a tasty salad for a meeting

I had a work meeting requiring treats yesterday, and had some nice apples and apparently nice celery roots from my vegetable box, so I decided to make this salad. It turned out a little different than I'd imagined it--I thought it would be a sort of grainy Waldorf salad, and it was a little sweeter and a lot fluffier than that--but I really liked it and wanted to record it here so that I remember to make it again. I made it just as the recipe said except that I used my rice cooker to cook the quinoa, supplemented the celery root with regular celery when I turned out not to have enough of the root (see picture below), used aleppo pepper instead of a fresh chile, and added the arils of a pomegranate to make it look extra festive.

I used a magic vegetable peeler to julienne the apple; I would have tried it on the celery root too if I hadn't hacked it up into such tiny pieces to get the yuck out of the middle.

hippie salad dressing

Annie has been asking me to keep an eye out for one of her favorite boughten salad dressings, Annie's Woodstock Dressing. I found it at our grocery store--its label has changed, so Annie must not have recognized it--and was shocked to see that it cost $4.69 for a tiny eight ounce bottle. It's only $3.39 if you buy it directly from Annie's, but I'm sure she charges enough for shipping that you wouldn't save any money. I make my own Goddess Dressing all the time, so I was sure I could make I decent version of Annie's favorite.

I pretty much copied the ingredients off of the label, leaving out the xanthan gum, and I think it turned out very well. Annie's version has little lumps of sundried tomato--if those are crucial to your enjoyment of this dressing, you could reduce the amount of tomato paste and, after whizzing the dressing with your blender, mix in a dried tomato rehydrated in warm water and chopped up into tiny bits.

I used some of this dressing to make a nice cruciferous salad for my work lunch--I just mixed it with some thinly sliced kale, savoy cabbage, green onion, and celery, and let it get nice and limp.

EZ Woodstock Dressing

makes a little more than 8 ounces

1/2C oil of your choice
2T tahini
2T soy sauce
4 1/2T apple cider vinegar*
2T nutritional yeast
2T tomato paste
2 cloves garlic

Blend everything till smooth.

*Really! 1/4C wasn't quite sour enough, and 5T was a little too sour.

work treats

We had a birthday party potluck at work yesterday, and due to a communication breakdown I was the only person working that day who knew about it. We pulled ourselves together and got some cake and ice cream to complement my salad, so my efforts were not in vain. Everyone but me had brought their lunch--not knowing there was a potluck--so there was enough to go around. My salad turned out really well, and several people asked me for the recipe, so I decided to record it here.

It was adapted and Americanized from this recipe by Yotam Ottolengi. I didn't have enough fennel, but had some lovely leeks I'd gotten for my birthday so added those, and I substituted edamame for the broad beans since that's a lot easier to find in Seattle. You could, of course, do your own substitutions and additions--but try to keep everything green, as the greenness was one of its appealing attributes.

Green Quinoa Salad

1/4C olive oil, divided
225g quinoa cooked in 325ml water (I did it in my rice cooker)
400g frozen edamame, thawed and mixed in with the hot quinoa
1 big fennel bulb, thinly sliced
2 or 3 leeks, depending on their size, cleaned and thinly sliced
1 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp cider vinegar
1 green chile, deseeded and chopped (I used a roasted poblano)
1 sweet green pepper, seeded and chopped
2 celery stalks, thinly sliced
1 tsp ground cumin
Salt and black pepper
a handful of mint, roughly chopped
a big handful of cilantro, roughly chopped
some of the feathery leaves from your fennel, roughly chopped
3 limes, supremed, along with the juice squeezed from the leftovers

Heat 2T of olive oil in a big frying pan and sauté the fennel and leeks for about 15 minutes, till the leeks are soft. Add the sugar, vinegar, and some salt and cook for a couple more minutes, till the sauce thickens. Let cool.

Mix the quinoa and beans, your cooked vegetables, and all the remaining ingredients except for the lime supremes, in a big salad bowl. Artfully scatter the limes on top, and serve.

If you're not going to eat this straight away, keep the herbs separate and mix them in at the last minute, as the mint will turn ugly and black after a while and you want your salad to be pretty and green.

Mango!

There have been bargain mangoes around lately (2/$1 at Safeway this week!), so I have been buying them to eat for breakfast and to make things like apricot-mango jam (not really a success: it tasted nice but didn't set). I made this salad for Rachael, and it was the only part of dinner she liked--the stripey-pan tofu and oniony bulgar were too healthy for her refined palate. It's based on a salad our friend Mely brought to a church picnic long ago. When I asked her later for the recipe she said she couldn't remember, she'd just made it up: this is my reconstruction.

There are all kinds of methods for cutting up a mango, but whatever method you use, you should be sure to get all of the peel off as it can cause a terrible rash. I have a special mango peeler that gets off a nice, thick layer:



Fil-Am Mango Salad

makes enough for four people, or two with leftovers

a sweetish onion, thinly sliced
2T rice vinegar or lime juice
salt, black pepper
2 under-ripe mangoes, peeled and cut up into biggish pieces
a cucumber, peeled, halved lengthwise, seeded, cut into thickish slices
1 or 2 tomatoes, cored and cut into suitably-sized pieces
a little sugar,if necessary
some lettuce, preferably a crunchy kind like iceberg or romaine, ripped into bite-size pieces

In a big bowl,sprinkle the onion with the vinegar or lime juice, season with salt and pepper, and let soak while you prepare the remaining ingredients. When everything's cut up,lay the lettuce on your serving dish and mix everything else together. Taste for seasoning--it may need a little sugar if the mangoes were really under-ripe. Pile it all on top of the lettuce and serve.