Salads

Red Kuri squash salad bowl

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Since getting a CSA this year, I had the opportunity to try new things I have never had before. In a previous post, I made a pea shoot salad for the first time.
Two weeks ago we got a red Kuri squash in our CSA box from the Angelic Organics farm.  I got inspired by this recipe and modified it based on which ingredients I had on hand and also made it dairy free since it called for goat cheese. But first, here is a red Kuri squashIMG_4268I did not peel the squash. The skin is tender enough to eat when cooked and I am all for maximizing usage. The seeds can also be roasted and enjoyed as a snack much like pumpkin seeds.

I made the salad with the arugula that was in this week’s CSA box and  used a sweet vinaigrette to balance its spiciness. I like how the slightly sweet flavor of the squash marries with the sweet and spicy arugula.

I also added tomatoes since we have a lot of those right now.

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Red Kuri squash salad bowl
– 1 red kuri squash
– olive oil
– salt (optional)

Salad:
– 3 cups of arugula (can substitute with baby arugula or spinach)
– 1 can of cannellini beans
– 1 onion
– 2 garlic cloves or 1 big clove
– 1 big tomato or two medium tomatoes, sliced

Salad dressing
– 3 tablespoon olive oil
– 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
– juice of 1 lime
– 1 teaspoon mustard
– 1/2 tablespoon maple syrup
– salt
– pepper

Heat the oven at 385°F. Scrub the skin of the squash clean and pat dry. Cut it in half and scoop the seeds out. Cut each half of the squash in two. Brush the top of the slices with some olive oil. Salt and pepper as needed. Bake for 35-40 minutes until tender.

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Remove the beans from the can and rinse. Slice the onion thinly and chop the garlic. Heat some olive oil in a pan and first add the garlic to flavor the oil then add the onion and saute for a few minutes until tender. Add the beans and saute for another 5-10 minutes. Salt and pepper as needed.  Set aside to cool. img_4323

Mix the ingredients for the salad dressing in a small bowl

Rinse and dry the arugula. I chopped the leaves with scissors since they were quite big but if using baby arugula, just leave as is. Place the arugula in a big salad bowl, add the beans and salad dressing. Toss.

Scoop the salad onto the roasted squash. Enjoy!

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Pea shoots salad

~ Hanta ~ 1 Comment

This year, we signed up for a CSA with a local farm. For those who don’t know, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. You pre-pay for the crops before the season starts, and you receive a share of produce every so often, in our case, every week once the harvest begins. This is our first time signing up for a CSA, and we signed up with Angelic Organic farms. It is an excellent way to get fresh organic produce and helps to support the local farmers as well.
We received our first box last week, and it contained something I have never used, pea shoots. I did not even know they were edible. A lot of veggies greens, like radish and beets, are edible, but I had yet to have these.

IMG_3560I was intrigued and tasted a shoot. It was crunchy and tasted, not surprisingly, like snap peas.

From a quick search, it seemed they could be used as salad and married well with soy sauce and ginger. I added radishes, also from the farm share, as well as some store-bought cucumber and carrots.

So, this is my first shot at a pea shoots salad. I purposely did not give accurate quantities here, as you can add in as much of each ingredient as you have or as you like. Simple, yet delicious.

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Pea shoots salad

  • Pea shoots (I removed the big stems and kept the end shoots and all the leaves, enough to fill a large bowl
  • Radishes, finely sliced as needed
  • Cucumber, finely sliced
  • Finely sliced carrots

Salad Dressing:

  • 4 Tbsp of olive oil
  • 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar or rice vinegar
  • 1/2 Tbsp soy sauce (I use a low sodium one)
  • Salt
  • PepperIMG_3596

Pick the end stems out, including the first leaves after the curly ends as well as all the leaves from the large stems. Wash the shoots and leaves and spin to dry or towel dry. Mix with the radish and the cucumber in a big bowl.

Mix all the ingredients for the salad dressing. Salt and pepper as needed. Add the dressing to the salad and toss. Enjoy!

Variations:

  • Add 1 Garlic clove, finely sliced
  • Sprinkle Toasted sesame seeds

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Pasta salad with creamy pesto

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Summer meals are best enjoyed on the patio with friends and family…and salads make the best summer meals.
Pasta salads are always well appreciated in our household since our son absolutely loves pasta. He will have it at every meal, including breakfast, if he can have his way. I am happy to indulge him, so my way to compromise is to add plenty of vegetables with the pasta. So far, he will eat almost everything you give him as long you feed him, but you gotta let him pick the pasta himself. Letting him just feed himself will defy the purpose of the pasta salad as he will just eat the pasta and leave the rest untouched.

The choices of vegetables to add is based on what is on sale and in season, in addition to my “go-to” frozen veggie mix. It is a big bag of frozen mix I get from our local grocery store that has green beans, cubed carrots, peas, lima beans and corn. It never fails me and I practically add that sh*&^% in every dish.
Anyway, no matter what veggies you add for this dish though, cooked veggies will go better with the creamy pesto. I always cook the veggies quite soft as our son will not eat anything too crunchy but  a crunchier version can be made for less picky eaters.

