Fearless Kitchen

Recipe: Turnip and Potato Salad

Recipe Source: Power Foods.  Clarkson Potter Publishers, New York, 2010 p. 282

Well, I've gone and done it again.  For those of you who haven't been reading this blog for the past 4 years, I've developed something of an obsessive-compulsive disorder around vegetables.  I'm obsessed with having them on the table.  I can't be comfortable unless there are at least three dishes involving vegetables in some way.  In the case of this past Thanksgiving that compulsion led me to have more dishes on the table than there were diners in attendance.  This is before my friend added the delicious side dishes she brought with her.  (Mmmm.... chard.  And the absolute best bread pudding I've ever had.)  I only feel a little bad about that, though.  There were plenty of vegetables, everyone had something they could eat whatever their dietary restrictions and there were enough leftovers to throw another little dinner party the next night.

This was one recipe I made.  It is vegan.  It was easy enough to make ahead of time and was doubly convenient in that it did not require refrigeration.  I made some changes.  Unfortunately my daughter has absconded with my notes about those changes, so you're going to have to rely on my memory.  I used a Macomber turnip instead of a rutabaga because that's what I could get my hands on.  (Strange; I rarely have problems finding rutabaga in the colder months.)  I didn't use Dijon mustard.  I used a stoneground horseradish mustard instead.  I wanted to give this dish a little bit more kick than the original.  I omitted the oil to limit the fat, which pleased most of my guests, and I made up the volume with mustard.  I increased the quantity of celery as well, because celery is super healthy.

The results were decent.  The vegetables were steamed, so they retained most of their nutritional value.  They were not however overcooked, and may have even been a little underdone as they retained a great deal of their crunch.  This would make a great side dish for a traditional barbecue or for any kind of picnic you might experience over the spring.

Turnip and Potato Salad (serves 8; approx. $0.66/serving)

1 Macomber turnip, peeled and cut into 2" pieces

1 pound red fingerling potatoes, cut into pieces more or less the same size as the turnip.  Mostly this will be halved or maybe quartered.

2 tablespoons champagne vinegar

3 tablespoons stoneground horseradish mustard

Black pepper to taste

5 celery stalks, chopped

Equipment:

• Basket steamer and saucepan - a two-tiered basket steamer worked very well for me here
• Small bowl
• Whisk

1. Fill the saucepan with water and bring to a boil.
2. Put the turnip pieces in one basket of the two-tiered steamer.  Place on top of the saucepan, cover and steam 5 minutes.
3. Put the potato pieces into the second basket.  Remove the basket lid.  Place the second basket on top of the first.  Cover and continue to steam 15 minutes.
4. Transfer the steamed vegetables to your serving vessel.
5. Combine the vinegar, mustard and pepper in the small bowl.  Whisk to emulsify.
6. Pour the dressing over the steamed vegetables.  Toss well.
7. Add the chopped celery to the serving vessel and toss to combine.
8. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Recipe: Pomegranate and Bucheron Salad

I love pomegranates.  I never tried one until I got to college.  I'd heard of them, of course, but only in myths.  Now they're an unmitigated favorite.  Maybe it's the mess that they make - mess-making is a real talent of mine.  Maybe it's the delightful flavor, which can't be compared to anything else in the world.  Maybe it's the beauty of the arils, jewel-like against any background.  Whatever.  Yes, pomegranates are very healthy.  They've been described as a superfood.  Frankly, I get frustrated when I see them marketed as a "health food," because I feel they're being short-changed.  Pomegranates are a delicious seasonal special treat that happens to be frighteningly good for you.

Right.  So on to this salad.  My notes say that there are three ingredients here: pomegranate, bucheron and angelica.  I'd found a somewhat different pomegranate recipe in one of Najmieh Batmanglij's books but I completely forgot to do anything like, you know, follow it or even refer to it.  I just threw the arils and the cheese into a bowl.  Then I opened the book and saw that her recipe called for angelica powder.  Ordinarily I would just omit that, since angelica powder is hard to find.  This time, though, I'd just found a new Mediterranean market earlier that week.  They had angelica.  Since they had it, I used it and I'm glad I did.  It gave the salad a little bit of a more rounded flavor.  If you can't find angelica just leave it out, there isn't an equivalent spice.  If you can't find bucheron - I only had it because I picked it up for an event and then never ate it - use feta.  The flavor and texture will be a little different but it will still work very well with pomegranate.

