Salad Leftovers: Chopped Salad, Sorta

Bringing lunch to work is a win-win proposition in my book: you save money, and what you eat is tastier (usually) and healthier (usually) than what you'd buy on your lunch break. Salad, however, poses a problem. What started out last night as a delicious plate of greens is nothing more than a mushy pile of yecch by lunchtime today.



Well, fellow Serious Eats contributor Maggie Hoffman over at Pithy and Cleaver has a solution: skip the greens altogether. Her Chinese restaurant inspired Crunchy Cucumber Salad has all crunchy ingredients (plus sauteed shiitakes) smothered in a peanut sesame dressing (go check it out). I wanted to replicate this, but my salad had to go with the White Beans with Sausage and Greens I was making for dinner (more on that soon), so I switched in a simple lemon vinaigrette for the peanut sauce, and voila: a salad that's even better the next day. It's not so different from Bittman's recipe for Chopped Salad, so we're going to go ahead and check that recipe off the Everything list, too.

Substantial Salad: Warm Chickpea Salad with Arugula

Here's a nice, substantial salad that you can eat as a main course or a side--I had it as a main, and it was nice and hearty yet light enough for a hot summer day.


You just sautee some garlic, ginger and cumin (I added green garlic to the mix, which worked great) and then add chickpeas and stir until they're coated in the seasonings. Then you just add some honey and vinegar and mash up some of the chickpeas to give this dressing a bit of texture. That goes into a bowl with some sliced shallot or red onion and arugula, mix it up, and you're done. I added some cheese, because hey, why not?

Grind Date: Bittman's Favorite Burger, Cold Asian Greens and Ginger Salad

Mark Bittman's been talking about grinding your own meat for hamburgers since a 2007 Minimalist column. I'm just gonna let him explain:

The key is to avoid packaged ground meat. When you buy it, you may know the cut of the meat — chuck, for example — and the fat content.

But you have no way of knowing whether the meat came from high- or low-quality animals. It could come from dozens of animals, and they could all be poor-quality animals — old dairy cows, for instance, rather than cattle raised for beef. The meat from these animals is ground together in huge quantities.

If the aesthetics of that don’t give you pause, consider the health concerns. Massive batches of ground meat carry the highest risk of salmonella and E. coli contamination, and have caused many authorities to recommend cooking burgers to the well-done stage. Forgive my snobbishness, but well-done meat is dry and flavorless, which is why burgers should be rare, or at most medium rare.

The only sensible solution: Grind your own. You will know the cut, you can see the fat and you have some notion of its quality.

Sold. I don't have a meat grinder, of course. But I do have a food processor, and you guys know how I love to use it. Score one more for the Cuisinart--it grinds meat!

Bittman suggests starting with a chuck roast or sirloin steak, cutting it into 1- or 2-inch cubes, and just pulsing it with a bit of onion. I did it in batches, not wanting to crowd the processor's bowl. I was careful not to chop too much, which Bittman warns against. Hindsight being 20/20, I definitely could have pulsed the meat a bit more, but it was still good. In this burger recipe, entitled simply My Favorite Burger, the only ingredients are the meat, about 2 lbs., half an onion, and salt and pepper. I added to that some soy sauce, but I figured on this inaugural DIY grinding project I'd just keep it simple.

The burgers were fantastic; you can really taste the quality of the meat. Bittman is right; it's going to be hard to go back to preground meat after this. The benefits far outweigh the perceived inconvenience which, really, only amounts to a few minutes of cutting, grinding and washing of the food processor. On top of that, you can use this method for any kind of burgers; pork, chicken, lamb, fish, whatever you like. Check out the Minimalist article, or HTCE, for more ideas.



With the burgers, I made the Cold Asian Greens and Ginger Salad, which sounded great but ended up kind of mushy and weird. I may have just overcooked the bok choy, I'm not entirely sure, but either way I think I'd have preferred the Cold Cooked Greens, Greek Style which this recipe is a variation on.

The Minimalist: For the Love of a Good Burger [nytimes]
Thanks to Kyle Kabel for taking these pictures.

Steak!: Pan-Grilled/Oven-Roasted Steak, Simple Pan Sauce, Braised Potatoes and Raw Beet Salad

I like steak alright, but it's not my absolute favorite thing in the world. Ambivalence combined with my own trepidation at trying to make it kept me from ever attempting to cook a steak myself. Turns out it's easy, and it'll make you look good! I mean, come on, steak is impressive. It just is. I don't know why, as it's super simple.

