fire escape salad
21 May 2010 2 Comments
in beans & lentils, greens, recipes, vegan, vegetarian Tags: Brooklyn, catnip, container gardening, cooking, gardens, herbs, home cooking, italian cooking, onion, rosemary, sage, salad, sustainability, thyme
come as you are!
the trouble with writing about salad is that making salad is not really cooking but assembling. Yet, these are essential ensembles. Consider this your salad reminder— salads make a fine meal from a cool kitchen. With global weirding subjecting us at random from this day forth to the heat formally relegated to the official months of summer, the oven’s days are numbered. Even off the shaded garbage courtyard, this Brooklyn apartment kitchen can get hotter than crêpes suzette come summer. Maybe the possibilities of salad make hot weather an ideal time for wooers-not-cookers to court; salad can be high on haute and low on technique. What matters most is the freshness of the goods, and the whole rainbow of plantdom is pretty much a candidate. It goes without saying that salad is really good for you.
this salad thrills because it is composed mostly of bounty off our fire escape, where we’re nurturing a container garden of lettuce and herbs, plus catnip for the miraculous flying cat, the K. Pidds.
the k. pidds
in scavenged tubs, two kinds of lettuce are putting out sails of green and red leaves. After harvesting greens the size of my hand, the still unfurling centers promise more salad to come. I hope to add Tom Thumb and Little Gem. If we add rocket, soon we’ll have mesclun.
authorities claim the key to a gorgeous salad is well-rinsed and gently, thoroughly dried greens. Simple oil and vinegar dressing clings to dry leaf sides. In Unplugged Kitchen, Viana la Place not only feels “a keen excitement” when she sits down to eat a dish of beautiful green leaves, she writes: “Harvesting lettuce leaves in the garden right before supper creates a romantic vision, but it also allows us to derive the full benefits from each ruffled, fragrant leaf.”
a heartfelt Italian cook, Viana delivers 25 recipes for lovely salads, including beloved veggies: purslane, artichokes, beets, and old fashioned potato and nasturium salad. As I nod to her here, she gleefully shares “salade fatigue” by 1960s fashion impresario Simonetta, an Italian in Paris and a Snob in the Kitchen:
many of Simonetta’s salads, including this one, call for the salad to “season” for an hour before serving. For Simonetta, a salad must be fatigué, “tired,” to be good; it must be “mixed, beaten, and drunk with its dressing.”
current food fashions have veered away from greens besotted with dressing but beaten and drunk have a certain camp appeal. She recommends whacking towel wrapped greens against the counter to tenderize them, also a satisfying way to call forth the essential oils in herbs going whole leaf into salad.
fire escape salad
our herb garden includes spicy or Greek basil, a diminutive cousin of the towering Italian type classically paired with fresh sliced tomatoes and creamy mozzarella in mid-summer. Also tiny, forest green peppermint. Lime basil, with slender, petal-thin leaves. Sage that has since been menaced by the weather and lost its leaves but seems to be reviving. Creeping thyme, lots of it, my favorite.
rosemary too, which is now only three branches strong but with care will become a bush and burst forth with fragrant purple blossoms. Those will go in the salad too. Rosemary needles, with the resiny toughness of an evergreen (though it’s a member of the mint family), are better cooked, even for salad. Bringing me off the fire escape and into the pantry for staples that made this salad a meal.
cannellini beans cooked with one healthy branch of our little shrub and a bit of salt and fresh ground pepper. When boiled tender, drain the beans in a colander and toss with a pour of olive oil, salt, fresh pepper and handfuls of fresh herbs. While the beans cook, slice a red onion very fine and soak the shreds in ice water for at least 10 minutes to take the bite out. Marinade in balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper for as long as you like.
in your biggest, best salad bowl, gently combine the beans and onions with your greens, including that succulent lettuce and fresh herbs. Just lift the onions out of their marinade with a fork. Despite Simonetta’s preferences, the vinegar soaked onions and oiled beans will carry plenty of dressing into the salad. Croutons are nice, and grated parmesan. Serve with crusty white bread toasted and sliced, along with a plate of very fine olive oil with a pool of honey in its center, sprinkle with sea salt and a crank of fresh pepper. Trust me.
kohlrabi salad with purslane and mysterious mini-greens
18 Jun 2007 Leave a Comment
in greens, kohlrabi, recipes, vegan Tags: olive oil, salad
the kohlrabi plant has its own special way of being a vegetable
The Kitchen Gardener’s Companion, Pat Katz’s A-Z encyclopedia for using the food that you grow, 2000
oh, pat, it’s true. kohlrabies look like alien vegetables or vehicles – door knob sized bulbs of waxy celery green or purple like shredded purple coleslaw cabbage. Since hardly any one eats it, kohlrabi gets compared to everything: cabbage, turnip, cauliflower. It is like the asian pear of veggies. Impossible to describe; go find them.
5 small purple kohlrabis, broken off from their stalks and leaves. Pare away any nubbins or hard spots but no need to go so far as peeling. Cut them into cubes. Sauté them in a bit of olive oil and the juice of half a lemon over medium heat for about 10 minutes. Let them sit in the hot pot until your greens are ready.
pick over 5 generous handful of greens. This week I got purslane, some mild form of mustard with tiny, ruffled leaves, and a mysterious micro-plant with a transluscent stem and two bitty leaves, like clover. I think any mix of mild fresh summer greens would be good, but the purslane’s nice because it is so juicy and queer.
in a big bowl, toss the greens with the hot kohlrabi and dressing. For the dressing, shake together in a jar:
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
¼ cup of olive oil
½ tsp sea salt
½ tsp black pepper
¼ cup minced, fresh cilantro
It is surprising that kohlrabies are not better known, since they are easy to grow and store, as well as being easy to enjoy in many different ways. Their name is German, taken from the Italian caroli rape, cabbage turnip.
The Kitchen Gardener’s Companion, Pat Katz’s A-Z encyclopedia for using the food that you grow, 2000
black radish and spinach salad
10 Jan 2007 1 Comment
in greens, recipes Tags: black radish, olive oil, salad
- black radish (one, maybe two if you are spicy; they’re beautiful, kinda witchy)
- spinach (one bunch)
- pear (bosc pears are particularly nice, and if it is earlier in fall, apples)
- lemon
- garlic
- fresh sage
- dijon mustard
- olive oil
- balsamic
- a big salad bowl
for dressing
Roast one head of garlic. Mince two cloves of garlic and one tablespoon of fresh sage. whisk together 1 teaspoon dijon mustard, 4 bulbs of roasted garlic, minced raw garlic, sage with about ½ cup olive oil and ¼ cup of balsamic.
for salad
Cut the pear in half, then in quarters and slice off the remainder of the core. Cut into thin slices (leave peeled). Squeeze half a lemon over the pear.
Peel the radish. Then shave patches of radish into the salad bowl. A veggie peeler or paring knife will work as a tool.
Rinse the sand off the spinach. (If you do not have sand and grit in your spinach, then it is from a bag or some other such garbage. While I utterly appreciate the feeling of liberation at not having to clean or cut your own veggies, it is just not worth the risk of E. coli (Escherichia coli) for your self and the destruction of the environment for everyone else.) Use icy cold water so the greens stay crisp and gently but thoroughly pat dry. I lay out salad greens on a clean kitchen towel or paper towels or some combination of absorbent materials and lightly roll it all up like a sleeping bag.
Rip spinach into slightly larger than bite sized pieces.
Toss everything with the dressing in the salad bowl. I use my hands.
