Chicken Salad

The other day, Sandi and I were eating at our favorite neighborhood diner, Les Brothers, when a waiter walked past with a plate of chicken salad.

It was served old-school style inside a cut-up tomato. I don’t think I’ve seen chicken salad presented like that since the Reagan administration. I instantly knew I had to try it.

Serving compound salads — chicken, tuna, ham, egg, etc. – in hollowed out tomatoes used to be pretty common. But I suppose it had been done to death so people stopped doing it.

Well, I’m bringing it back! It not only is visually appealing, but it fits with my efforts to reduce the amount of white flour and white sugar I eat. Plus, now it’s nostalgiac. Bonus!

I served it with an Israeli cous cous salad. I wanted to make a macaroni salad, but Sandi wrinkled her nose at that, so I made this instead. But the joke’s on her because cous cous is simply a small, granular shaped pasta, so it’s exactly the same thing!

So much for my avoiding white flour, however.

Finally, I added one of my homemade dill pickles and garnished the plate with a few black, seedless grapes. I think it looks pretty elegant and wouldn’t be out of place on a posh lunch menu.

Chicken Salad

1 lb Chicken, cooked (I used half a baked chicken from dinner the night before), diced

1/2 cup Reduced-Fat Mayonnaise

1/2 cup Fat-Free Sour Cream

Juice of 1/2 Lemon

1 Garlic Clove, crushed

2 stalks celery, small dice

1/2 Red Onion, small dice

1/3  cup Dried Cranberries

1/4 cup Walnuts, chopped

1/4 tsp Lawry’s Seasoned Salt

1 Large Tomato

1. Combine chicken, celery, onion, cranberries and walnuts in a mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together mayonnaise, sour cream, lemon juice and garlic. Mix a little of the dressing at a time to the chicken mixture until you get the proper chicken salad consistency, holds together but not too soggy. Season with seasoned salt. Refrigerate at least 30 minutes to let the flavors meld together.

2. Use a paring knife to make alternate zig-zag cuts around the perimeter of a tomato. Pull it apart then use the knife to remove some of the core from each half. Lay flat on the plate and use an ice cream scoop to place a large dollop of chicken salad in the center of the tomato half.

To plate the cous cous salad, I simply spooned the salad into a ramekin and patted it down. Then I placed the serving plate on top of the ramekin, turned the whole thing upside down and removed the ramekin. The salad will then hold the shape of the ramekin.

What kind of old school foods would you like to see come back into fashion? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!

 

Chinese Chicken Salad

This salad could go either way. It could be called a Chinese chicken salad or it could simply be called a chopped salad.

The only real difference between the two is the dressing and the crunch.

In the past, I’ve used dry, fried chow mein noodles to achieve the crunch. In restaurants, I think the guest expects this. But because I’m trying to cut down on white flour (and fried foods), I substituted a little fresh cabbage.

There was definitely less crunch, but it wasn’t really missed in the texture. And the cabbage added better flavor than chow mein noodles, which to me always taste kind of sawdust-y anyway.

The other difference is the dressing. On a chopped salad, I would use a simple vinaigrette or a low-fat creamy dressing. But because I was going for an Asian feel here, I used a fat-free sesame soy ginger vinaigrette I picked up at Trader Joe’s.

My sesame soy ginger vinaigrette is delicious, but it is not fat free. I wanted to try TJ’s version, and although it was sweeter than mine, I found it to be delightful.

On both a chopped salad and this Chinese chicken salad, all the ingredients are cut into small peices. This gives it a texture that is a little different and is easier to eat.

Any salad can be made into a chopped salad, including a Caesar salad, a Salade Nicoise, a Cobb salad or a chef’s salad. It’s all about the size that you cut the ingredients and it makes for a nice change of pace once in awhile.

This salad also is sometimes called a garbage salad, although I’ve always stayed away from that name on my menus. It just has kind of an off-putting connotation to me: “And here’s your plate of garbage, madame!”

