Beet and Citrus Salad

It's getting to be that time of year, when we have to balance our treats (Halloween candy, chocolate chai lattes, caramel apples) with our veggies.  But why should that have to be boring?  This beautiful  salad is the perfect combination of flavors to keep your tastebuds, and tummy, happy!  Think salty pistachios, tangy citrus, sweet beets, and a bright dijon vinaigrette to finish it off. 

JP and I had this for dinner on Halloween night, as I figured we would want to eat light with all our yummy candies waiting for neighborhood kids...and us.  The original recipe for this beet and citrus salad can be found here, though I made a few minor changes for this recipe.  With winter coming up, the best citrus will be here; enjoy this by itself, or the perfect side for a protein!

Beet and Citrus Salad (from Snixy Kitchen)
5-6 beets, peeled, sliced, and roasted (I used a pre-steamed package from Trader Joe's)
1 Valencia orange, peeled and sliced into rounds
1 ruby red grapefruit, peeled and segmented (I didn't do this, but will next time!)
1 fennel bulb, shaved
2-3 Tbsp. pistachios
4-5 c. spring mix
1 recipe of Martha Stewart's dijon vinaigrette (recipe here)

Layer salad with spring mix on bottom, topped with fennel, citrus, and beets.  Sprinkle pistachios on top, and dress with vinaigrette to taste.  Enjoy!

Chopped Summer Salad

JP and I had the most delightful salad last night for dinner, and I just had to share it with you.  It's a completely delicious combination of fruity sweetness and crunchy vegetables, with a hint of salty goat cheese.  It's not over the top, and it's not a huge pain to put together.  It's just a bunch of good-for-you stuff thrown into a bowl, dressed, and devoured.  You'll love it.

Chopped Summer Salad
1 large head of Romaine lettuce, chopped
1 c. strawberries, hulled and quartered
1 crisp apple, chopped into 1/2 inch cubes
1 avocado, chopped into 1/2 inch cubes
1/4 cup almonds, sliced
1/4 c. crumbled goat cheese
1 c. chopped cold chicken (we used rotisserie)
Salt and pepper to taste
1/4 c. olive oil
4 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar

Place everything in a salad and toss until well mixed.

This recipe is endlessly adaptable.  If you're feeling adventurous, you could add some sliced prosciutto or crisped bacon, substitute the goat cheese with gorgonzola, blueberries or raspberries instead of strawberries; make this salad your own!

Quinoa Shrimp Salad

Sometimes we just need something light and colorful for dinner, something that will leave us feeling virtuous and good.  After spending the majority of last week eating cereal and toast (unpacking for 10 hours a day, figuring out where to grocery shop, trying to not embarrass myself in front of our new neighbors, and keeping an eye on Miss Mia in the new house took a lot of energy), I had to whip up a salad come Thursday night.  It was delicious!
This is so, so easy: just a bed of greens, sauteed, seasoned shrimp, lots of beautiful veggies, and some quinoa for extra protein.  Add a dressing made with oil and lime juice.  Wonderful!

Quinoa Shrimp Salad
4 c. mixed greens (you could also just do spinach)
1 tomato, chopped into 1/2-in. cubes
2 bell peppers, roughly chopped
2 scallions, sliced into thick rings
1 avocado, cut into 1/2-in. cubes
1 c. cooked quinoa

Combine everything in a bowl.  Top with shrimp and dressing before serving (recipes below).

Seasoned Shrimp
1/2 tsp. of the following: salt, pepper, paprika/pimenton, cayenne pepper, and garlic
1/4. lb. of peeled shrimp

Combine in a small bowl.  Sautee in a pan over medium heat until opaque throughout.

Lime Dressing
1/4 c. fresh lime juice (from about 2 limes)
1/2 c. olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Shake in a mason jar.  Add desired amount to salad.

