese have their hot sauce too – we fondly call it rooster sauce because it has a picture of a rooster on the bottle. A big jar lives in the door of my refrigerator. In this case it’s harissa, a briskly hot condiment from Morocco. There you can see it right out of the jar – thick and spicy. You don’t want to use much – the amount I spooned up for the picture would be way too much for a standard sauce. Harissa originally came from Tunisia, but has been adopted by many cuisines of the region, Morocco among them. They’re much the same – red chiles, cumin, coriander, garlic and a little bit of oil to smooth it out. You can make your own easily enough too. That jar will likely last me the rest of my life because you don’t use much of it in any one dish, and I don’t make Moroccan, Tunisian or Libyan food with any frequency!

Now then, back to the meal – the lamb. It was marinated overnight in a variety of things like olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, mint, coriander, cumin. Most of the lamb soaked up the marinade – how can that be? But it did. We actually served the lamb two ways – butterflied and grilled, and also cut into cubes and threaded onto flat-bladed skewers as kebabs.

The Harissa Yogurt sauce was ever so simple to make – jarred roasted red bell peppers were whizzed up in the food processor along with garlic, oil, cumin, coriander, Greek (thick) yogurt and seasoned with some salt and the harissa. That’s it. Chill until ready to serve. The sauce will keep for a week or so and could be used on other proteins too.

To round out the meal I highly recommend you also make the side skewers too – red onion wedges and whole dried apricots. I wouldn’t have believed that grilled dried apricots would make such an impression on me – they were wonderful. During grilling the edges get charred, and that caramelized them, of course. Delicious. And the onions – crunchy just a bit and a great accompaniment. They need to be grilled first since they take about 10 minutes longer than the lamb – once done just move them over to a cooler part of the grill while you grill the lamb. Serve with rice or couscous.

Because I had a lot of sauce left over (I made a double batch – far more than needed) I used it about a week later this way, pictured below. This was the broiled lemon salmon recipe that kind of goes with the asparagus pesto – I served it with some freshly made wild sockeye salmon and our dinner guests had a choice of either or both sauces..

What I liked: well, first and foremost I loved the sauce. Did I mention I think I could eat it with a spoon? Yes, well, it’s good! Loved the skewers of onion and apricots too. All worth doing.

What I didn’t like: nothing, really. Delicious meal beginning to end.

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Over the years we’ve gone to Marakesh (the restaurant) and always at the end of the meal they serve mint tea. Hot, sweetened mint tea. And I always love to watch the servers pour it from long narrow-spouted decorated metal teapots into delicate glasses from 2-3 feet above.

Until the other day I’d never made mint tea. In Moroccan tea culture, the tea is made with gunpowder green tea – and mint added. Checking info over at wikipedia, I discovered the Moroccans are concerned now about all the pesticides used in commercial mint production, so some Moroccans are foregoing the mint. How sad, I say!

Fortunately I had a copious amount of mint (without pesticides!) from my friend Joan’s garden. She made the mistake of planting it somewhere in her back yard some years ago and now it wants to take over, as mint likes to do. I used a LOT of mint in my Moroccan dinner I made the other night. And making the mint tea was so easy – I bought some green tea at Trader Joe’s (green tea isn’t a tea variety I turn to, nor did I have any in my tea arsenal). You can vary the amount to suit your taste – I made about 12 cups, I think, and used 5 green tea bags (which were so easy to remove once the tea had steeped) and about 3-4 long mint stems (about 5-7 inches long) and attached leaves. It steeped for 5 minutes, then I strained it, let it cool and chilled it. I also sweetened the tea, but I didn’t add as much sweetener as the recipe called for, and I liked it that way. You might want to taste it before you add too much.

Interestingly, when I was reading info at wikipedia, in Morocco, actually boiling the tea with sugar is an important step because it allows the sugar to undergo hydrolysis, giving the tea a distinctive taste. Photo at right came from wikipedia, showing the pouring of hot mint tea into glasses. They pour it from a distance in order to create foam.

In Morocco, tea serving is generally the bailiwick of men, believe it or not! And it’s an important sign of hospitality. Some years ago Dave and I did visit Morocco (only for a day), and were served Moroccan mint tea several times – at a spice merchant’s shop, at a Moroccan carpet store, then again after lunch. I have no recollection if it was served by men or women, though.