I was scared because there's not a ton of wiggle room with steak. It's just a piece of meat. You can't really mask any big fuck ups. But that's also what makes it fairly easy to make. It's just a piece of meat. There aren't a lot of places to fuck up, short of overcooking it, and even then, it's probably going to be edible. And as long as you're not cooking for a big jerk, shouldn't be a huge problem. It's a good litmus test, actually: feed someone an overcooked steak, see how they handle it.

So, we turn to the first recipe in the Meat chapter of How to Cook Everything: Grilled, Pan-Grilled, or Broiled Steak, Many Ways. Many ways, indeed! I settled on the Pan-Grilled/Oven-Roasted Steak, "an excellent method if you don't have first-rate exhaust system or your steak is thicker than 1 1/2 inches." Mine were about 1 1/2 inches, rib steaks that were on sale at the store, and my exhaust system I would say is good-not-great.

Basically you crank your oven up to 11 (at least 500 degrees), then heat a cast-iron skillet (I used my huge dutch oven, as it's the only cast-iron cookware I've got) until it's really hot. Sprinkle the bottom of the pan with some kosher salt and add the steaks. Then you immediately transfer this to the oven. Turn once, cooking until the steaks are done. That's really it; I don't know why I was so freaked out about all of this. Really it's one of the simplest things I've made, and that says a lot.

With the bits stuck to the bottom of the pan, I turned to another recipe I probably should have made by now: Simple Pan Sauce. Pour off some of the fat, and with the pan back on the heat, add some red wine and minced shallots, scraping the brown bits off the bottom of the pan until they're all free and floating around and most of the wine has evaporated. Then add some stock or water, turn off the heat, and add some butter, a little bit at a time. As much or as little as you like works here. I didn't use much and it was still delicious. Then just add a bit of lemon juice or vinegar (optional), and you're done. You can garnish with parsley but I was eating this with my brother, and he hates parsley.*

On the side, I made Braised Potatoes, which is basically just potatoes seared then cooked in stock with a bit of chopped onion and whatever other aromatics you like. The stock gives them a lot of flavor and they end up perfectly tender, soft enough to soak up some of that extra steak juice and pan sauce.

Finally, I made the Raw Beet Salad, where you grate beets (thanks food processor!) and toss them vinegar, mustard and a bit of olive oil. I topped it with some goat cheese, because goat cheese is delicious. I also added an arugula salad to the beet salad, because they go well together, pretty much. I would have made it all one glorious amalgam of a salad but arugula's not everyone's favorite. I know, I don't get it either.

And that was our steak dinner. It was freaking great.

*How can you hate something as inoffensive as parsley? Hell if i know.

Remember Thanksgiving? It Happened.

It was weeks ago already, and I've been totally missing in action ever since. Probably because I just came out of the resulting food coma. I know, I know, it's halfway to New Year's already, but I'm just now getting around to posting a wrap-up of the big day.

Ari, my cousin, made the turkey. He's been doing this for a few years now, and he's really good at it. Look at that turkey thigh! It's moist as can be. And I got a wing, which is always fun, because, you know, it's like a chicken wing, only HUGE.

I made the stuffing I talked about earlier, doctoring up some Whole Foods' brand stuffing mix with Dipaola turkey sausage (IT'S THE BEST) and a ton of fresh celery and onions. It was really good, just what I was hoping for.

I also made a bunch of roasted root veggies: blue potatoes, purple carrots, shallots, and jerusalem artichokes mixed with a ton of fresh rosemary and minced garlic, pimenton, salt and pepper. What could go wrong? Nothing, that's what.

There was also a lentil salad I brought along. It was really good--lentils cooked in vegetable stock, some chopped up carrots and shallots, lemon zest, sherry vinegar, mustard, olive oil, salt and pepper, mixed just til combined. This one's great to take to a party because it keeps really well, and it tastes even better if you make it a few days beforehand.

I also made an incredibly large--3+ gallons--batch of the Potato Leek Soup, a recipe that I've now made more times than I can count. How can just three ingredients come together to be so rich and satisfying? It's particularly good for tiding people over while various sides go in and out of the oven in preparation of the big feast.

So, that was Thanksgiving! Thanks to Aunt Susan and Uncle Jay for hosting everyone (I believe there were about 300 of us in total) and to everyone who brought or made some form of deliciousness, and especially to Mom for decorating the tables and making everything so pretty (that's her handiwork pictured above). I am truly thankful for such a large, loving family that I genuinely look forward to spending time with. And that's to say nothing of how thankful I am for all of you out there reading this. There's more on my list, but those two will have to do for now. Hope you all had a great holiday, and good luck with all the Christmas, Hannukah, New Years', and whatever else parties you all have coming up!