Finally, the pesto! This has been one of my best find of this summer. I started to grow some things on our deck and I have two pots of basil and they grow so well we had to find ways to use the basil leaves, hence the pesto! The creamy pesto in this recipe is a lighter, tangier version of pesto and it totally rocks this pasta salad!

Pasta salad with creamy pesto

  • asparagus – 1 cup cooked and cut 1 inch longIMG_5327
  • spinach- 1/2 or 1 bunch depending how big
  • 2 medium zucchini
  • 1 cup of mixed frozen veggies : peas, carrots, green beans, lima beans, corn or  about 1/4 cup of each
  • 1/2 lb of pasta of your choice
  • salt

IMG_5323For the pesto (this makes a lot, feel free to cut  the amounts in half, but it also stores very well in the fridge)
– 1 avocado
– 1 or 2 cloves of garlic
– 1/4 cup of water
– Juice of 1 lemon (or 3tbsp)
– 2 cups of basil leaves
– 6 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil

Cut the zucchini in thin slices (1/4 inch thick). Saute the zucchini slices in a pan with a little bit of oil until it browns on the edges and it is soft. Add the spinach to the pan and saute with the zucchini until it is wilted. Transfer the zucchini and spinach to a large bowl.
Steam, boil  or saute the other vegetables to desired softness or crunchiness. Add in the bowl containing the zucchini and spinach, mix up with a spoon or hand mix. Sprinkle with a bit of salt to taste.

To make the pesto, mix all the ingredients but the salt in a blender or food processor. Blend until smooth and salt to taste.

Serve the salad and add a dollup of pesto on top. Taa-dahh!!Enjoy!!

 

 

 

Meatloaf with kale salad

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Coming up with recipes from scratch is an art. You have to know how to mix tastes and smells to create something that tastes great. Or you can be like my husband, who is what I would call  “a master of substitution”. He can take a recipe and substitute the ingredients (or all of them) to come up with a dish that can be drastically different from the original recipe but would still blow your taste buds away.

Compared to my husband, I consider myself only an amateur in terms of substitutions, but I also like to make variations of recipes depending on the ingredients that I have in hand, or depending on my mood ( for example if I need a picker upper, adding a healthy amount of chocolate chips to a cookie recipe always seems like a good idea). The beauty of variations is that you can basically have endless possibilities based on what you have available. The two recipes in this post here are “variations” of recipes , if I may say so.

The meat loaf  is a variation of a recipe my mom used to make…a very far stretched variation; because the recipe I started from was stuffed tomatoes. Okay, let’s say I made a variation of the stuffing and instead of stuffing it in tomatoes, I put it in a loaf pan and made it a meatloaf. My mom’s recipe used only ground beef but I like the mix with ground pork as it makes the results more moist. As for the other ingredients (mushrooms, pepper), I just had them so I  figured I might as well put them in. I think it would be fair to say that my mom would never recognize her dish in this recipe if she tasted it.

As for the salad, it was a recipe my friend Kate told me about… I mean, she told me about a recipe she learned from a raw food chef that I believe resembles this. It involved kale and lime, avocado and other things. Last night when I was thinking about what I would bring for lunch the next day, I thought this salad would be great with the meatloaf that I just made. At least I had the kale, but I did not have lime to begin with so I substituted that with lemon. And I decided against the avocado and substituted that with bell pepper and for good measure I added cherry tomatoes. Well, to be honest, I forgot what other ingredients Kate mentioned in the original recipe and I was not going to call her in the middle of the night to ask her about it. When I decided to post the recipe I remade the salad, but then I ran out of cherry tomatoes so I used roma tomatoes instead. And bam! I just basically made a variation of the variation. See? Endless possibilities!

 Meat loaf with kale salad

For the meat loaf
1 pound of ground beef
1 pound of ground pork
1 medium sized onion, finely diced
4 white button mushrooms, finely diced
1/4 of a bell pepper, finely diced
4 cloves of garlic, finely diced
1 tsp of 21 seasoning salute from Trader Joe’s (you can substitute for other herbs or spices of your choice)
1 tsp of salt
2 Tbsp of oil

IMG_5103 copyFor the salad
3 kale leaves medium size
1 roma tomato, cut in cubes
1 bell pepper, cut in cubes (or the rest of the one you used for the meatloaf will do)
The juice of half of a lemon
1 Tbsp of extra virgin olive oil

Heat oven to 415°F. Place the ingredients for the meatloaf in a mixing bowl using and mix thoroughly. I like to use a potato masher to mix them or you can also just use your hands. Place the meat mix in a loaf pan (or a meatloaf pan if you have one). Bake for 35-40min. IMG_5106 copy

Remove the kale leaves from the stems. Wash and dry them. Roughly cut them in pieces , not too small. Place in a bowl and add the lemon juice and the oil. Season with salt as needed. Toss the kale and make sure to rub the lemon-oil well into the leaves with your hands so there are well coated. Add the cut tomato and bell pepper. Toss to mix. It is best to prepare the salad in advance and let it macerate while the loaf is cooking. The lemon juice with macerate and soften the kale leaves so it is not so tough to eat.