Lemon-Herb Chicken (and Salad)

I am very lucky that this man of mine loves (loves) salads.  On any given day, I could throw some lettuce on a plate, add some oil and vinegar, and maybe a hunk of baguette, and he is a happy camper.  Most times, though, I try to get a little fancier than just lettuce and bread (though, it's definitely not difficult to improve on such meager offerings).  

This Lemon-Herb rub is from Everyday Food's Great Food Fast, and is lovely and light, with a little bite of acidity from the lemon, and earthiness from the bay leaves.  For this particular salad, I also roasted up some potatoes (fun little purple ones that I found!), and green beans, then made the salad dressing by deglazing the pan after I cooked the chicken.  I'll get to all that.

If you want to make this exact salad, preheat your oven to 350, and place potatoes and green beans on a rimmed baking sheet.  Drizzle with olive oil, and season with salt and pepper; place in the oven.  Cook these while you do the rest of the stuff for the salad.

To make the lemon-herb rub, you'll need 1 tbsp. tarragon, 1 tbsp. grated lemon zest, 4 crumbled bay leaves, 3 minced cloves of garlic, 1.5 tsp. coarse salt, ground pepper to taste, and 3 tsp. olive oil.  Mix it all up!

Rub the mixture onto some chicken breasts, then let them sit for a couple minutes to soak in all the juicy goodness.  

While the chicken breasts are sitting, heat some olive oil (or coconut oil, if you prefer) in a skillet over medium-high heat.  You'll want the pan good and hot before you add the chicken, so that it gets lovely and brown.  Cook the chicken for a couple minutes on each side, to get that brown goodness, then lower the temperature and cover the pan to continue cooking.  

While the chicken finishes up cooking, cut up your lettuce.  Remove the chicken from the pan, and get excited about all that good fond left at the bottom of the pan. (Bet you didn't know that the little brown bits of food left in the pan after cooking were called "fond".  This is a very educational post.)  Remove the pan from heat.  I added a bit of extra olive oil, some vinegar, lemon juice, and a smidge of Dijon mustard to the pan and swirled it all around.  Let that just sit.  

Slice up the chicken, remove the roasted veggies from the oven, and pile it all up on the lettuce.  Add the dressing from the pan, and you are all set!  

Now, the Lemon-Herb Rub can be used for a lot of other meats, too; Everyday Food recommends "leaner foods such as turkey...and flaky white fish (such as halibut, cod, or snapper)".  Let me know if you try it/have tried it on something else--I would love to hear about it!

Sushi Roll Edamame Salad

Are you suffering from too much butter and sugar?  Do you feel as though you're constantly coming down from a nasty caffeine buzz?  Maybe you're just burnt out on summer hamburgers.

This is the meal for you.  Shutterbean's Sushi Edamame Salad will cure what ails you.  It's jam-packed with greens: romaine, avocados, scallions, even kale!  There's a delicious green miso vinaigrette, full of fresh ginger and agave!

You can even serve it two ways: above (the regular ol' Abbi way) or...

...the Great Wall of Avocado, John Paul way.  We made it for dinner last night and it was a smash hit.  I topped it off with a bit of sriracha for some heat.  

We'll be fighting for the leftovers today.  I don't know if I can take the man who built such a foodie-architectural beauty, but this salad is worth it.

Watermelon, Cucumber and Arugula Salad

 A couple weeks ago, I went out to lunch with the two other people in my office to a pizza place.  As someone who doesn't eat a ton of cheese, this wasn't really super appealing to me, but I figured there would be something appetizing on the menu of an Italian cafe.  This salad screamed at me to order it, and it was absolutely perfect for a hot May day: sweet watermelon; crisp, cool cucumber; bitter, earthy arugula; and a light, tangy lemon vinaigrette to tie it all together.

I recreated it for a dinner at home last week, and it was absolutely wonderful and light.  JP and I paired the salad with a Spanish pan con tomate and a cool glass of white wine.  Cheers to finding a unique new summer dish!