Chinese Chicken Salad

1 Boneless, skinless chicken breast, cooked and small dice

1/2 head Green leaf lettuce, chopped fine

1 cup Shredded green cabbage

1 large Tomato, ribs and seeds removed, small dice

1/2 Red onion, small dice

2 Green onions, sliced thin

1/2 Green bell pepper, ribs and seeds removed, sliced thin

1/4 cup Crumbled Blue cheese

1/4 cup Crumbed Feta cheese

For Sesame Soy Ginger Vinaigrette

1 TBS Sesame oil

1/2 cup Extra virgin olive oil

2 TBS Rice wine vinegar

2 tsp Low-sodium soy sauce

1 tsp honey

1 TBS Fresh ginger, chopped fine

1 clove Garlic, crushed

Sea Salt

Fresh Cracked black pepper

1. Combine the oils in a bowl and mix. In a separate bowl, combine the vinegar, soy sauce, honey, ginger and garlic. Slowly add the oils to the vinegar mixture, starting with a drop at a time and slowly building, until dressing is emulsified. Then season to taste with salt and pepper.

2. Combine all salad ingredients in large bowl. Dress with vinaigrette and mix throroughly. To plate, use a tongs to pile the dressing high in the middle of a large salad or pasta bowl, trying to attain as much height as possible. Make sure large peices of the chicken are visible.

A word about lettuce: In this salad, I used a green leaf lettuce, which is my lettuce of choice, along with red leaf. You also could use Romaine, a spring mix blend or a mixture of escarole and any other kind of lettuce to get a great texture and a healthy salad.

One lettuce I would never recommend is iceburg lettuce, which ironically is the most popular because it also is the cheapest. Iceburg lettuce is composed almost entirely of water and that’s exactly what it tastes like. Also, it has almost no nutritional value.

It pains me to say this because this is supposed to be a budget cooking column, but where’s the savings if the flavor is poor and there aren’t any usable vitamins or minerals? Do yourself and your family a favor and spend the few extra pennies for greens that not only taste better but are much better for you!

 

Egg Salad

When I was in culinary school, there was an entire class devoted to egg cookery.

That’s because in the restaurant business, eggs are one of the things you cook the most. You need to be able to cook eggs any style quickly, with several different types of eggs going at the same time: Over easy, scrambled, poached, over medium, omelets. Behind the line during the breakfast rush, it can get pretty complicated quickly.

Depending on the restaurant, eggs are cooked either in non-stick pans or on the big skillet. The key to mastering egg cookery is simply practice. After the first day on the job, after you’ve dropped dozens of eggs on the floor and accidentally broken countless yolks (you need to start over), eventually you get the hang of it.

One of the simplest methods for cooking eggs is hard boiling them. To get perfect hard boiled eggs that are easy to peel every time, there are a couple things to remember:

1. Older eggs work better than fresh eggs. If you are planning on making hard boiled eggs, use the eggs that have been sitting in your refrigerator for awhile. They will be easier to peel later.

2. It’s almost impossible to overcook hard boiled eggs. If you do, the worst thing that will happen will be that the outside of the yolk will become a little green. Once you mix all the hard boiled eggs together into a salad, you won’t even notice it.

3. Start your eggs barely covered in cold water. This will reduce the likelihood of the eggs cracking when you boil them because they won’t jump around as much.

4. To keep the egg whites from seeping out if they do crack, add a capful of vinegar to the water. This won’t effect the taste much and will discourage the whites from leaving the shell.

5. Bring the cold water to a boil, reduce it to a simmer and let simmer only about 2 or 3 minutes. Then turn the heat off, cover and let the eggs sit for about 15 to 20 minutes. Then pour out the hot water and replace it with cold water and let the eggs sit another 15 to 20 minutes.

These same principles apply whether you are hard boiling one egg or one hundred eggs.

Because Sunday was Easter, a lot of people this week have an ample supply of leftover hard boiled eggs. And you know what that means: Egg salad!

Egg Salad

1 dozen Eggs, hard boiled

1 cup  Mayonnaise (Reduced fat preferred)

3 TBS Dijon mustard

Sea salt

Fresh cracked black pepper

1. Peel the eggs under cool running water to wash off any excess shell. One gritty peice of egg shell will ruin your egg salad. If you are using Easter eggs and some of the stain has seeped through to the egg, you can still use it, but use your best judgement because you don’t want to discolor your entire salad. Use the little air gap at the bottom of the egg to start your peel.