Pomegranate and Bucheron Salad (serves 8; approx. $1.33/serving)

2 pomegranates

1 round of Bucheron, crumbled

1 tablespoon angelica powder

Equipment:

• Large mixing bowl, preferably one that won't stain

1. Slice your pomegranates in half lengthwise and put them in the mixing bowl.  Fill the mixing bowl with water.
2. Use your hands to remove the arils from the peel and membranes.  The peel and membranes float; the arils sink.  When you've finished separating them, skim off anything that floats.
3. Drain the bowl.  Transfer the arils to a serving bowl.
4. Crumble the bucheron into the pomegranate.
5. Sprinkle the angelica over the top and toss very well to coat.
6. Serve.

Recipe: Root Vegetable and Apple Salad

Recipe Source: Foster, Sara.  "Simply Thanksgiving."  Better Homes and Gardens November 2011, pp. 133 - 137 and 161.

I know I've posted about this before, but maybe you haven't been reading this site for long.  (It's okay.  You're here now.)  I have really developed an obsessive disorder about vegetables.  I absolutely, positively have to have vegetables on the table, and lots of them.  Sometimes my husband feels that my quest for more vegetables leads me to significantly exceed the amount of food necessary for a given meal or gathering, but I really cannot help myself.  I just have to have them and if they are not present on the table at dinner time I get twitchy.  I can't sit.  I can't eat.  I fret.  I fuss.  So he's mostly stopped complaining about the quantity of food I sometimes find myself serving.

These vegetables came from our final farm share pickups.  Root vegetables store well and tend to last a good long time, but they were taking up a lot of space in the refrigerator.  They're also not favorite vegetables of mine, being too sweet for my tastes.  I decided to take the opportunity one recent Sunday to rid myself of the remaining carrots in my refrigerator.  This recipe, which I came across in Better Homes and Gardens, seemed like a very good use for them.  I made a few changes, although they seem kind of minor now that I'm looking at it critically.  I didn't have Granny Smith apples.  I don't know what kind of apples I had.  The trees weren't labeled, but they're great cooking apples and I figured their tartness would kind of offset the sweetness of the carrots and beets.  I omitted the parsley (because I don't care for it) and replaced it with sage (which I love, and which we were using in several other recipes that day.)  I omitted the zests, I used white wine vinegar instead of sherry, and I omitted the oil to please my husband.  I also added some lemon juice to kind of round out the flavors, since I was omitting the zests.

This made an absolutely obscene amount of food.  People ate it.  They ate lots of it.  There was still more left over than I would generally prefer.  Oh well.  I was able to offload some of the leftovers on guests, and at least those stupid carrots are gone.

Root Vegetable and Apple Salad (serves 12; approx. $0.54/serving)

10 carrots, peeled

6 beets, peeled

1 turnip, peeled

4 apples, peeled

1 generous handful fresh sage leaves, finely chopped

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

4 tablespoons lemon juice

Equipment:

• Use a clear-sided serving bowl for this dish if at all possible.
• You will need some way of grating the vegetables.  I used my food processor with the grater attachment.  You can use a box grater if need be, but don't bleed into the food, that makes it no longer vegan (or sanitary.)

1. Grate the vegetables.  I did this in descending color order, starting with the white vegetables (apples and turnip), then moving to the carrots and finally grating the dark beets.  This kept the other colors from staining the white vegetables.  The only reason to do this is presentation value.  It will not affect the final product if your apples are slightly tinged red from beets.  They'll get there anyway.
2. Layer half the carrots on the bottom of the serving bowl.  Top with half the beets.  Add the half the apples, then all of the turnips.  Follow with the remaining apples, then the beets, then the carrots.
3. Drizzle with the vinegar and the lemon juice.
4. Sprinkle with the chopped sage and serve.