So anyway, I made the tea, cooled it, chilled it, then served it with a mint sprig in the top and set a pitcher of tea on the dinner table, with a bowl of ice and more mint. Everyone enjoyed it. I had left over tea, so I enjoyed it for many days afterwards. Green tea has less caffeine than black tea, and less caffeine than coffee (a lot less, actually). I’m very careful about caffeine. I get “the jitters” quickly from drinking regular coffee, so on rare occasions do I drink any beverage with much caffeine.

What I liked: the refreshing taste – I like spearmint (but not peppermint at all) – and I like the very mild sweetness added to it. The mint shines through.

What I didn’t like: nothing.

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Would I have purposely picked up this non-fiction book at a book store? No. Would I have bought it at a garage sale? No. Would I have sought it out on a library shelf? No. I’d probably never have read this book, period, if it hadn’t been an assignment in one of my book groups. Botany is certainly not a subject I pursue. Even gardening doesn’t pique my interest much. But it’s just for books like this that I treasure the reading I do in both of my book clubs.

And actually, once I started reading The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe , it took me awhile to get into it. I didn’t begin reading it until about a week before I needed to finish it, but fortunately, it’s easy reading and once I did get into it, it took ahold of me and I could hardly put it down. I wouldn’t exactly describe it as a page-turner, but it was extremely interesting.

Jeanne Baret was a French woman. Learned (probably by her Huguenot mother) , but not a scholar. She was an “herb woman,” an acceptable profession of the time (although not much of a money-making one), who worked with one or more physicians to collect, dry, process and package herbs as medicine. In the 1740’s (when she was in her 20’s) she was employed as a housekeeper to Philibert Commerson, a physician by training, but a botanist by choice, and one of some renown. When his wife died in childbirth, Baret stayed on, and it is well presumed she became his lover. She bore a child in 1764 (presumed to be Commerson’s; the child was given up for adoption and died 2 years later). Commerson never married her. Refused to.

The meat of the story is about a voyage Baret took as Commerson’s assistant, as they circumnavigated the world (with financial aid from the Queen of Sweden) to locate, cut, dry, save, and write about all the flora and fauna they discovered. They boarded a French Navy ship – so therefore Baret had to disguise herself as a man since it was verboten for a woman to even be on a Navy ship. This drawing at right purports to be Jeanne Baret, but according to the reviewer in my book club, this style of dress was not common anywhere for at least a near century. But it does portray a woman disguising herself as a man.

I don’t want to give away all the details of this history. You got it, right, this is a true story. The author, Glynis Ridley, is a professor of 18th century everything at the University of Louisville (Kentucky). She obviously spent years doing research about this bit of history, and her aim, obviously, was to bring to light the amazing accomplishments of a woman history forgot. A woman Commerson didn’t value enough to give any credit for the 60 crates of flora and fauna and much of the documentation as well that mostly she collected (Commerson was not physically well enough through most of the 3+ years voyage).  Jeanne Baret was forgotten by the French government too.

In the process of reading the book you’ll learn some about botany (that part’s not tedious at all). You’ll learn about how bougainvillea got its name (pictured above our yard – and the colorful part is actually leaves, not flowers – see how much I knew about it – see a closeup at right). You’ll learn some about Baret’s struggles as a lower-class passenger on a Navy ship (not a pleasant one even though she mostly shared Commerson’s cabin throughout the voyage). About the difficult voyage itself. About Montevideo, a bit about Rio, the Straits of Magellan, Cape Horn, then Tahiti, and the Great Barrier Reef (they somehow “missed” the Australian continent – it must have been cloudy that day). After what the author believes was a gang rape by some of the crew and one or more officers of the ship during a collecting afternoon on a tiny island in the South Atlantic, Baret and Commerson departed the ship in Mauritius. And it’s here I’ll quit telling you what happened. You need to read it for yourself.

I can’t imagine how Baret could have given up her child to a foundling home. Obviously she was deliriously in love with Commerson. That’s the only rationalization I can fathom. That and the fact she was penniless and depended solely on Commerson for her livelihood. And if he was going on a voyage, she must have believed that was her only option, to give up the child and accompany him.

If you have eclectic reading habits, you’ll like this book. If you like to at least give a silent hurrah to a real heroine of the 18th century (not only because she performed all the botany detail, but because she was the first known woman to circumnavigate the world, albeit disguised as a man), and an unsung heroine for sure, then you’ll want to read the book. I learned a lot. Am ever so glad I read it.