Watermelon, Cucumber and Arugula Salad

4 c. arugula, washed and rinsed

3 c. cubed seedless watermelon

1/2 cucumber, peeled into thin ribbons 

Lemon vinaigrette, recipe below

Combine first 3 ingredients in a medium-sized bowl, and top with vinaigrette. 

Easy, Light Lemon Vinaigrette

3 Tbsp. good quality olive oil

juice from 1 large lemon

Salt and pepper to taste

Combine ingredients in a small jar, shake and pour over salad.

This is what I look like when prepping a watermelon for this dish.  Reppin' Flagler College!

Asparagus, Ramps and Mushroom Salad

JP and I spent about an hour yesterday browsing the produce available at the DuPont Farmer's Market, arguably the best in the city (yes, yes, Eastern Market is good, too, but I love the smaller scale of DuPont's).  There are greens all over the place in April, so we picked up some local asparagus, mushrooms, spring mix and ramps. 
Have you ever cooked with ramps?  This was my first time, but you can rest assured that it won't be my last.  A member of the onion family, they have the appearance of scallions with more bulbous roots and more greens, which can be kept attached to the root and eaten.  They're quite flavorful and pungent, so a few will go a long way. 
After doing some research on them, it was decided that we would just saute our veggies, place them on a bed of spring mix, toss with a simple lemon vinaigrette and add a few capers.  I did a rough chop on the asparagus and mushrooms, then separated the ramps from their greens, and heat everything individually on a hot pan with olive oil. 
This is the perfect spring meal: easy, local, satisfying.  Check your farmer's market to see what's available in your area, and make your own version!

Asparagus, Ramps and Mushroom Salad
1 pint mushrooms, cleaned and roughly chopped
1 bundle asparagus, tough stalks removed if necessary and chopped into 2-3 in. segments
about 10 ramps, cleaned and greens separated
1/2 bag of spring mix
olive oil, for saute and dressing
salt and pepper
juice of 1 lemon
1 tsp. capers

1. Heat olive oil over medium-high heat, and cook mushrooms until browned and soft.  Remove from pan.
2. Add asparagus to pan and blister.  Remove from pan.
3. Blister ramp bulbs, and remove from pan.  Quickly heat ramp greens until soft, about 1 min.
Steps 1-3 should take about 7 minutes total.
4. Add a splash of olive oil, lemon, capers, salt and pepper to a jar, cover and shake until combined.  Toss with spring mix.
5. Arrange heated vegetables over lettuce, serve in 2 bowls, and eat!

Sushi Bowl

After a week of indulging in all-inclusive drinks and food (yummy pina coladas and tons of tortilla chips with salsa, anyone?), it was time to reset the ol' taste buds last week.  I've been eying this recipe from Super Natural Cooking for several months, and finally had an excuse to really get my vegan-ness together.

The dressing of the rice is the real star of this recipe: citrusy with some raw sugar added for sweetness.  Honestly, I wanted to pour this on everything!

It's super-customizable for the seasons (add blanched asparagus in the spring, zucchini in the midst of summer, green beans in early fall) and meat-lovers (add chicken, pork, scrambled eggs, whatever floats your boat).  You'll love it!

Steak and Potatoes Salad

Yesterday I mentioned that Haley made a supertasty salad during my weekend visit.  She got the recipe from Real Simple, and it was perfect for summer!  If you have a grill (lucky!), try grilling the steak outside instead of using a skillet; I'm sure it can only add to the deliciousness.
This salad has something for both the carnivore (um, steak?  Bacon?), as well as some veggies, although I would add grape tomatoes to recipe.  It's really, really tasty; even more so when your cute-as-a-button sister makes it while you get to enjoy a drink a watch!