Recipe: Pasta with Mushrooms and Peas

Recipe Source: Klein, Donna.  Vegan Italiano.  The Penguin Group, New York, 2006 pp. 70 - 1.

Halloween is a very important holiday in the Fearless household.  My husband and I met on Halloween.  We first got together on Halloween (several years later.)  My husband used to throw this huge Halloween party every year, with elaborate decorations and crowds that would probably be illegal at any other time of year.  We haven't been hosting the halloween parties the past few years, though.  As we've gotten older we've found that between competing parties and our friends' lifestyle changes it just isn't feasible anymore.  It's not as though we're not celebrating, though.  We're just letting other people host!

This year we went to a party in Allston hosted by some good friends of ours.  I wanted to make sure that we both had something in our stomachs before we left the house.  Don't get me wrong - the hosts are fantastic cooks and it's always a delight to eat their cooking, but Halloween is more of a snacky-food holiday than a proper-dinner holiday.  I wanted to make sure that we got at least some actual nutrition before we hit the eyeball cupcakes and gummy fingers.  This is also a party at which it is reasonable to expect that drinking will occur, and drinking on an empty stomach is just stupid.

So I made this dish.  I made a few changes to the original because I wouldn't be me if I didn't.  I added some garlic because garlic is necessary for survival.  I used a lot more of the vegetables - mushrooms and peas - and I added some dried lobster mushrooms because they looked pretty in the store.  (Don't judge.  They were good.)  I omitted the parsley and I used some spices that weren't really called for in the original and wouldn't be found in most Italian cooking, vegan or otherwise.  I used whole wheat pasta as well.

I'd say that this dish was a success.  We both loved it, but we found we couldn't eat as much of it as we'd have liked.  That was fine; I was able to save it and serve it the next day as a pasta salad for our Sunday open house.

Pasta with Mushrooms and Peas (serves 12; approx. $1.26/serving)

2 tablespoons olive oil

6 garlic cloves, sliced

1 onion, diced

10 ounces cremini mushrooms, thinly sliced

3 1/2 ounces shiitake mushrooms, thinly sliced

1 package dried lobster mushrooms, rehydrated and sliced

14 ounces canned diced tomatoes with their juices

1 pound frozen green peas

Kosher salt to taste

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon very hot chili powder

1/4 teaspoon ground coriander

1 box whole wheat rotini, cooked according to package instructions and drained

Equipment:

• Large saute pan

1. Heat the oil in the saute pan.
2. Add the onion and garlic.  Saute until softened.
3. Add the mushrooms.  Cook until slightly softened.
4. Add the tomatoes, peas, salt and spices.  Bring to a simmer.
5. Simmer until the sauce thickens.
6. Add the pasta.  Toss well.
7. Serve.

Recipe: Radishes with Pepper and Brine

Recipe Source: Apicius.  Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome.  Joseph Dommer Vehling, ed. and trans.  Dover Publications, New York, 1977 p. 84

I'm looking at this recipe, and I'm looking at the original recipe.  The recipe has precisely four ingredients.  The original recipe takes up two lines, and even that's kind of a stretch.  What can I do to make something so simple, so elemental, interesting enough to be worth your attention?  Well, it was worthy of my attention, but I'm weird like that.  Maybe you're weird like that too.

Or maybe I can talk about why I made this dish.  I made it by accident.  I had initially intended to make a turnip recipe on the same page, but when I got down to work Sunday morning I got confused.  I had quite a few radishes on hand from our farm share, and I hadn't had nearly enough coffee, and the child and dog were distracting me, so I got down to slicing and the next thing I knew this dish was finished.  That was when I realized I'd made a mistake.  I'd meant to serve turnips.  Oh well, I thought, easy enough to fix.  Everyone can use more vegetables in their life, after all, and it got the radishes out of my refrigerator.