2. Dice eggs using either an egg dicer or a knife. Combine with mayo and mustard, season with salt and pepper and mix thoroughly.

I served mine on some whole wheat bread thins with my new favorite chip — quinoia and black bean infused tortilla chips – both of which I bought at Trader Joe’s. Add a pickle and some cole slaw and you are good to go.

If you are making devilled eggs, the procedure is the same except cut the peeled eggs in half and combine just the mashed yolks with 1/2 cup mayo and 2 TBS mustard. Then pipe or spoon the yolk mixture into the egg halves and sprinkle with paprika.

Or you can make low-cholesterol egg salad by discarding the yolks altogether.

A belated Happy Easter to everybody!

Low Carb Chicken Roll-Ups with Spicy Avocado Sauce

I have been trying to cut out white sugar and white flour from my diet to drop some weight for the summer, but it’s been difficult.

Not so much that I have been craving these things, but because it seems like they are in everything!

So far, I’ve had to settle for drastically cutting back. This recipe, for example, features low-carb whole wheat tortillas, but they still contain some flour and a little sugar as well. Even the products that are suupposed to be better for you have sugar and flour!

This is a great use for leftover chicken. When I make chicken, I usually roast or grilll a whole chicken for just the two of us, so there is typically at least half of a chicken leftover. The next day, I separate the chicken from all the bones and skin, then pull the chicken into strips. Then I can either make it into a salad or toss it with some barbeque sauce and use it as a delicious pizza topping.

Avocados are one of our favorite foods, but because the weather has been so warm here in Chicago, we’ve had guacamole a lot already this year (OK, let’s face it, we never stop eating guacamole, even in the dead of winter).

So this time I went with a spicy avocado sauce that was super simple to make and was a delicious dressing for this wrap. The Sriracha sauce is very spicy, which was a refreshing compliment to the mellowness of the avocado and sour cream. But if you don’t like heat, you can reduce the amount or leave it out altogether.

This makes a delicious warm weather lunch or light dinner. I served it with plantain slices that I pan fried then simply seasoned with a little salt and pepper to give the dish a Carribean feel. The plantains were very good when they first came out of the pan, but they became soggy fast. Next time, I think I will either slice them thinner or grill them.

Low Carb Chicken Roll-Ups with Spicy Avocado Sauce

4 Low-Carb Whole Wheat Tortillas

1/2 lb chicken, pulled into thin strips

1/2 green bell pepper, ribs and skins removed, julienned

1/2 yellow bell pepper, ribs and skins removed, julienned

1/4 cup cabbage, sliced thin

2 green onions, sliced on the bias

4 to 5 leaves red leaf lettuce, chopped into thin strips

1/4 red onion, very thinly julienned

For the Spicy Avocado Sauce

2 avocados, mashed

1/2 cup fat free sour cream

1 TBS Sriracha Sauce

Sea salt

Fresh cracked black pepper

1. Basically, you are making a chicken salad. Put the chicken and all the vegetables in a mixing bowl and toss together.

2. Combine mashed avocados, sour cream and Sriracha sauce in a separate bowl and mix together with a fork or spatula. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

3. Combine chicken mixture with dressing and toss until evenly coated. Lay tortilla on a flat surface, spoon filling into center then carefully roll up into a tight wrap. Try to prevent the salad from coming out the ends. Seal with a toothpick placed in the center of the roll-up.

What kind of warm weather dishes are you looking forward to making in the summer months? Share your ideas in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!

Meat Free Mondays — Grilled Vegetable Salad

Now that the weather is warming up, it’s time to clean up the grill, get some fresh propane or charcoal, and start thinking about the best menus for cooking out.

Cooking on the grill can be more limiting for vegetarians than it is for carnivores, but for those looking to avoid meat the backyard barbeque need not be avoided altogether.

For example, I recently wrote about a party I catered that featured a California vegetarian menu — with meat options — that focused on grilled vegan burgers and tofu dogs.