If You Think We're Turning On The Oven You're Crazy: Bean Salad, Tomato Mozzarella and Basil Salad, Chicken Salad with Olive Oil and Fresh Herbs, and Fennel and Plum Salad

So, this dinner was held at my parents' last month, during the hottest days of August, when we really didn't want to turn on the oven. So, salad party! With an essential assist from Sullivan Street Bakery's pizza bianca.

First up was the Bean Salad. At first glance, it's not the most exciting recipe in the world. Sitting there on p. 215, it's just onion, salt, pepper, cooked or canned beans, olive oil, vinegar (or lemon juice) and some parsley. There's a list following, "7 Simple Last-Minute Additions to Bean Salads" that has some good ideas. But it's not until you make your way to p. 216 that the variability really hits you: here we have a full-page chart of variations (eight in all) of Bean Salad. You think you can go either way on bean salads, but what about a Spicy Black Bean Salad? Chickpea Salad w/ Chutney? Meditteranean Stlye White Bean Salad? Yeah, I thought so.

The latter is what Mom decided on: white beans with tomato, cucumber, a bit of shallot, and lemon juice for the acid. This salad was delicious and I imagine the leftovers tasted even better after the additional soak time.

Next up was Tomato, Mozzarella, and Basil Salad, also known as the Caprese salad. This is one of those recipes that is so simple it's almost sitting there on the page, mocking you. "You really need me, asshole?" it seems to taunt, complaining to its recipe friends what an idiot you are.

Cut up some tomatoes (using good ones is important). Cut up a ball of mozzarella. Tear up some basil leaves. Layer it all on one plate. Salt, pepper, drizzle with olive oil (I like a splash of balsamic, too, though Bittman omits this). Done. A combination that's as common as PB&J, and with good reason.

Next up was Bittman's Chicken Salad with Olive Oil and Fresh Herbs, a lighter alternative to the usual mayo-heavy chicken salad. This recipe is free of any mayo--it's just shredded chicken, shallot, olives, lemon juice and zest, and a whole lot of any type of herbs you like (fresh, not dried, if possible). You can also add a bunch of torn greens, though we declined to do so.

This recipe, like the Bean Salad, is really just a matter of throwing everything into a bowl and mixing it up. It's delicious, and it's nice to not have all that mayo--makes the salad a lot more chickeny.

Finally, we made a salad not from How to Cook Everything, but rather from Bittman's list of 101 simple salads for the summer. This one (#48!) was simply sliced fennel and plums (hello food processor!) tossed with a cider-ginger vinaigrette. Simple, interesting, refreshing, this may have been the star of the table.

It may have been, if we hadn't served it all with the Sullivan Street Bakery's pizza bianca, which very well may be the most delicious bread in the world. This meal was one of the best of the project so far. Salads: who knew?

Tweaks Needed: Warm Spicy Greens with Bacon and Eggs

Billed by Bittman as "the salad for meat-eaters," this was not one of my favorite dishes so far. Part of that could have been the greens I selected (mustard) or the fact that they were kind of on the wet side when I put the salad together (I don't have a salad spinner). It was a good start, I guess, something I'd like to try again in the future.

So, to make this recipe, you fry up a few strips of bacon, cut into small pieces (I'm sure pancetta and the like work well here, too). Then you add some onions or shallots, and let those soften, then deglaze the pan with a bit of red wine vinegar and mustard. This sauce makes the dressing for the salad. Place the greens in a warm bowl, toss with the bacon dressing, and then top each portion with a poached egg.

I thought this salad would make a great main course, and that's how I served it. Unfortunately, a series of circumstances made it a really just-okay salad. First of all, I'd never eaten raw mustard greens before; their name is no joke. It was like eating greens laced with wasabi. Some bites were mild enough, while others brought on hot tears. I could barely taste the bacon! Eating it, I thought that perhaps quickly blanching the greens might make them a bit milder, one possible tweak to make this recipe a bit more bearable.

Sidebar: Jacques Pepin makes a similar salad, with frisee instead of greens and the bacon on top instead of incorporated into the dressing. Looks really good. You can watch the episode of Pepin's show where he makes the salad here.

Barbecue in the Woods: Spicy No-Mayo Cole Slaw, Carrot Salad with Cumin

Last weekend, my friend and coworker Melanie invited me and some other friends to her mother Donna's house in New Hampshire for a barbecue and weekend of relaxation.

