November 13, 2019
If you buy a lot of food inevitably some vegetables will linger in the fridge, not going bad but needing to be used. This is the time to put a few of them together and make a nice crunchy salad that is substantial enough to stand on its own as lunch or light dinner with good bread. This hardly require a recipe but here are a few ideas of might go into... View Article
October 17, 2019
My kind of salad, with sweet potatoes, black beans, pomegranate seeds and chopped pistachios combined for a spectrum of textures and flavours. I make this salad all year round and change it a little with every season. In the fall I add pomegranates or even firm, ripe pears for a touch of fruity flavour. In the summer I add fresh corn, roasted on the grill and scraped off the cob into a waiting... View Article
July 24, 2018
Summer beets are a special treat, especially when you get them small and tender. This is a pretty and refreshing salad using the beets in a few different ways. I cooked the beets sous vide but you can roast them to equally delicious results. I then marinated them in a little olive oil and balsamic crema to impart sweet and tangy flavour. I then made a light mayo style dressing to which I... View Article
May 29, 2018
Rice noodles have a light texture and neutral flavour that adapts to any sauce or dressing you pair it with. The noodles are beautiful white and raw vegetables add colour and texture to the dish. This salad is quick and easy to prepare and for us it’s a light and refreshing dinner on a warm evening or a hot summer day. The crushed peanuts on top add just the right crunch and nutty flavour, I... View Article
September 15, 2017
Halloumi is one of the only cheeses I know that doesn’t melt and keeps its shape when grilled. This white cheese with firm texture and salty flavour originates from the island of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean and found also in Greek and Middle Eastern cuisines. Halloumi keeps its shape when cooked because of its high melting temperature but once fried you need to serve it immediately, it does not benefit from sitting around. In... View Article
July 19, 2017
Lentils are versatile and I use them all year, for soups and stews in the winter and salads in the summer. I often have cooked lentils in the fridge to pull out on the spur of the moment to make a lunch or dinner salad. In this salad I used leftover beets and carrots from my new sous vide experiment, more on that later, but you can make this without a sous vide by boiling... View Article
July 8, 2017
If you have your grill fired up it’s an opportunity to try a few grilled salad versions with summer produce. I particularly like to grill radicchio and serve it as a warm salad and this time with a few shitake mushrooms I had on hand. If you don’t grill you can make this in a skillet on top of the stove. The process is simple: cut the radicchio in half or quarters, brush with... View Article
July 2, 2017
This spring was not a good season for artichokes locally. I barely saw an artichoke once or twice at the local grocery store and nothing at the markets. That’s unfortunate because I love cooking with them. On my last trip to the store though I found a few reasonable looking specimen and thought I’d take them. Instead of cooking the artichokes whole, I cut the outer leaves down almost to the heart and then into... View Article
June 16, 2017
Local farm cucs are not yet available here but I found these little ones the other day at the store and made this fresh cuc salad to go with a pasta dinner. I still had the elongated French breakfast radishes from this recipe and a bag of gorgeous wild watercress from our local forager Scott Moran, so I combined them with the cucs together with lots of fresh dill from my garden. Instead of cutting... View Article
June 10, 2017
My trip to the local market today did not yield much. A couple of bunches of garlic scapes, a few small new carrots and local walnuts was almost all there was. However, thanks to our local professional forager Scott Moran I also got wild watercress, cattails all peeled and ready to use and a pound or so of wild morel mushrooms. I know what to do with the morels and wild watercress, check upcoming posts.... View Article
April 27, 2017
I posted recipes for cauliflower “rice” before. It’s a useful method to add cauli to various dishes without the florets dominating the shape. Today I had a white and purple cauliflower and this dish evolved from it. Once I chopped and roasted both cauli and aded them to the cooked quinoa I needed more colour so into the processor went a few stems of broccolini, chopped into rice size pieces and roasted for a few... View Article
April 25, 2017
The humble carrot plays center role in this colourful and fresh salad. I came across the recipe in Michel Richard’s book Happy in the Kitchen (foreword by Thomas Keller) and wanted to try it. Richard’s cuisine is remarkable in its sophistication and “simplicity”, using this word judiciously. Jaques Pepin calls his cuisine “wildly simple, always brilliant”. I have marked a few recipe to try and if they work I’ll post them here. For this salad Richard... View Article