Today we will consider the grilled vegetable salad, one of my personal favorite summertime vegetarian meals.

The grilled vegetable salad offers a lot of different options for the home chef: various kinds of vegetables to include, fun plating opportunities, and a variety of salads that can anchor the plate — including those made with greens, grains or even beans.

Any kind of vegetable can be grilled: If you can cook it, you can grill it. Some, however, benefit from being blanched — the process of steaming or boiling until softened, then immersing in ice water to halt the cooking process — before being “marked” on the grill. Among these would be asparagus, potatoes, carrots and other harder textured vegetables.

Others grill perfectly from the raw state. These include any kind of peppers, onions, eggplant, mushrooms and other softer textured vegetables.

When grilling vegetables, there’s a couple of key concepts to remember:

• You are grilling vegetables, not charring or burning them. Usually, veggies work best if you simply mark them for a few moments over the hottest part of the grill, then move them to a cooler spot where there is indirect heat for them to complete their cooking without becoming overcooked.
• While you can grill any kind of vegetable, try to include a variety of colors, shapes and flavors to liven up your final plate. If all your vegetables are green, for example, the final product will look boring.
• Grilled vegetables give you a lot of freedom for creative plating. Think of your plate as a frame and arrange your vegetables artfully for the most appealing visual effect. Don’t forget about the 3-D opportunities your plating can include: Consider stacking your vegetables into “towers” so that they come up out of the plate.
• Don’t forget to use pan spray and seasoning for all your vegetables. A tiny bit of salt and pepper will bring out the natural flavors of your grilled vegetables.

For this salad, I used zucchini, yellow squash, red bell pepper, asparagus and eggplant (it’s under the salad where I used it as a pedestal), then topped it with a chopped salad of red leaf lettuce, sliced cabbage for a crunchy texture, and julienned tomatoes and radish, all topped with crumbled Gorgonzola cheese.

Grilled vegetables can be served warm or cold and can easily be marked off hours before you serve them. In restaurants, we would arrange our intricate vegetable platters long before service then simply warm them up for a few moments under the broiler, in the oven or even in the microwave to speed up service.

Finally, leftover grilled vegetables can be chopped up and served again later as a ratatouille if you like.

Grilled vegetables are a welcome addition to any plate at any time of the year, but take on a more prominent role on summer dinner menus. As this year’s grilling season begins, it’s time to start thinking about the best ways to feature our vegetables by grilling them.

What grilled vegetable dishes do you love to make? Share your ideas in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!

Seafood Fridays – Grouper

Grouper always reminds me of family vacations in Florida.

That’s because my parents used to have a condo on Siesta Key, which is near Sarasota on the Gulf Coast, and grouper is very common on restaurant menus in that area because it is plentiful in the Gulf.

Grouper is one of my favorites because it is from the sea bass family. It is firm fleshed like mahi mahi or even tuna, yet its meat is slightly sweet and still flaky.

I find grouper to be one of the most durable fish to cook. It is most commonly deep fried, but it also will stand up to grilling, like salmon or tuna. Most importantly, it is delicious.

Grouper is a very interesting fish. In comes in a lot of different varieties and can be found all over the globe. In the Gulf, it is sometimes called jewfish and can grow up to 700 lbs. Yet it is commonly caught with a fishing line under bridges and in narrow creeks.

Fun fact: Groupers are born and mature as females, then become males when they grow older. They also have no muscular bones, so they are easy to fillet, although the skin is extremely tough and difficult to remove.

Because grouper meat is so chunky and can withstand a lot of cooking, it is used a lot in stews and chowders. It is also commonly found in bouillabaise and paella.

In Florida, we most commonly ate grouper that was deep fried or grilled and served on a sandwich. So that’s how I prepared it for this recipe. I served it with a chipotle aioli, quinoa salad and braised mustard greens.

There are two ways to make the chipotle aioli: The easy way and the hard way.

For the hard way, you use a food processor to blend one egg yolk, one TBS of lemon juice and just a touch of Dijon mustard together, then slowly add 1 cup of extra virgin olive oil until it is emulsified into a mayonnaise, seasoning it with salt and pepper. Then you fold in 3 TBS chipotle salsa.