Obviously I was going to take this chance to work in a real kitchen (I'd refer to my own kitchen as "fun size") for all it was worth, but Donna had things covered with plans for smoked brisket (pictured above), chicken, and fish. So I brought some veggies to grill with the idea of making some Five Minute Drizzle Sauce, and decided I'd put myself on salad duty. It's often hard at a BBQ to get your fill of veggies, but I always want to. You can only pack your body full of so much delicious meat before you want some salad or a nice grilled zucchini. I settled on the Spicy No-Mayo Cole Slaw and Carrot Salad with Cumin, in addition to some really nice summer squash I got at the greenmarket that would act as the vehicle for the Herbed Five-Minute Drizzle Sauce, as suggested in the chart on page 250 ("How to Grill Vegetables").

The kitchen was a dream come true. Check out Donna's easy access spice drawer:

OK, on to the cooking.

The Carrot Salad with Cumin is a real ace in the hole; you're basically just grating a bunch of carrots, then tossing with cumin, lemon juice, orange juice, and olive oil, plus salt and pepper. The result is sweet and tangy and the cumin lends it a nice complexity.

If you have a food processor, it should take all of ten minutes including cleanup. The flavors intensify the longer you let it sit.

The Spicy No Mayo Cole Slaw should definitely be made ahead of time--it tasted way better the next day, even. I like this recipe; it's not the kind of cole slaw I'm used to, swimming in sugary mayonnaise, but resembles something closer to an actual salad. I wouldn't put it on my hot dog, but for a side at a barbecue it's light and fresh and just what I wanted.

The dressing is mustard and sherry vingegar plus garlic, chile, and olive oil. That goes on top of a lot of cabbage, some scallions (I used a leek instead, as there were no scallions at the farm) and bell pepper. Like I said, this was a delicious salad, but it got a lot better in the fridge overnight. Cabbage is so underrated. Just saying.

Finally, the summer squash (and some onions!) and drizzle sauce. Grilling the veggies was just a matter of a quick brush with olive oil and bit of salt and pepper, then throwing them on the grill til they were sufficiently charred (for me, this is bordering on totally black).

The drizzle sauce is just olive oil, heated up, with shallot and lemon juice and herbs mixed in. It takes, as the recipe states, all of five minutes, and is another one of Bittman's endlessly variable recipes (sub peanut oil or sesame oil for the olive oil, ginger or onion or garlic for the onion, soy sauce or vinegar for the lemon, etc.).

All in all, this was one of the most delicious meals, and relaxing weekends, of my life. Donna's smoking technique, which invlolved getting up at 7am to light the coals, and nearly 12 straight hours of sauna time for the meat, is world class, to say nothing of her homemade barbecue sauce. Many thanks to Donna and Mel's Aunt Lynne. We all had a great time eating, relaxing, and enjoying your beautiful home. Hope we can do it again!

The Manic Minimalist: 101 Simple Salads

Today's Minimalist column is another one of Bittman's lists of 101 one sentence recipes--this time with the theme of summer salads. They range from the standard to the completely zany (carrots, blueberries and pine nuts, anyone?) across a wide range of categories, including seafood, meat, noodles, grains, vegetarian, and "mostly vegan." There's even some dressing recipes. If you can't find at least a handful of things you want to eat on this list, there's something wrong with you. Go check it out.

Also, if you fancy this kind of super short recipe thing, check out Bittman's latest book, Kitchen Express, a collection of these seasonal recipes from the Times.

101 Simple Salads for the Season [nytimes]
Share Your Salads [bitten]
Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express: 404 inspired seasonal dishes you can make in 20 minutes or less [amazon]

Above picture jacked from the NYTimes.

Low and Slow: Braised Anise-Scented Short Ribs

So, this recipe was one of the most full flavored, complex, rich and satisfying ones I have made so far. But overall, I think they're a little too fatty for my taste. I'd like to try the same recipe with a different cut of meat, maybe, because the combination of star anise, ginger, nam pla, carrots, potatoes, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sugar did really magical things.

This recipe is a variation on Short Ribs Braised with Mustard and Potatoes, and I wasn't sure if I was supposed to include the potatoes or not; I decided to use them after all because it seemed like it'd make the dish more substantial, so why not? It didn't say to omit them outright, but the variation does sort of just ignore them. I was glad I included them, but I'm still not sure if I was supposed to.

Served it with the Roasted Red Pepper Vinaigrette from before.