And that's kind of the thing.  When we modern folks think about Imperial Rome, we think of decadence, of opulence, of waste.  We think of aristocrats gorging themselves on food and drink, then deliberately inducing vomiting so they could repeat the process.  That certainly happened on occasion, but I don't believe that it was as commonplace as we think.  Those over-the-top banquets have survived in print and legend, I think, specifically because they were so extraordinary.  Apicius is the author of the most complete cookbook we have from that era.  There are certainly opulent recipes in Apicius, but there are plenty of recipes in there that are beautiful in their simplicity.  I frequently turn to Apicius for vegetable recipes, for example, that really let the vegetables themselves shine through.

This is one such dish.  It has four ingredients.  Four.  There are radishes, salt, vinegar and pepper.  You do not have to heat up your kitchen.  You can make this ahead of time by several hours.  You could bring it to a potluck or a picnic.  You could bring it to work as a healthy snack.  You can serve it as part of an elaborate banquet or as a side dish to a simple dinner, just as the ancient Romans did.

Radishes with Pepper and Brine (serves 8; approx. cost per serving not available)

2 bunches radishes, very well cleaned

1/2 cup red wine vinegar

4 tablespoons kosher salt

2 tablespoons pepper

Equipment:

• You'll need a very sharp knife to slice the radishes thinly, but a food processor with the slicer attachment will work just as well if you're not comfortable with your knife skills.

1. Slice the radishes as thin as you possibly can.  Transfer them to the serving dish.
2. Combine the salt with the vinegar and mix well.  Try to dissolve as much of the salt as you can.
3. Pour the brine over the radishes.
4. Sprinkle with pepper.  Mix well.
5. Serve.

Recipe: Rutabaga Salad

Recipe Source: Jenkins, Sara and Mindy Fox.  Olives & Oranges.  Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 2008 p. 27

If you want to play a slightly funny joke on your dinner guests make this easy salad.

When I was first putting this salad together my husband came into the room.  "What's all that cheese for?" he asked.  I told him it wasn't cheese, it was rutabaga.  He said, "Is 'rutabaga' Farsi for cheese?"  I said, "No, it's a giant (expletive) turnip."  He said, "Oh," sampled some and went on about his day.  The recipe directed that the dish sit out at room temperature and I duly assembled it and sat it out on the table, well out of reach of dogs and cats and marauding small children.  A friend of ours walked in.  He looked at the dish.  He looked at me.  He looked at the dish again.  He looked at me again.  I asked, "Can I help you find something?"  He said, "Shouldn't this cheese be in the fridge?"

Okay, it's not hugely funny, but sometimes I'll take what I can get.

I had a couple of rutabagas from our final farm share shipments sitting in the fridge.  I needed to do something with them.  Unfortunately for me, I was feeling incredibly uninspired and had to resort to my cookbook collection for inspiration.  I found it in this book, which I rarely use.  I'm glad I did, though.  This was incredibly easy to prepare with my food processor's help.  It was delicious and easily assembled ahead of time.

I made a few changes.  I increased the quantity mostly to use up the rutabagas.  I used lemon juice instead of lime because I had a bunch of lemons on hand that needed to stop occupying fridge space.  I increased the harissa because I frankly like the stuff.  I also added some herbs because I had them and because I thought they would round out the dish.

This simple salad was a real hit.  Try it sometime when you've got a lot of people to feed and less time to do it in.

Rutabaga Salad (serves 8; approx. $0.79/serving)

2 rutabaga, peeled and grated

2 tablespoons kosher salt

12 tablespoons lemon juice

5 tablespoons harissa

1 handful fresh thyme leaves

1 handful fresh oregano leaves, chopped

Equipment:

• I used a food processor to grate the rutabagas.  You can use a box grater if you need to  but try not to bleed into the food.
• Small bowl.
• Whisk

1. Combine your grated rutabaga and salt in your serving bowl, which should be roughly the size of Belgium.
2. Set aside a minimum of five minutes.
3. Combine the remaining ingredients in the small bowl and whisk to thoroughly combine.
4. Pour the dressing over the rutabaga and toss to coat.
5. Set aside up to six hours.
6. Serve.