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Do you like dates? I do and I don’t. They’re almost too sweet to me (like candy, and I really eat very little candy – now cookies, that’s another story) and yet dates impart a unique flavor to things. Like this easy cake I made recently for a Moroccan dinner.

You can count on one hand (maybe even one finger!) the number of date recipes on my blog. The only one that comes to mind is a delicious Celery, Date, and Pecorino Salad. It’s really tasty and such an unexpected combination. This recipe – Phillis Carey made it as part of a Moroccan dinner recently – and I’ve now made the entire menu here at home. So you’ll be seeing a bunch of Moroccan recipes in the next week or so.

The cake is very easy to make – probably the hardest thing to be done is chopping the dates. They’re sticky – I found scissors worked best, and I just cut the date flesh away from the pit. Those big Medjool dates (it took 9) are so flavorful. The cake is an easy mixture of the usual stuff, and at the end you fold in the dates and walnuts. Bake for 30 minutes. Done.

Dates and oranges have one of those natural affinities, so those are some blood oranges, actually, that I sliced and dosed with a bit of honey and cinnamon. The heavy cream can be whipped up a few hours ahead (and mixed with some orange zest and honey for sweetening). Slice in wedges and serve with a few slices of the oranges and a big dollop of the whipped cream.

What I liked: how easy the cake was to make – as I mentioned – the most tedious thing was chopping up the dates. Even slicing a few oranges was easy and the whipped cream? Oh gosh, don’t not make that part – the cream is what makes it!

What I didn’t like: can’t think of a thing!

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Not like any other corn and tomato salad you’ve ever had. What makes it different is the use of white balsamic vinegar as the dressing. All of 1 1/2 tablespoons for an 8-serving bowl of it. You wouldn’t think it would add all that much. But yes, it does.

As it happens, I had some lemon flavored white balsamic vinegar that I picked up at Oliver’s in San Clemente some months ago. I’d not used it yet. I thought white balsamic was milder in flavor (it’s not) – making that assumption just because it’s as clear as water in color. Some other people who made this salad commented they didn’t like using dark balsamic (which, I think, is what the original recipe called for) because it stained the corn. When I read that I just decided to use white balsamic.

Although I’ve used white balsamic for some years (and not often, I have to admit, and only when a recipe called for it) I wasn’t sure of the production process. Here’s what I found at www.thekitchen.com:

White balsamic vinegar . . . blends white grape must with white wine vinegar and is cooked at a low temperature to avoid any darkening. Some manufacturers age the vinegar in oak barrels, while other use stainless steel.

The flavors of the two are very similar, although the dark balsamic is slightly sweeter and tends to be a little more syrupy. The white has more of a clean aftertaste. The main reason one would use white balsamic, rather than regular, is mostly aesthetic. It can be used with lighter colored foods, dressings, or sauces without any discoloring.

It’s that last sentence that confirmed my reasoning. No dark colored, stained corn for me!

The recipe I’ve had hanging around in my to-try file for some years – it first appeared in Gourmet Magazine in 2000. By the way, did you know that the internet still has a Gourmet magazine presence – not just old recipes (1941 to when Gourmet stopped publishing a monthly magazine in 2009) which live over at www.epicurious.com – it actually has new content. Just not in a monthly magazine. But it’s an evolving online website. They also publish some special editions, which I’ve not seen, although I don’t frequent any magazine aisles at all – I have all the magazine reading I can handle, thank you! But perhaps I should look at the special editions now and then.

Okay, back to this recipe. It’s SO very simple, although you do sauté the corn a little. I questioned why I should need to do that since corn cut right off the cob is so very tasty and tender. But perhaps when it’s cooked slightly it just becomes sweeter. Hard to imagine, as sweet as corn is these days. It’s cooked in a little jot of olive oil, then you add the garlic, and the halved cherry tomatoes. Lastly you drizzle in the white balsamic vinegar and lastly the scallion. Done. I didn’t add quite as many tomatoes as called for, and I decided to use the white part of the scallion too – meaning I used both the white and green parts. Perfection.