For the easy way, you just mix one cup of mayonnaise (preferably reduced fat) and the chipotle salsa. Most of the restaurants serving chipotle aioli make it the easy way, in my experience.

The grouper is simply sprayed with pan spray, seasoned with sea salt and fresh cracked black pepper and then grilled until done. It was served on whole wheat rolls.

Here’s the recipe for the quinoa salad:

Quinoa Salad

2 cups water

1 cup quinoa

1/4 cup red onion, small dice

2 stalks celery, medium dice

1/4 cup cucumber, peeled and seeds removed, medium dice

1/3 cup parsley, chopped

3 radish, small dice

2 green onions, sliced thin

1 jalapeno, ribs and seeds removed, small dice

1 clove garlic, crushed

Juice of 1 lemon

1/2 cup EVOO

1. Bring water to a boil and whisk in quinoa. Return to a boil, reduce heat and cover. Cook 12 minutes. Turn off and let sit 15 minutes so all the liquid is absorbed. Remove cover, fluff with fork and let sit until it’s at room temperature.

2. Combine cooled quinoa with onion, parsely, cucumber, radish, green onion, celery and jalapeno in a mixing bowl. Juice lemon into a separate mixing bowl, add garlic, then slowly whisk in EVOO until emulsified into a dresssing. Season with S&P, then fold into the quinoa salad. Season salad with S&P, then refrigerate at least 30 minutes so the flavors can meld together.

Are there any foods that remind you of your family vacations? Let us know what they are in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!

Avocado Chicken Salad

For some reason, I keep encountering South America lately.

For example, I recently saw this recipe on “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” where it was being made at La Caraquena, a Venezuelan restaurant in Falls Church, Virginia. They called it Sifrina and it looked so delicious I just knew I had to make it right away.

Then, I saw these amazing plans for a solar-powered waterfall that will serve as the symbol of the 2016 Olympic games in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. How awesome is that thing?

Next, my older brother just returned from a vacation in – you guessed it — Columbia, which is in South America. This can’t be a coincidence!

Whatever the reason, I’m glad South America keeps coming into the picture because it’s a continent that many Americans know little about, but which has incredible culinary treasures for us to explore.

Among them is this recipe for avocado chicken salad. Avocados, especially when made into guacamole, is one of my wife’s and my favorite foods. This little fruit — which is sometimes called alligator pear in the South — is the perfect combination of creamy richness and healthy vitamins.

Even though avocados grow on trees, they are high in monosaturated fat, which accounts for about 75 percent of the fruit’s soft and lush meat. As a result, they blend well with chicken and suspend the flavors of the other ingredients perfectly in this salad.

Plus, avocados are good for you. They have more potassium than bananas, and are rich in Vitamin B, Vitamin E and Vitamin K. They can lower your cholesterol, reduce hypertension, help prevent diabetes, and may even prevent you from getting cancer!

When buying avocados, you can determine their ripeness by gently pressing on them. If they give just a little, they are perfectly ripe. If they don’t give at all, they are underripe and can be ripened quickly by putting them in a sealed paper bag for a day or two. If they are squishy, they are overripe and unusable.

Avocado Chicken Salad (Sifrina)

3 ripe avocados, peeled and seed removed

Juice of 1/2 lime

1 boneless, skinless chicken breast, cooked (about 8 to 12 ounces)

1/4 cup red onion, small dice

1 jalapeno, seeds and ribs removed, small dice

1 medium tomato, seeds and ribs removed, diced

1 TBS mayonaisse

1/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Sea salt

Fresh ground black pepper

Dash hot sauce

1. Place avocado and lime juice in mixing bowl and mash with potato masher until smooth. Add chicken, mayonnaise, onion, jalapeno, tomato, cheese, and hot sauce and fold together with spatula.

2. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper to taste, then refrigerate for at least 30 minutes so that the flavors can meld together. When you are ready to serve, use an ice cream scooper to scoop a generous portion of the sifrina onto whole wheat burger buns.