Recipe: Green Salad with Very Simple Dressing

Salad dressing is one of those ingredients that many people purchase in the store.  I'm not a hundred percent sure why, although I've been known to do so myself on occasion.  I guess it's the convenience factor.  My mom never, to the best of my knowledge, bought salad dressing in the store.  She made it herself, and as far as I know she still does.  She doesn't even make it up separately.  She just throws the ingredients on top of the salad and tosses it, and it comes out splendid.  It just does.  My uncle Tommy used to come by just in the hopes that my mom was making a salad.  I've done it her way and it never comes out quite as well, although I've generally been satisfied with the results.

Salad dressing is also one of those things that people get into their heads has a lot of fat and calories.  Sometimes that's true.  Sometimes it isn't.  The important thing is that if people think there's a fatty dressing then they may not eat the salad, and that may be the only vegetable on the table the entire meal.  When we hosted the impromptu dinner party - the one with the pulled beef - I had a bunch of vegetables I wanted to use up.  There was some lettuce from the farm share, and a cucumber from the same source that was as big as my forearm, no joke.  My mom had given us two lovely salad tomatoes from a farmstand back home and I wanted to use them before they went bad.  The Spouse had hosted Sunday dinner without me that week and there was half a thing of feta left in the fridge.  I wanted to serve a salad, but I knew that one of our guests had been seeing a nutritionist.  Now, I'm not a big fan of nutritionists thanks to a particularly negative experience with one, and I don't know that he told her to avoid salad dressings, but I figured that it was better to be safe than sorry.  I decided to serve the salad like you see here - with the dressing in a separate bowl, in the middle.  Passed alongside would work just as well.

The salad is simple and I know I've posted salad dressing recipes before.  This time the emphasis is on this very simple dressing.  One of the guests also spooned it over some salt potatoes to great effect, so that's another possibility for this treat.

Green Salad with Simple Dressing (serves 4; approx. $1.35/serving)

1 head Boston lettuce, washed and torn

1 cucumber, chopped

2 large salad tomatoes, chopped

2 ounces (approx.) crumbled feta cheese

1/4 cup olive oil

1/2 cup red wine vinegar

7 garlic cloves

Kosher salt to taste

Equipment:

• Large bowl
• Mini food processor

1. Combine the vegetables and the cheese in the large bowl and toss well.
2. Transfer the contents of the bowl to your serving vessel and make a well in the middle.
3. Combine the garlic and salt in the food processor.  Process to a paste.
4. Add the oil and vinegar.  Process until emulsified.
5. Transfer the dressing to a smaller bowl.  Set it in the well in the middle of the salad bowl.
6. Serve.

Recipe: Apple and Celery Salad

About a thousand years ago I tried a Waldorf salad.  I don't remember the circumstances or who made it.  I remember having been very young.  I also remember the weather as having been distinctly chilly but not yet particularly snowy, which would put it sometime between October and early December depending on the year.  I'll say it was around Thanksgiving.  Maybe we made it in class or something.  Anyway, when I came home from my latest pilgrimage back to my native land (Syracuse), my husband decided that we needed to throw an impromptu dinner party.  Long story.  Anyway, I was desperate to think of things to supplement the pulled beef he made, and maybe it's the fact that it is now apple season in Syracuse but that youthful experience with Waldorf salad was stuck in my head.

A classic Waldorf salad involves apples, celery, mayonnaise and grapes as well as walnuts.  Now, I don't remember my youthful salad having had mayonnaise.  I hate mayonnaise and since my recollection is so very, very positive there could not have been mayonnaise in the original.  Maybe the cook used sour cream?  My intention was to use yogurt here but I ran out.  I decided to go with the sour cream instead.  Grapes were certainly not going to be used for such a purpose in this house - my 20-month-old daughter is obsessed with "beeps" and would never let them be put anywhere but directly into her mouth.  I planned to use walnuts, but the Spouse informed me that he hates walnuts.  I used some roasted, salted pistachios I had on hand instead, which meant that I didn't need to add any more salt to this dish.