What I liked: everything about it – the combination of flavors is particularly good. We had it cold as left overs a couple of nights later and I swear it was as good if not better. No balsamic taste at all, yet it added a little elusive flavor somehow. I’ll be making this again this summer, before corn season is gone.

What I didn’t like: gosh, nothing. Worth making for sure.

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Wanting to try a different cole slaw? This could be the one. The dressing is more buttermilk than mayo, with a hint of peanut oil. And it has a little bit of crushed pineapple in it and then the peanuts. The peanuts are great in it – they give the whole salad an extra crunch.

It’s been several years ago I made this salad, but must not have taken a photo of it. I loved it. There’s a hint of sweetness (the pineapple), a hint of Asian (peanut oil, and maybe the peanuts). Well, and then there’s cilantro too, just about my favorite fresh herb. There wasn’t anything in this salad I didn’t like.

When I decided to make this I bought a half head of green cabbage, and a half head of purple cabbage. But I’ve learned over the years that you can’t combine them ahead of time because the purple color will bleed into the dressing. Not quite so appetizing. So it was simple enough to combine everything in 2 bowls and just put it together when I was ready to serve. That also made it easy to combine them again 2 nights later with the left overs. I just think the two cabbage colors are prettier – no other reason.

Although the ingredient list may appear long, it’s really not all that hard. I made the dressing the day before, actually, and it will keep for a week or so. I always try to keep one can of crushed pineapple on my pantry shelf. And I had peanut oil too. Once you have the dressing made, it’s very simple to shred the cabbage and combine the few ingredients for the cabbage part. The recipe calls for using 2/3 cup of dressing. Having made this a few nights later without measuring, I think the salad may need just a tad more than 2/3 cup. But it kind of depends on how big the cabbages are too. So, taste it and figure out if it might need a bit more.

What I liked: the all-over crunch in the salad – the cabbage and the peanuts. Also liked the salty addition of the peanuts – they’re just unexpected in a salad like this.

What I didn’t like: nada, nothing. Will make again for sure.

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Do you like lemon? If so, you HAVE to make this dish. It helps if you like garlic too, but the sweet (honey) and sour (lemon juice) combination is a match made in carrot heaven.

There must be something in my genes that perks up with anything – ANYTHING – lemon. And this recipe just screams lemon. But it’s tempered with some sweet (honey, or sugar). And then it has the healthy addition of fresh baby spinach. Not only does it make a gorgeous side dish, but there’s a total of 3 T. olive oil in the dish. It’s called a salad. But it’s a side dish in reality.

My curiosity got me on this one – what exactly IS a salad? When I started writing this, my contention was that this dish isn’t a salad. So, I consulted several online dictionary sources. A SALAD is:

A cold dish of various mixtures of raw or cooked vegetables, usually seasoned with oil, vinegar, or other dressing: “a green salad”.

or

A dish of raw leafy green vegetables, often tossed with pieces of other raw or cooked vegetables, fruit, cheese, or other ingredients and served with a dressing.

or

A usually cold dish consisting of vegetables, [such] as lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers, covered with a dressing and sometimes containing seafood, meat, or eggs.

So, okay, I generally associate “salad” with greens. BUT, obviously potato salad isn’t a green. A cold lentil salad isn’t a green. Egg salad, isn’t a salad at all! My logic is flawed! I have to laugh, though at the variety of definitions. The carrot and spinach salad fits within the 1st and 3rd choices, but not the 2nd one, unless the spinach was left raw. Oh well – so much for that little study in definitions. There’s your English lesson for the day.

The dish does require the use of a couple of pans (although you could use the same pan, just put the drained carrots into the bowl then re-use the sauté pan). You need to cook the carrots – but only partly – you want them to have a bit of bite in them – and they’re cooked in honey, lemon juice and salt. The spinach is sautéed briefly – just a minute or less. It’s chopped. Then you add the dressing (honey, cumin, garlic, orange juice, more lemon juice and a tiny bit of olive oil). Toss and set aside, or serve immediately. To raves. And you can call it whatever you’d like – salad, schmalad! Whatever it is, it’s good! Thanks to Phillis Carey for the recipe.

What I liked: The sweet/sour flavors just burst in your mouth. I guarantee it. If you have really tasty carrots (organic is what I buy whenever possible) it’ll be even better!

What I didn’t like: nothing – I could have eaten an entire plate of the stuff! Make more than you think you’ll need since I know you’ll like it a lot – unless you’re a crazy person who doesn’t like carrots. Are there such people?