Cracking the Dressings: Roasted Pepper Vinaigrette

18 Variations on Vinaigrette, another chart in How to Cook Everything that's just completely loaded with potential. All of them are variations on the classic template: oil, acid (vinegar, lemon juice, what have you), salt, pepper, hopefully some shallot and maybe a little bit of garlic.

Bittman swears by emulsifying it all in the food processor, as the cleanup time still makes up for the whisking-by-hand time, not to mention the stress on your wrist.

So for Roasted Pepper Vinaigrette, first you roast a pepper (in this case, a red one). I do this on the burner, turning it with tongs until it's black all over. The one you see here is about halfway there.

Then stick it in a plastic bag and seal it so that the pepper steams as it cools. You can then peel it with your fingers under running cold water, slice it open, remove the stem and seeds, and you're ready to make the dressing.

Olive oil (something like 1/3 cup), good wine vinegar (I used sherry vinegar, around 3 tbs.) and the pepper are all that Bittman suggests, along with salt and pepper, of course. I added to this a bit of shallot, because hey, why not?

Let 'er rip.

And here's what you get: a delicious salad dressing that tastes so much better than even the best storebought (which, for the record, is Newman's Own). If only it kept for longer, I'd make it by the gallon. Oh, well. Can't win 'em all.

Light, Fast, Easy: Grilled Squid

So, this one is sort of an approximation. Grilled Octupus, something I definitely still mean to try, involves simmering the cephalopod for about an hour until it's "nearly tender." Then you grill it up, with a little bit of olive oil and lemon juice just till it's a bit crisp. That's it.

I had squid in the freezer (how awesome is the top hat-wearing squid on this package?), so I used that instead. Basically, I cut out the simmering and went straight to the grill (a stovetop cast iron thing that's a bitch to take out and clean at the end of the night, but really gets the job done).

Served it with garlic bread and a salad. I can't tell you how nice it is to have a light, springy seafood and greens meal after so much brisket etc.

Green Street Style: Chicken with Yogurt and Indian Spices and Fried Polenta

Kyle, the designer of this computer based periodical you're looking at right now, was in town from DC for the weekend. Clearly we had to make dinner. Sometimes it feels cruel making Kyle work on this project about delicious food that he rarely gets to enjoy. Someone please offer him a job here so that he can move to New York and come over for dinner all the time.


Anyway, I sent him a list of things we could make, and we decided on Chicken with Yogurt and Indian Spices, a curry dish with a yogurt base, and Fried or Grilled Polenta (in this case, fried).

Polenta was something we made a lot back when I lived with Kyle in Cambridge, Mass. Well, we made it once or twice, then stopped, probably because we were buying that kind that comes in a tube. That stuff looks, feels and tastes like rubber, lightly fried.

I'm not sure why we used that stuff, because real polenta is really easy to make, even though it takes some attention (read: constant stirring). Boil water (plus milk, not necessary but recommended by Bittman) with some salt, add the polenta, lower heat, and whisk constantly until it thickens. It should be about as thick as sour cream, says Bittman, but "for Grilled or Fried Polenta, you want something approaching thick oatmeal."


Then you smooth it out, let it harden up a little bit (this is a very similar technique to a recent Minimalist recipe) and pan fry it. You can also brush it with olive oil and grill it, which I might try in the broiler next time. If you do fry it, though, do yourself a favor and use a nonstick pan, because we started with a regular skillet and could not get a single piece to lift off easily, no matter how much oil we used. Anyway, this was really really delicious stuff, and with some practice, I think it could get even better.

The Chicken with Yogurt and Indian Spices is a really nice simple curry, where you brown your chicken (breasts and thighs in this case, but use whatever), remove it, sautee some onions in the oil and fat from the chicken, throw in a bunch of garlic along with cumin, coriander, cardamom, turmeric, and cinammon... and maybe some others that I may be forgetting? I think there was cayenne as well. You let the spices cook for a minute or two (your kitchen goes from smelling good to smelling like magic), then stir in the yogurt. Add the chicken back into the pan, cover and let it cook over fairly low heat until it's done... this was about 20 minutes for me.

What you end up with is a chicken dish that photographs pretty poorly (it's a very brownish shade of grey) but tastes awesome and leaves a lot of sauce. Next time we'll need some naan bread or rice or something. Susan made a delicious Israeli salad (cucumbers + tomatoes, no leafy funny business) to go along with it, nothing from the book, but it had Drunken Goat cheese in it. Drool.


Oh, and it was totally Kyle's fault that all the polenta stuck. You can't let that guy do anything.