Although avocados usually turn brown due to oxidation fairly quickly, the lime juice prolongs this process and this stayed fresh in my refrigerator overnight with little to no reduction in quality. I served mine with oven-roasted sweet potato fries.

An aside: I just returned from a relaxing week’s vacation in Los Angeles, where my younger brother and his wonderful new wife live and where I ate like a sultan! I swear, we ate our way across that city and I probably gained 10 pounds, but it was so worth it! I will write a blog soon about the incredible food I enjoyed on the West Coast, but it’s also great to be back home.

Meat Free Mondays – 25 Cent Pasta Salad

The purpose of this blog is to provide inexpensive and delicious recipes to help folks stretch their grocery budget during these tough economic times.

Recently, all the stars aligned and I was able to make three pounds of pasta salad for just 25 cents. I wanted to write about it because it exemplifies how a little outside the box thinking can offer real rewards.

Okay, so I was at a produce store one day last week when I noticed they had 1 lb bags of pasta on sale for just $.25. They were mostly tiny pastas, like mini shells and orzo. At that price, I grabbed one immediately. I later saw the same pasta at a national chain grocery store and it was only $.44, still a great deal.

When my wife Sandi came home from her family’s Thanksgiving dinner (we split up for Thanksgiving, but Christmast is sacred), they insisted she bring home the leftover relish tray — an assortment of carrot and celery sticks, black olives, scallions, pepperocini, radishes, pickles, etc.

When I opened the refrigerator the next morning and found the relish tray, a lightbulb went off over my head — 25 cent pasta salad!

I quickly diced up select portions of the relish tray, combined those with a few other vegetables I had lying around, and then whipped up a quick Italian dressing and, voila! Three pounds of delicious italian pasta salad for just a quarter. For The Win!

This recipe is an example of how leftovers can be repurposed in creative ways, one of the hallmarks of frugal cooking. Here’s an article I read recently about other ways to radically stretch your food budget.

25 Cent Pasta Salad

8 oz bag of small shell pasta

4-5 carrot sticks, small dice

4-5 celery sticks, small dice

3-4 radishes, small dice

1/2 red onion, small dice

8-10 black olives, chopped

2-3 pepperocini, stem removed, chopped

2-3 scallions, sliced

For the Zesty Italian Dressing

1/2 cup EVOO

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

1 TBS Italian seasoning

1/2 tsp granulated sugar

1/4 tsp red pepper flake

1 clove garlic, crushed

Sea salt and black pepper to taste

1. Boil a pot of salted water. Add pasta and cook to package instructions, about 8 minutes. Drain in colander and rinse under cold water to stop the cooking process.

2. To make dressing, combine vinegar, garlic, Italian seasoning, sugar and pepper flake in a mixing bowl. Place bowl on damp dishtowel to keep the bowl from spinning while you add the oil. Whisk the oil into the vinegar solution, starting very slowly with only a drop at a time then steadily increasing, until all the oil is emulsified into the dressing. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

3. Combine pasta, olives, carrot, celery, radish, red onion, olive, pepperocini and scallions in mixing bowl, then fold in dressing. Season to taste with salt and fresh cracked black pepper.

This pasta tastes better if you let the flavors meld together in the refrigerator for at least an hour. Toss before serving to distribute the oil that settles to the bottom of the bowl.

Have you ever had the opportunity to make a shockingly inexpensive dish? Share your story below in the comments section. And thanks for looking at my blog!

Farmer’s Market Treasure

As the economy struggles to improve, it becomes more important than ever to find ways to stretch our food budget. One good way I’ve found is to visit the local farmer’s markets.

A little internet research shows there’s one almost every day of the week in the Chicago area this time of year.

Not only are they a fun way to spend time outdoors in the crisp autumn air, farmer’s markets also feature a wide variety of fruits and vegetables and usually are less expensive grocery stores because they have, literally, no overhead.

Some farmer’s markets also have flowers and plants, baked goods, jams and jellies, assorted honeys, and even cheeses.

This week, I visited two local farmer’s markets – in Oak Lawn and Evergreen Park. I spent a total of $9.25 and I bought: One medium pumpkin for making soup, two smaller pumpkins for serving the soup, three sweet gypsy peppers, two purple peppers, two large eggplants, 5 or 6 patty pan squash, and three beautiful red beets.

