Sunday Cooking – Salads for Salad Month

Designating May as ‘salad month’ is a little odd if you’re trying to eat only locally-produced stuff. Not a lot of potential salad ingredients are coming out of gardens or are available in Maryland’s farm markets right now, thanks in part to the cool, damp spring we’ve been having. There are tons of terrific recipes for substantial salads you can make on Sunday and stuff into the frig to eat all week, send to school with the kids, take in your own lunch box, whatever. But the local part.  That’s a toughie.

What’s truly local right now is predominantly early greens. And maybe a few stored root vegetables and some winter squash.  Dried legumes. Spuds. Strawberries if it will stop raining long enough for them to ripen properly.  A good solid local food network is a key to a healthy populace, environment and economic ecology (to say nothing of national security), but it’s not simple. On either the production or the consumer side. I’m just saying.

Back to the salads. What makes a salad a salad?  Ultimately, it’s a dressing with a little bite in it – vinegar, lemon, lime, orange juice, beer, wine, mayo, which has a little citrus and/or vinegar, buttermilk, yogurt. But the salad itself can be a combination of a host of things. Usually raw vegetables and fruits, or a combination of raw and cooked. With the exception of already dressed tender greens, many keep for days.

For example, cole slaw made with shredded green cabbage, celery, onion,  and carrot keeps for a week in the frig. So does cole slaw made with chopped onion, sweet pepper and the shredded stems of broccoli that are left over after making something with the tops (like broccoli and cranberry salad below). So does grapefruit and shredded jicama, (which is like a delicious cross between a turnip and a crisp, juicy apple), dressed with a quick orange and poppy seed vinaigrette. You could add shredded raw beets or carrots for sweetness and a scallion or red onion for contrasting flavor.

Local mushrooms are available now, and I’ve been enjoying a simple salad with them and the lettuce out of my garden (pardon me while I preen a little). Sauté sliced mushrooms and sliced shallot quickly in a little olive oil. Put them, still hot, on top of the greens. Sprinkle toasted walnuts and crumbled feta or blue cheese on top, drizzle with balsamic vinegar and olive oil.  The lettuce is cold, the mushrooms and shallots are warm.  Ten minutes tops to prepare. Yum.

Many salads are best made and dressed just before you eat them. But you can prep ingredients, put them into containers in the frig, then can come home from work, fling a chop or burger into a pan, take some of this and some of that from things you’ve prepped onto some greens, add a little feta or goat cheese, dress the whole with balsamic vinegar and olive oil and hey presto you’ve got a combo side dish and salad. Add a chunk of bread slathered with some garlic and olive oil, and you’ve got a company-worthy supper even if you don’t have company. Soothes the shattered soul on grey days.

Using nuts, roasted root vegetables and other things makes a salad satisfying, nutritionally dense and healthy.  And you can create a surprising array of ready-made salad ingredients in an hour on Sunday afternoon.

For example:

In about an hour, you can roast beets, roast spiced butternut squash cubes, toast two or three kinds of nuts (which also get stored in containers in the frig to keep them from getting rancid), make French lentil salad, broccoli and cranberry salad, and black bean and corn salad. It cuts kitchen time if you get the oven things in first and let them roast while you’re doing the other stuff.

1. Roast beets by wrapping them in tin foil and sticking them in a 375F oven for anywhere from 35 minutes to an hour, depending on how big they are. Put them on a sided pan in case they drip.
2. Toast nuts (walnuts, pine nuts, almonds – pistachios are ready to use) by putting a single layer of nuts on a cookie sheet or pan and shoving them into the same oven for about 10-15 minutes. Take them out and cool them before storing.
3. Once the beets and nuts are in the oven, peel and cube a butternut squash, throw it into a bowl with some paprika, cayenne, salt, pepper, cumin, chili powder and garlic powder. Toss to coat the cubes with the spices, drizzle with olive oil, toss again, and spread them on a cookie sheet in the same 375F oven to roast at the same time as the beets. This will take about 25-30 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, on top of the stove, prep the French lentils. Bring about 3 cups of beef stock or beef bullion to the boil, add a up of French lentils, add a garlic clove, a half an onion, maybe some thyme and simmer about 20 minutes until al dente. When they are tender, drain the rest of the liquid, and while still warm, dress with salt, pepper, some wine vinegar and olive oil. Lime or lemon basil is nice in this but should be added at the last minute before serving.
5. In another pot, boil a couple of ears of corn for about 3 minutes, remove and, when cool, cut the kernels from the ears. Add a can of black beans, rinsed, a chopped fresh tomato or a drained chopped canned tomato (or even a couple of drained diced dried ones from a jar), a chopped white onion, some chopped sweet pepper or poblano, salt, pepper, fresh cilantro, red wine vinegar and olive oil. This is an easy thing to pull out for supper or a side with a bit of meat. It lasts for about 5 days or until the tomato looks gross.

Once you have roasted beets, you can make beet and goat cheese salad in about 3 minutes. Peel the beets (the skins slide right off), slice or chop and put them on top of mesclun or soft lettuce, add scallions or chopped onion, some toasted nuts, some cheese (feta, shaved parmesan, shaved robusto, even dabs of queso fesco or ricotta) and drizzle with vinaigrette.

With the toasted squash, you can do approximately the same salad – cooked veggies on top of fresh greens — but with orange slices added. Or instead of orange slices, add a scoop of the French lentil salad and a chunk of goat cheese.  A slice of toasted multigrained bread and a glass of red wine makes this salad seem like something you’d get in a sidewalk French bistro. (And whatever your politics or your feeling about France, those people know how to eat!)

For people as busy as a one-armed-hanger, here’s the Spy’s art director, Jean Sanders’s salute to salad month:

May 18, 2011

We are continuing to celebrate May as National Salad Month. There are some nights when I can barely tear open the plastic bag of pre-washed salad greens. The effort to feed everyone healthy green stuff can be yet another rock rolling slowly up the Sisyphean hill of dinner. Here is a perfect compromise – practically dessert rolled into a dinner salad: The Red Salad.

Combine tomato wedges with halved strawberries, basil leaves, shaved Parmesan and balsamic vinegar. Thank you Mark Bittman from the New York Times for this one. A little Plugrá butter spread meltingly on a nice warm dinner roll and a glass of wine complete your dinner prep. (OK, wine for me, non-alcoholic beverages for the underage set…)

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dybLHF-liBo/TdOm5a5aaMI/AAAAAAAAEF0/_YWmkkkYfmo/s1600/may182011web.jpg

 

Broccoli and Dried Cranberry Salad

2 heads of broccoli

2 scallions

½ cup toasted walnuts

½ cup dried cranberries

1/3 cup mayonnaise

1/3 cup plain yogurt

¼ cup red wine vinegar

salt and pepper

Chop broccoli and slice scallions into a large bowl. Add walnuts and cranberries. Toss (gently so you don’t get it all over the counter the way I do). Mix mayo, yogurt, vinegar, salt and pepper. Dress the salad. This keeps for a week. Before serving, shake the container so the dressing gets all over it again.