The result was pretty darned good, if I do say so myself.  I liked the pistachios here, and I liked the apple.  The celery lent a pleasing crunch and the sour cream was much lighter on the palate than mayonnaise.  (At least, it was much lighter to my palate.  And that's the one that counts.)  Furthermore, one of our guests (who professes to detest vegetables and anything else that is not meat) took all the leftovers with him when they left, so I guess it was a hit with more than just me!

Apple and Celery Salad (serves 8; approx. $1.74/serving)

5 apples, chopped

1 bunch celery, chopped

1 bag roasted, salted pistachios

1 cup (approx.) sour cream

Equipment:

• I like to drop the apple pieces into a bowl of acidulated water - just a bowl of water with some lemon juice or whatever - as I cut them.  This helps to make sure that the pieces do not brown.  Since the browning does not really affect the taste of the apples - not for a few hours anyway - this piece of equipment is recommended but optional.

1. Combine the apples, celery and pistachios in your serving vessel of choice.  Toss to combine.
2. Add the sour cream.  Toss very well to ensure that the sour cream is evenly distributed.
3. Serve.

Recipe: Kousa and Feta Salad

I have to admit that I got the idea for this recipe from an issue of Martha Stewart Living, but it was just the idea. When the time came to make the recipe I couldn't actually find my copy of Martha Stewart Living, thanks to a combination of factors that you don't care about. I did, however, buy the kousa for exactly this purpose. Kousa are a summer squash, kind of like a zucchini but pale. Personally I prefer the flavor of kousa squash to that of zucchini, but since I've only ever seen kousa at farmers' markets and farmstands use zucchini if you can't find kousa.

One thing I'd like to note about this recipe is its simplicity. There are three ingredients and – here's the best part – none of them require cooking. I could go on a high-and-mighty tangent about how eating food raw retains more of its nutrients and allows you to eat it in its pure state and minimizes the added fat and blah blah blah but really, I don't believe in any of that. (I mean, really. "Minimizes added fat?" It's got 8 ounces of feta, for crying out loud!) The real advantage to not cooking this salad is that it doesn't heat up your kitchen. We had a pretty nasty heat wave this year. Things that didn't heat up the kitchen looked really good to me. You shouldn't even need to add salt to this if you've used a decent quality feta.

Kousa and Feta Salad (serves 12; approx. $1.00/serving)

5 kousa squash, diced

8 ounces feta cheese, crumbled

4 ounces white wine vinegar

Equipment:

• None

1. Put the kousa in the serving bowl.
2. Crumble the feta over the top of it.
3. Splash the vinegar into the bowl and toss to combine.
4. Serve immediately.

Recipe: Green Salad with Sake-Miso Dressing

This is another recipe from the weekend I boycotted grocery shopping. Some of the ingredients were from the farm share. Some were ingredients that I had lying around and needed to use up – you know, from previously abandoned recipes, that sort of thing. That's all kind of unimportant. The important thing about this recipe is the dressing.

The dressing came from another recipe, one I'll have to share with you another time. It involved stuffing cucumbers. I tasted the stuffing and I said, "Wow, this would make a great salad dressing." And so it did. I used real sake, not cooking sake like you'd find in the international section of the grocery store. I figured it was important to use something I wouldn't mind drinking myself, since it was a dominant flavor in the dish.

Green Salad with Sake-Miso Dressing (serves 12; approx. $0.99/serving)

1 bunch romaine lettuce, torn

5 tomatoes, chopped

1 bunch salad turnips, thinly sliced

3 scallions, thinly sliced

1 ½ ounces red miso

½ cup sake

1 ounce ginger paste

Equipment:

• Bowl
• Whisk

1. Assemble the lettuce, tomatoes, turnips and scallions in your serving vessel.
2. Combine the remaining ingredients in the bowl. Whisk to thoroughly combine.
3. Drizzle the dressing over the salad.
4. Serve.