Not a bad haul for the money.

Next, I had to figure out what to do with all this. It’s sort of like one of those tryouts for a chef’s job, where they give you a mystery basket full of ingredients and you have to create something unique and delicious out of it.

So after nosing around my refigerator, freezer and cabinets, here’s what I came up with: Roasted Beet, Blue Cheese and Walnut Salad with a Honey Dijon Vinaigrette, and Assorted Stuffed Peppers. I’ll make use the rest to make pumpkin soup and baba ganouj another time.

The stuffed peppers are kind of an inside joke between my wife, Sandi, and I. Growing up, stuffed green peppers was one of the few dishes Sandi’s mother and grandmother could make, so they made it almost every week, freezing leftovers in plastic Wonder Bread bags. As a result, she ate her lifetime allotment of stuffed green peppers by the time she turned 12. It’s one dish I’m strongly discouraged from making at home.

But I’m going to stuff those purple peppers, the sweet gypsy peppers, as well as a green pepper from our garden, so hopefully this twist on an old standard will be acceptable.

Roasted Beet, Blue Cheese and Walnut Salad

For the Salad

1 large beet

1/2 TBS EVOO

1/4 cup walnuts, broken up

4 oz imported Danish blue cheese (or domestic), crumbled

1 head Boston Bibb lettuce

For the Honey Dijon Vinaigrette

2 TBS honey

1-1/2 TBS Dijon mustard

3 TBS red wine vinegar

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/4 tsp cracked black pepper

1/4 cup EVOO

1. Roast the beets the night before: Preheat the oven to 425F. Leaving about 1/2 inch of the stem attached to prevent beet juice from escaping, rub beets with EVOO, place in baking dish, cover with foil and bake until a knife passes through easily, about 1 hour. Allow to cool and remove skin with a pairing knife.

2. In mixing bowl, whisk together honey, Dijon, vinegar, salt and pepper. Emulsify the oil into the mixture by slowly whisking in the EVOO, starting with a drop at a time and building to steady stream. Season with S&P to taste.

3. Dice the beets into medium cubes. Remove a few lettuce leaves and set aside. Chop remaining lettuce into bite-sized peices and toss with beets, walnuts and blue cheese, then dress with vinaigrette. To assemble, place one Bibb leave in center of each chilled salad plate, and build tall pile of salad in center of each leaf. Drizzle a bit more dressing on top and grind a little more pepper on top of that.

Roasted Beet, Blue Cheese and Walnut Salad

Assorted Stuffed Peppers

2 purple peppers

1 sweet gypsy pepper

1 green pepper

1 lb ground turkey

1-1/2 cooked white rice

1/2 white onion, diced

1 clove garlic, crushed

8 oz can tomato sauce

1/4 cup grated parmesan

Assorted Stuffed Peppers

1. Cut tops off peppers, then use a spoon to dig out the ribs and seeds, being careful not to pierce the walls. Blanch peppers by dropping into boiling water for 30 seconds, then immediately plunging them in ice water.

2. Heat cast iron pan. When hot, add TBS EVOO. When smoking, add chopped pepper tops and onion and saute until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook another minute, then add ground turkey and cook until browned, about 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Combine turkey, rice and 3/4 of the tomato sauce in a mixing bowl. Season with S&P to taste.

3. Use a spoon to stuff the peppers with the meat and rice mixture. Place about 1/3 of the mixture in the bottom of a 9″x9″ baking pan. Place peppers on top, spoon a little of the remaining tomato sauce onto the top of each pepper, then sprinkle each with parmesan. Bake at 350F for 30 minutes.

What treasures have you found at your local Farmer’s Market? Share your discoveries in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!

Hail Caesar!

Ah, the Caesar Salad. The workhorse of most restaurant salad stations.

People love Caesar Salad. It never seems to go out of style, ever since Caesar Cardini first invented it at his restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico, back in the 1920s.

Every restaurant I have ever worked in (or eaten in, for that matter) has had it on the menu. And it’s always one of the top sellers.

