Salmon and Crab Sandwiches with Roasted Cauliflower and Potato Salad

Coming up with this meal, simple as it is, took hours.  Foodless at home and without any ideas, I walked the 15 minutes to the farmers market, hoping to find something delicious.  The farmers market had the usual suspects - beets, lettuce, potatoes, basil, beans, peas, et cetera et cetera.  Nothing popped at me, so I sat for a while, staring at the produce, and decided I should just play with a new favorite of mine: roasted cauliflower.

Kamut Berry Salad with Tomatoes, Chickpeas and Feta

I am uninspired.  It's been raining for days in Pittsburgh, the summer harvests aren't at their peak yet, and my summer temp job is, let's say, less than stimulating.  In a fit of creativity I was able to pull together a lovely Italian-inspired grill menu for two of my friends the other day, and since then, I've been in a culinary funk.  Simply eating so not to pass out, which is not how I like to eat.

Learning to Love Foods I Hate

As a self-proclaimed foodie, I feel an obligation to like everything.  A foodie can't be picky, right?  But sadly, there are some foods I just can't stand.  Olive, pickles, and really strong blue cheeses top the lists of foods that I keep trying and keep hating.  And then there are those foods - mainly veggies - that I am convinced I don't like, even though I haven't tried them in years.  Hence this weeks project: learning to like (or at least tolerate) a food that has made me cringe since I was a kid: tomatoes.

Lemon Pasta with Chard and Chives

The post's title is somewhat misleading: this dish is packing tons of good stuff, and should probably be named "Creamy Lemon Spring Pasta with Chard, Chives, Shrimp, and Edammame"

Two main points of inspiration for this cheery/delicious/nutritious spring dish:

1. There is a literally a tugboat's worth of lovely green chard growing in the community garden across the street from our house, which I'll try to photograph when it's a sunny day.  So, I've decided to use bundles of it regularly before it goes to waste (or the squirrels).

2. I recently discovered that one can make a classic French béchamel (white creamy basic sauce) with SKIM milk instead of the usual whole milk, and it works just fine.  Hurrah!!!  This discovery is super-appealing to me because creamy white sauce feels like a luxurious and rich indulgence, but who wants all the fat, calories, and heavy feeling from a sauce that's essentially one step down from a full-on cream sauce?  Skim milk-based béchamel provides the best of both worlds: you get a creamy, luscious sauce for a fraction of the fat that's in classic béchamel or cream-based sauces.  And, while plain béchamel itself doesn't have a lot of flavor, it's a welcoming canvas for almost any flavor profiles you can dream up: roasted garlic, white wine and thyme, goat cheese and rosemary, or in the recipe at hand--lemon and spring chive.  Deeee-lish.

--K, quite excited about the "light béchamel" discovery

Welcome spring with a Green Goddess

The internet surely yields overwhelming search results for "green goddess dressing," but this version is a serious winner: it's rich yet light and silky, flavorful but not overpowering, and comfortably at home as an accompaniment for crudité, spread thickly on a torn hunk of baguette, and drizzled on steamed vegetables or roasted fish.   My favorite use is to place a few spoonfuls of it on top of a simple green salad with poached chicken (as seen above) for a light and satisfying meal (the flax seed tortilla chips weren't a bad partner, either).  The story Molly Wizeberg wrote about this dressing and Chez Panisse appeared along with the recipe in the May 2009 Bon Appetit.  I was curious and made the dressing as soon as I read Wizenberg's story last year, and the Green Goddess has since entrenched itself in a many a salad at my house.  Don't let the long ingredient list deter you--it's a dressisng, so you basically whirl everything together in a processor.  I'm happy to welcome the Green Goddess again this year with spring's warmth and cheery tulips...

--K, feeling awfully thankful for wondrous avocados

Green Goddess Dressing

See how lovingly it slumps on your salad?  If you look closely, you can see flecks of the various herbs through the creamy light green base.

Quinoa-Black Bean Salad

This recipe started as an experiment for a potluck last spring.  Several of my friends had never heard of "quinoa" so I decided I needed to make something to show off its tastiness.

Now, for those of you who aren't familiar with this grain, you should be.  Actually, according to wikipedia (the best source for random knowledge) it's not a grain, but a seed, but that doesn't really matter. Quinoa (pronounced "keen-wah") is originally from the Andes and apparently used to be a core crop of the Inkan empire.  More recently, it has become popular among vegetarians for being a complete protein, meaning it has all nine amino acids.  Feel free to whip out that piece of trivia at your next dinner party.

Risotto, Part 2: Arancini (Fried Risotto Balls)

For my international pot luck a little while back, I decided to advance my risotto-making to the intermediate level.  I saw a recipe in my latest splurge, Andrew Carmellini's Urban Italian, that outlined the process for arancini, stuffed deep fried risotto balls.  Now, I'm a Minnesotan.  We are known for our "Minnesota Nice" demeanor, ten thousand lakes, and having one of the greatest state fairs of all time. Besides being one of the largest fairs in the country, and home to 2,000 pound pigs that my dad drags me to year after year, the State Fair is also known for its abundance of food that has been stuck on to a stick and deep fried.  Man, I love things that are stuffed with cheese and deep fried.  Or just cheese deep fried.  Brings me back home with every bite.