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Just when I think I’ve run out of ideas for lean chicken, I go to another cooking class and get a great one – like this recipe. Chicken breasts pounded thin and stuffed with Boursin cheese, ham and chives, then dipped in egg and a bread crumb/cheese mixture. Then the little bundles are baked at a high temp in a thin layer of hot oil in the oven to get a crispy crust on it. Like deep fried, but not really. Healthier. The crunch is wonderful!

The night I made this I wasn’t in any particular hurry (fortunately), so when we didn’t sit down until well after 7:00 I realized I should have started a little earlier. Not that it took all that long to make this – I just didn’t start working on it until after 6:00. I did have green beans left over and I sliced some tomatoes as sides. If I’d wanted carbs, I’d have made some buttered orzo, which is what Phillis Carey suggested, but I didn’t want carbs. The chicken breasts had been defrosted earlier, so I pounded them thin between two layers of plastic wrap. You need to make them fairly big (thin) in order to have enough to wrap around the filling. The Boursin cheese is part of the secret to this dish – it adds a nice, moist succulence to the stuffing (thin-sliced deli ham, chives, and a little tiny sprinkling of red pepper flakes). You can either fold over the chicken, or roll them up (I did a roll). Hopefully the sticky raw chicken will kind of self-adhese (is that a word?) on the outside edges. Carefully they’re dipped into the beaten egg and rolled very gently in the toasted bread crumbs, Parmesan and chopped parsley.

The “trick” if there is one, is pouring a thin layer of grapeseed oil into a rimmed baking sheet (with enough room on it for as many chicken bundles as you’ve made, with some breathing room in between them) and pre-heating that oil in a very hot oven for about 4 minutes. Until it’s almost (but not quite) smoking. That part worked like a charm for me – when I placed the chicken bundles in the pan, the oil was already spitting at me. The chicken is baked for about 7 minutes on convection bake (8 minutes regular heat), turned over (and they spit at me again) and baked an additional 5-7 minutes. Done. In that last 5 minutes I plated everything else and slide the chicken onto the plates right out of the oven. Because they were really HOT, they stayed warm on the plate well for at least 10 minutes while we consumed them.

My DH (who will tell me if something doesn’t taste up to snuff) couldn’t say enough good things about this chicken. He loved it. So did I. What’s there not to like? – Boursin cheese inside, crispy coating on the outside. Yum in every bite.

What I liked: already said – crispy coating on the outside that you’d only get if you did this oven-fry method – it works because the oven is very hot and the chicken is thin – it all cooks in a few minutes. Also the Boursin cheese. Oh yes. Delish. You could also make this a few hours ahead (the pounding, stuffing, then refrigerating). Just dip in egg, crumbs and do the oven frying at the last minute. This would make a GREAT company meal. As I mentioned, Phillis said to serve with buttered orzo.
What I didn’t like: well, I suppose if I had to say something, it was getting zapped by the spitting fat in the pan, but couldn’t be helped. No burns. Otherwise, nothing at all.

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With peaches in season, and as tasty as I’ve tried in a long while, I yearned for some creamy peach ice cream. I tried a new recipe, herewith . . .

The half-flat of peaches came from Costco. That great company called I Am Ripe. I think there were 12 in the box. But no, they really weren’t ripe the day we bought them. It took a few more days, and they were just exquisitely juicy. Every single peach was perfect – no blemishes or bruises. Using David Lebovitz’s book, The Perfect Scoop, I followed his peach ice cream recipe. First I peeled the peaches – peeled them, using my Messermeister Pro Touch Serrated Swivel Peeler that will peel fresh peaches (and apricots, even ripe tomatoes – if you don’t have one of these, you should). I peeled them over the saucepan I’d cook them in so I wouldn’t lose any of the juice. These peaches are clings, so I ended up having to cut the flesh from the pit. Water was added and the peaches were simmered gently for 10+ minutes, until tender.

Actually, I’d planned on making two batches (since I had so many peaches), so I doubled the amount of peach puree I made. If nothing else I thought I could freeze the puree to make another batch of ice cream in a couple of months when there won’t BE any peaches. If you end up doing what I did – then you’ll want to make a double batch of the puree too – just save half of it. I actually added the sugar to the peaches so I could do that. I improvised slightly!