Ceasar Salad

     My eyes were opened to the intricacies of a good Caesar salad by our mom's best friend, Sari.  Rather than just tossing lettuce into a bowl and pouring dressing over it, she showed me how to make a paste of garlic cloves and anchovies and smear it around the bowl before adding the lettuce so that each bite of salad would have that same bite of garlic and salt of anchovy.  The salad dressing is from Martha Stewart's Good Food Fast (a book so popular in our family, it is commonly known as "the bible").  The recipe suggests adding anchovies to the dressing, but I omitted them because they're used in the actual salad.  The way you interpret this recipe is really up to you: if you like garlic, add more garlic, if you like anchovies, add more anchovies.  One thing I beg of you, however, is to use fresh-ground black pepper; there really is no substitute for the subtle heat of coarse ground pepper and using pre-ground pepper just does not do justice to this spice. 
     I made this particular salad for my weekly dinner at Aunt Nesi's.  I didn't add as many anchovies as I would have liked (I have a strange fondness for canned, cured fish), but the salad ended up being a perfect compliment to the hot wings that Nesi made for dinner, a way to cool down our mouths after eating copious amounts of spicy deliciousness.  One tip for this salad is to microwave the lemons before slicing and juicing them; they will yield a lot more juice. 

Materials:
     For Salad:
Romaine Lettuce
Garlic Cloves
Anchovies (I prefer flat fillets packed in olive oil, but rolled fillets with capers are equally delicious)
Parmesan Cheese (to garnish)
Black Pepper
     For Dressing:
Lemon Juice
Low-fat Mayonnaise
Garlic
Grated Parmesan Cheese
Black Pepper

To prepare dressing, combine equal parts lemon juice, mayonnaise, and Parmesan cheese in a blender.  Add one garlic clove.  Blend until smooth.  Add black pepper to taste. 

To prepare salad, smash 3 anchovies and 2 large garlic cloves into a paste in the bottom of a salad bowl using any flat-bottomed glass.  Tear a piece of lettuce and use it to smear the paste all around the bottom and sides of the bowl.  Leave that piece of lettuce in the bowl, and cut and add the remaining lettuce.  Squeeze the juice of one half of a lemon over the lettuce. Mix the salad to more evenly distribute the anchovy-garlic paste, garnish with Parmesan cheese and black pepper.  Enjoy!

Arugula Salad with Beets

I love salads. Veggies are my favorite food group (well, some of the time, anyway), and I'm a sucker for a well-constructed bowl of greens. I get cravings for my mom's chef salad, Katie Lee Joel's pesto pasta salad, and now Hook's arugula salad with beets. For no particular reason, beets were not part of my culinary vocabulary until last October, when I ate at Hook for my man's birthday and ordered said Hook salad on a whim.

Completely wonderful! Beets have a perfect natural sweetness that contrasts nicely with the subtle spiciness of arugula, and the whole thing is topped off with crumbled goat cheese and a sprinkling of nuts. The flavors are great for any season; just change up the dressing if you get bored with it. I've made this recipe several times, making little adjustments each time (adding cucumber instead of avocado, walnuts instead of almonds), and it just gets better and better!

Don't be afraid to add an ingredient or two to the salad, as long as it doesn't overwhelm the beets. Trust me, they're the standout of this salad.

Salad Recipe (these measurements are approximate, rather than exact):
2 cups arugula
3 beets, sliced*
2 oz. goat cheese
1/4 cup almonds, chopped
1/2 avocado, pitted and diced

Place arugula and beets into bowl. Crumble goat cheese over, topping with almonds and avocado. Toss with dressing (recipe following). Enjoy with a slice of challah, or some other delicious thick-sliced bread, if you've got it lying around.

Honey-Beet Juice Vinaigrette
1/4 cup olive oil
2 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
Leftover beet juice (see note)
1 Tbsp. honey
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine ingredients in a clean jar, cover with lid, and shake vigorously for 30 seconds. Voila! Top salad with desired amount, and save the rest (if any) for another salad, or sandwich.

*I get beets already cooked and peeled vacuum-sealed with some of their juices. Don't toss the juice! It's a great addition to the dressing, if only for the gorgeous pink color.