My friend Susie has an enviable job in food product development and an even more enviable collection of fancy ingredients that she gets to play with for work. Tucked away in a corner of her cozy San Francisco kitchen are bottles of olive oils, nut oils, truffle oils, infused oils and tons of tart and fruity vinegars. It’s a salad nerd’s nirvana.
Last Sunday was cold and rainy, and she hosted a girls dinner in. Girls were being girls… cooking, drinking wine and gossiping about recent dates. Where was I? Huddled in the corner with my friend Lizzie sipping oils straight from the bottle — okay, we used a spoon — and dorking out over each new aroma and flavor. When I got up to leave, Susie has stuffed a bottle of Argan Oil (never heard of it, more background here) and White Truffle Oil (never have the nerve to spend that much on oil) into my purse. It was like Christmas! I faux protested until she said, “Just take it!”. UGH… FINE.
Fast forward to Tuesday night: An Indian dinner at home called for a dressing more exotic than my stand-by mustard vinaigrette. Hello Moroccan Argan oil!
A little Googling pulled up a blood orange and Argan oil vinaigrette recipe that looked delish. I was short an orange so I improvised with some other stuff in my fridge. The result was great – sweet, tart and nutty. I used it to dress baby greens topped with salty feta cheese (a key addition, and kalamata olives would have been great too.)
I know Argan oil is pretty spendy, but I justify it like this: its great for your skin and a hell-of-a-lot cheaper than Botox, which at times feels right around the corner. And, because it has a pretty intense flavor, a little goes a long way. I’m looking forward to experimenting more with Argan oil. Thanks Susie!
If you’ve got a great recipe or use for Argan oil, please share!
Blood Orange and Argan Oil Vinaigrette
Serves: Enough to dress 4-6 side salads
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Categories: Dressings · Ingredients
Tagged: Argan oil, dressing, feta, no cook, orange, quick and easy, vinaigrette
Crates and crates of fennel bulbs have been staring me down at the farmer’s market all winter, and I’m not going to lie, I’ve been too intimidated to try cooking with them. They’re big and knobby and look hard to cut — basically a bloody kitchen disaster waiting to happen. Plus, my husband hates things that taste like black licorice, and fennel does have an anise flavor.
Then, last Saturday I caught the tail end of a PBS cooking show called “Everyday Food” where the chef made fennel salad look easy and tasty. I was on my way to check out the Grand Lake farmer’s market — clearly this was a sign that it was time to give fennel a shot. Turns out, Brian and I both loved this salad. It wasn’t too licorice-y and – BONUS – this recipe is is very low-cal, especially if you cut back on the olive oil. I served it with big spicy pasta dish with chicken and rainbow chard and it provided a light, cooling balance to the heat of the pasta. Give this easy, crunchy fennel salad a shot, and let us know if you love it!
Fresh and Crunchy Fennel Salad
Serves: 2 as a side salad
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Categories: Side salads
Tagged: fennel, fresh, lemon, low-cal, no cook, no lettuce, quick and easy, winter
Two Christmases ago, I was given a fantastic cookbook that I refer to more than any other: Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food. Its a go-to manual for a young(ish) cook like myself. The recipes are seasonal, use simple ingredients and teach you techniques that you’ll use over and over again. No list of crazy stuff you’ve never heard of — usually I already have most of the items I need for these recipes on hand. After using this book for a while, I thought I understood why people are so obsessed with Alice Waters.
That was until I was treated to a birthday lunch at her famous Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse. Now I REALLY get the obsession. My stepmom, her mom and I dined at the cafe upstairs recently and we all ordered the same salad: Beet and Cauliflower Salad with Egg, Capers and Chervil. It was fab! It was maybe the best beet salad I’ve ever had, and it didn’t even have goat cheese. Woah. What? Those are words I never thought I would utter… I feel like a real Judas to my beloved chevre, but really this salad is great.
I felt like a huge dork taking a photo of the salad in the restaurant, so I only got one.
Last night, I made this salad at home, and, lucky me, I found the caper/olive dressing recipe in the Simple Food cookbook. I served it alongside a piece of poached salmon and it was great.
Alice Waters’ Beet and Cauliflower Salad with Egg, Capers and Chervil
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Categories: Restuarant salad reviews · Side salads
Tagged: olives, no lettuce, fresh, low-fat, lemon, capers, cauliflower, beets, chervil, Alice Waters, Chez Panisse, winter
December 1, 2009: My face is nice and puffy, my rings barely fit and my jeans are quite a bit tighter than they were a week ago (sigh). This can only mean one thing…the jolly season is here! We spent Thanksgiving at Lake Tahoe scarfing down turkey and all the fixings, washed down with plenty of wine. You know the deal: it was totally delicious and disgusting in nature all at once. Followed by guilt, guilt, guilt.
When we got home, my husband joked about getting scurvy if we didn’t have a healthy meal ASAP. You know scurvy, the disease pirates used to get at sea from a lack of Vitamin C? Since pirates used to eat limes to combat scurvy, I dug up a salad I made a long time ago that has a lime-based dressing and lots of fresh ingredients.
This salad comes from a cookbook called “A Kitchen Safari: Stories and Recipes from The African Wilderness”. When I first made the salad a few years ago, the flavor combo of lime and chile powder sounded bizarre, but it turned out to be very tasty. We loved it the second time around too. Bonus? The dressing is fat & calorie free!
I was able to find watermelon in late November at Safeway, and while it wasn’t a county-fair-gold-medal-winner, it got the job done. The rest of the ingredients are easily found year-round. I also added 1/2 of an avocado, cubed and 1/4 cup of fresh pomegranate seeds, just ’cause.
Summer Salad of Watermelon, Pears and Pecorino
Serves: 2 as a dinner salad, 4 as a side salad
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Categories: Main dish salads · Side salads
Tagged: dressing, easy, filling, fresh, healthy, lime, low-fat, no cook, pears, pecorino, quick and easy, watermelon
My mother-in-law (nicknamed Mama K by her sons) made a delicious and very healthy side salad for a home cooked birthday dinner for my husband. It was the perfect cool antidote to some delicious, spicy roasted chiles stuffed with chicken, cheese and corn. Normally I’m not that into raspberry vinaigrette dressing – I especially hate the ones out of a jar, too sweet! – but this one was really really good. This salad would also be great with grilled chicken and pine nuts on top, for a little protein boost.
A little Googling reveals the photocopied recipe comes from The Greens Cookbook by Deborah Madison. Greens is a vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco that I’ve always meant to try, but have never gotten around to. Obviously that needs to change! For now, I’ve ordered the book from Amazon. (The photo below is courtesy of Brian Murphy, who as it turns out really likes taking the pictures for this blog. Call him the Ansel Adams of the salad world 
Mama K's delicious creation
Butter Lettuce and Spinach with Citrus and Avocado
Serves: 4-6 side salads
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Categories: Side salads
Tagged: avodaco, dinner party, dressing, elegant, fresh, grapefruit, low-cal, no cook, raspberry, seasonal year-round, spinach, vegetarian, vinaigrette