The peaches were whizzed up in the food processor to actually make the puree, cooled, then I made the ice cream mixture. This one doesn’t require a custard (eggs) so it was easy enough to combine. I chilled it for several hours. It was recently I was watching a food program on TV about the chemistry of ice cream and learned something important. Even though I happen to have an ice cream machine that doesn’t require freezing the bowl first (so I could put the mixture in there at any temp), the COLDER the mixture is BEFORE you put it in the ice cream machine the less ice crystals you’ll get during the freezing process. Therefore, the smoother the ice cream will be. Makes sense, and this batch certainly worked that way. If you’re new to my blog and don’t know about the ice cream machine I use, click over to this blog post which will give you plenty of info about it – as well as the recipe for my all-time favorite ice cream, Lemon Velvet Gelato.

Once the ice cream was done (took about 55 minutes in my machine) I scooped it into a big bowl with a cover and stuck it in the freezer overnight. I’ve learned now that I must take the ice cream out of the freezer about 15 minutes before I want to scoop it – otherwise I just can’t – it’s too cold/solid.

In the cookbook it was suggested that you serve the ice cream in individual bowls and slice additional peaches on top. I’d figured on doing that, but then I got an idea and went with it. I used small glass cups, crumbled up some vanilla meringue cookies (Trader Joe’s brand that I’ve had in my pantry for at least a year) and layered a little bit of cookies, some ice cream, more cookies, a few more meringue crumbs. We had a guest for dinner that evening and I made these you see pictured – those did have sliced peaches. But the next evening when our son and his family were here – THEN, my epiphany happened – I used the crumbs, the ice cream, and some of the peach puree, drizzled it on top (instead of fresh peach slices). THEN I drizzled just a little bit of balsamic glaze (Trader Joe’s brand that just lives in my refrigerator) on top of that. Oh my goodness was that good! I’ve box bordered the recipe below if you’re interested – it’s not exactly a recipe, but just a suggestion.

Even our 4 year old grandson ate it with relish. We all liked it a LOT. So easy to make, and the meringue cookie crumbles give the dessert some nice crunch/texture.

What I liked: the overall peach flavor; how easy the mixture is to make, although you do have to cook the peaches a bit; and, the fact that this is a dessert you can make the day before! Yippee. It made both evenings we entertained so easy to serve the dessert. The other thing I liked was that each serving contained a small amount of ice cream – smaller than if I’d served it by itself. I thought that was a good thing – less fat, calories, etc.

What I didn’t like: can’t think of a thing. I’ll be making these layered desserts again. And again. As long as I’ve got peaches! And peach ice cream. Maybe another visit to Costco is in order just so I can make more than one batch of the puree . . .

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Green bean salads are a regular around my house in the summertime when we’re having outdoor dinners. They’re a make-ahead item, and if you can find really good green beans, well, you’ll have a real winner of a side dish.

Usually I try to get those baby green beans, haricots verts, but in this case it was regular organic green beans that my DH found when he was shopping for me. I’d read the recipe over at Food52, and this was one of the contest winners last year. I simmered them in boiling water – well, simmering water until just done, drained them and got everything else ready to go. Marjoram isn’t something I have in my pantry or in the garden, so I substituted tarragon, which I do have in my garden. Not very big of a plant, but tarragon is a strong flavor anyway, so I only needed about 1/2 teaspoon or so of chopped tarragon.

Because I like onion but I don’t like raw onion at all, I always use that trick of soaking the onion in acidulated water (a tetch of vinegar in with water) for about 15 minutes. It takes that harsh edge off the raw onion. I sweetened the dressing with agave and poured it over the salad just before serving. Green beans make a great color item on the dinner plate too. It was a lovely salad to accompany some grilled pork chops. I liked making something other than our all-time favorite, the garlic green beans that I turn to at least a dozen times a year because they’re so easy and SO good. But this recipe was really good too.

What I liked: that I could make it ahead and just toss it before serving. Liked the pretty color addition of the red onion and Feta cheese – the color contrasts were very pretty. Actually, I thought with the lemon juice in it the green beans would turn gray after a day, but they didn’t. Enjoyed the left overs just as much as the first time. An easy side dish to make – do soak the onion if you can allow time for that. Definitely a keeper.

What I didn’t like: gosh, nothing. Loved all of it. Worth making.

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