Chicken Caesar Salad

Making a Caesar Salad can be as simple or as complicated as you like. You can find ready-to-serve Caesar Salad kits at most grocery stores that include the pre-cut Romaine lettuce, an envelope of dressing, croutons and parmesan. But these are expensive and, seriously, they lack creativity.

Instead, why not make your own homemade Caesar Salad, with freshly toasted croutons,
handmade dressing (it’s really simple), and freshly grated or shaved parmesan? Top it off
with some sliced grilled chicken breast or shrimp and you’ve got yourself a  satisfying an delicious meal for your family. Plus you can make it for far, far  less than you would pay at a restaurant.

The croutons and dressing, even the cut and cleaned lettuce, can be prepared a day or two ahead of time.

But before we begin, a few words on salads. Because most of the ingredients are raw, it is important that you select the best quality you can find. In cooked dishes, sub-par quality can often be masked, but not in salads.

I strongly recommend you make your own dressings. It is so easy and much less expensive than the lower-quality store-bought varieties. The trick is to use the best quality extra virgin olive oil that you can afford. The full, fruity flavor of a good quality EVOO can transform an ordinary salad into something magical.

Finally, make sure you wash all your greens thoroughly. Most commercial lettuces are
grown in soil that is mostly sand. You will want to ensure that there is no unpleasant grittiness to your salads. If you have one, use a salad spinner (I LOOOVE my salad spinner! If I weren’t already married, I’d marry my salad spinner).

If not, rinse your greens in cold water, let drain in a colander and pat dry with paper towels, being careful not to bruise the leaves. Make sure your greens are thoroughly drained. You don’t want a pool of water in the bottom of the bowl.

At Caesar’s Restaurant, making the signature salad was done tableside, a showcase that delighted diners and created lifelong memories. For a special experience, try assembling your salad for your family at the dinner table. It’s fun and gives you a chance to show off a little. For bonus points, chill your salad plates and forks by throwing them in the refrigerator about an hour before service.

There are four elements to the Caesar Salad – the romaine lettuce, the croutons, the dressing and the parmesan.

For the lettuce, use hearts of romaine if possible, the crisp, inner leaves of a head of romaine. These often sold separately, or you can buy a whole head of romaine and either discard the outer leaves or save them in a plastic bag for another time. Back in the day, Cardini would leave the leaves whole; it makes for a nice presentation. Otherwise, cut them into bite-sized pieces and set aside.

Crusty Homemade Croutons

2 cups French bread cut into ¾ inch cubes

3 TBS EVOO

2 cloves garlic, crushed

Salt and Pepper to taste

In a mixing bowl, whisk the garlic into the oil. Add the bread cubes and toss. Season lightly with S&P. Lay out evenly on a sheet pan and toast in a 225F oven until crisp, about 25 minutes. Remove and let cool. These can be kept fresh in an airtight container for up to a week.

Caesar Dressing

1 egg yolk

Juice of 1 lemon

1 cloves garlic, crushed

¾ cup EVOO

½ tsp Worcestershire

1 TBS grated parmesan

Coarse Sea Salt

For Plating/Presentation 

Fresh shaved or grated parmesan

Fresh Ground Black Pepper

Combine the lemon juice, garlic and egg yolks in food processor or mixing bowl and whisk together thoroughly. Slowly add the EVOO, starting with a drop a time then gradually adding more, until all is emulsified into the dressing. Finish by folding in the grated parmesan and season with salt. Transfer to a covered container and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes to the flavors can meld together.

It’s Showtime: Assembling the Caesar Salad

In a large mixing bowl, add the romaine and ¾ of the croutons and toss. Slowly and dramatically drizzle the dressing over the lettuce and carefully toss with wooden fork and spoon. Add about half the parmesan and toss again. Make tall piles of the salad on the chilled salad plates. Top each with a few of the remaining croutons and finally spinkle the
remaining cheese over the top. Grind fresh pepper over each and distribute.

You’re a pro!

Make a meal out of your Caesar Salad by adding a grilled chicken breast or some grilled shrimp.

Shrimp Caesar Salad