Wednesday, May 16, 2012

My favorite spring salad


My favorite spring salad is very light- just delicate young lettuce leaves thinned from the garden with a simple dressing.

Lettuce is so easy to grow-just plant seeds more densely than the package directs-all the seeds can go into a 6 foot row. Keep the soil wet until the seeds sprout, then water every day or 2. Wait a month or so until the seedlings are crowded, and thin them by cutting or breaking the leaves near the base. You'll get enough for a salad for 2 every few days for a while.

As soon as you pick the lettuce, or bring it home from the store, wash it by immersing it in a large bowl of cold water. Let it drain and spin it in a lettuce spinner, or just put the greens into a pillow case and spin it in big circles, outside where the droplets coming out of the case won't bother anyone. Wrap the washed greens in a towel and store in a plastic bag in the fridge.

Here's the easy part. Using the best oil and vinegar make dressing the lettuce simple. Buy some La Tourangelle roasted walnut oil-you'll find it in quite a few supermarkets, especially yuppie ones. Store it in the fridge so that the super-healthy omega-3 fats in the walnut oil don't go bad from air and heat. Toss the lettuce with just enough oil to barely coat the leaves.

Here's the tricky part. I've recently fallen in love with a balsamic vinegar that isn't as easy to find as the roasted walnut oil. However, it's worth searching out, because with these 2 ingredients, you have the most amazing and healthy salad dressing.

Leonardi Aceto Balsamico di Modena IGP, with a gold foil cap: it comes in a square 8.45 oz bottle and is more like a syrup than a vinegar. The walnut oil is expensive, but this is outrageous. Buy it anyway- this lasts forever and is concentrated and valuable. My first bottle was given to me as a gift (thank you, thank you) and the second I bought at Bi-Rite Market in San Francisco on 18th St.
Toss the lettuce with a little vinegar and a little salt until it tastes right. Enjoy.

(This goes perfectly with coppa, a thinly sliced cured pork (a wonderful one comes from El Salchichero in Santa Cruz, CA) and a spinach-stuffed Afghan bread, if you are so lucky.)

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Back to my blog with cauliflower recipe- Yum.

I haven't posted anything since I closed my consulting business and started to work at Threshold Enterprises in October--just too busy. But this seems like a good place to write notes for myself (and anyone else who is interested) on food I cook that turns out well and that I want to remember and repeat.

So here is an addictive cauliflower dish I made tonight- from past experience I know that kids love this finger food.

I cut out and discarded the thick stem from a large white head of cauliflower, and broke and cut the rest into what I call flowerettes, anywhere from 1-3 inches long, and spread them in a 10x13" baking pan.

Next I crushed 2 large unpeeled cloves of garlic in my garlic press into a measuring cup, added 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, and mixed them up. If you don't have a garlic press that you can use on unpeeled cloves, get one- it is the greatest.

I spooned the oil mixture onto the cauliflower and mixed it up with my hands, then added a little more olive oil (whether you need extra or not will depend on the size of your cauliflower), mixed it up, sprinkled it generously with salt, and put it into a 400 degree oven.

Then every 10 minutes I stirred it until tender and browned a bit. If you have little pieces of cauliflower it may be done in 20 minutes. Bigger pieces that are crowded may take 40 minutes. The timing isn't crucial and it tastes great fresh out of the oven or a while later.