Hot Salad in the City

I’m sitting out on my back deck, my flesh a feast for the mosquitoes, sipping some very drinkable sangria. And it’s 90 degrees. At eleven at night. Portland is in the middle of one of its worst heat waves in memory. Tomorrow we’re expected to tie our all-time high temperature of 107 degrees. All I can say is I am so, so grateful Aaron installed the A/C window unit in our bedroom this afternoon. Oh, yes, it’s true: many Portlanders don’t have A/C. There are even some, like us, who technically do have it, but never actually use it.

Earlier tonight we ate some quickly-thrown-together dish of rice spaghetti (at Iris’ request), garden zucchini fried in oil, leftover grilled chicken chunks and some torn basil. I tossed it all with some salt and pepper and a mayo-curry dressing I whipped up a few weeks ago when we ran out of salad dressing. It was fine, meaning everyone felt fed. But it wasn’t anything to get excited about.

As I was boiling the noodles, just that little bit of burner heat set off the emergency fan on my range (seriously) and the kitchen was almost inhabitable. And since I’ve just returned from BlogHer (more on that later) I hadn’t done any grocery shopping or meal planning and I’m literally just throwing protein together with veggies as quickly as I can.

(Oh, who am I kidding. I never do serious meal planning.)

Photo credit: Francesco Tonelli for The New York Times

I've got a few more quick dishes for hot nights in my repertoire, but not as many as The New York Time's Bitten columnist, Mark Bittman, who has 101 Simple Salads for the Season.

I love the way the recipes are divided. The first group is all vegan ingredients (unless you want to add the bacon Bittman suggests) so I know they're dairy-free, too. Then there are vegetarian salads, then seafood, then meat and then noodles. Most don't require any cooking, and best of all, almost all of the ingredients will be in season in the US at some point before October.

Here are a few standouts I want to try:

16 is really close to one of my favorites (fennel and apple).
28 is a revelation. I never would have thought to put figs and almond butter together.
38 is one of the many recipes with watermelon. I love watermelon in savory dishes.
They call 43 obvious, but I've never eaten raw beets. Have you?
50 may become my new lunch salad. Boiled eggs are a new staple.
78 sounds like something my sausage-loving, Midwestern husband would love and may force me to figure out how to make gluten-free bread.
79 could be a great one for impromptu dinner parties with grown-ups and kids.
I want to eat 81 right now. But the prune plums in my neighbor's tree are about a month out.
And 82 may work with all my arugula that's bolted.
94 Quinoa Tabbouleh!
I think even my quinoa-hating kids may love 99 since it calls for cherries (I'd make it with red quinoa, which is less bitter.)

There's a you can get even more ideas or offer some of your own at the Bitten blog's comments.

Tomorrow night, we may eat well. And not melt.

Seasonal Transitional Dinner

The kind ladies at Enviromom, Renee and Heather, whom I met at Green Sprouts last weekend, gently pointed out that I haven’t been posting a lot of recipes. And they’re right. It’s been so hectic around here I haven’t been taking the time to make notes and take photos. But last night I did, and here’s a great example of what we’re eating for dinner these days.

This meal is “seasonal transitional,” meaning it’s taking the best of the end of summer and the beginning of fall. It has a few non-local (to me) ingredients but most ingredients can probably be found just about anywhere in North America right now.

Potatoes have become our new pasta. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this. I appreciate that they’re loaded with good vitamins and minerals. Clara is still boycotting them, but everyone else seems to like them fine. I used to dislike potatoes, too, because I thought they took too long to cook (they don’t if you slice them thinly) and they’re high on the glycemic index, something I try to avoid, at least at dinner. I think I also wasn’t storing them correctly and that affected the flavor. Now I keep them in a paper bag in a cupboard and I’m enjoying them much more.

Fennel still feels very exotic to me as this is the first season I’ve ever cooked with it. I know! I love the licorice taste and Iris devours the celery-like stalks. Even Aaron, who dislikes licorice, likes it. Clara hates it. Shocker!

Chop the fennel bulb like you would an onion. Chop the stalks like celery.

Apple Fennel Salad

-1 fennel bulb, chopped in half and then into thin slices (See Note)
-1 Granny Smith apple, or any variety of your choice, chopped into 1” chunks
-1 small carrot grated, more if you like
-1/4 cup red cider vinegar
-2 tbsp. olive oil
-2 tsp. local honey

1. Toss together fennel, carrot and apple in a salad bowl.
2. In a separate bowl combine oil and vinegar and stir in honey. Whisk or stir briskly with a fork. Toss with salad to coat.

Note: You can dice the ends of the fennel stocks like you would celery.

Apple Fennel Salad

What do you call this kind of potato dish? It’s not casserole, it’s not a hash (though if you diced the potatoes it could be, I’m just too lazy to go to that much work). So I’m just calling this a “Fry Up.” Because that’s just what you do—throw potatoes and meat together and fry it up. This will not win any culinary awards. This dish is pure sustenance. Given our budget constraints with the Eat Local Challenge it works because it's a filling, nutritious and tasty, cheap dinner.

I seriously made this up as I went. That’s how I cook most nights. The beauty of cooking with fresh, whole foods is that you know the flavors will be strong and present and the texture of the foods will be at their best. If you've got those things, you don't have to do much else to the food.

In the case of this particular potato dish I wanted it to complement the salad, since that was the dish with the strongest flavors. I didn’t want to add onion or garlic, like I normally do with my staple potato dishes. And I certainly didn’t want to add anything too sweet. So I decided, as the potatoes were cooking, to chop up a carrot and toss that in. Then I actually added a few sprinkles of dried fennel seeds. I know that seems like fennel overload but the dried seeds are considerably less potent and have an earthy flavor. The flavors just faded into one another, like different hues of the same color. And Clara ate the carrots.

The Fry Up

Potato and Ground Pork Fry-up
-1 lb. of ground pork (or turkey or beef)
-1 tbsp. olive oil or butter
-2 red potatoes, cut into 1/8” slices
-1 small chopped carrot (more if you like)
-Dash of pepper and salt
-¼ tsp. of dried fennel seeds

1. Sauté the meat in a frying pan until cooked but not browned. Set aside in a separate bowl.
2. In the same frying pan heat the oil or butter on medium heat about 30 seconds. Add the potatoes and carrots (see note). Cook covered about 4 minutes, separating frequently. Add ground meat to potato mixture. Cook 4 more minutes or until potatoes are tender and meat is browned.

Note: Add the carrots later in the process if you like a really crisp carrot.

And there you have it. A simple, flavorful salad and a total peasant dish, literally meat and potatoes. Virtually all local and pretty cheap, too.


Edited for picture correction.

Collard green soup

So that menu planning thing. It did work, mostly, in that two nights in a row I knew exactly what I was cooking for dinner and that I had the ingredients on hand. And, bonus, most of the ingredients were either grown locally or came from locally-based companies.

Except, I made a few erroneous assumptions:

1) I could get apples. Nope. There are no local apples this time of year (I think they’re about to come in). I suppose if I’d thought a little harder I would have realized this. I haven’t seen any apples at the farmers’ markets. But because apples and pears were the only local fruit I could reliable get at the grocery store all winter I didn’t even consider if they were available or not. They’re not. They only had Fujis.

2) I could get fresh green beans. Nope, not at my grocery store. The only ones they had were from California. This irked me. I know that I bought a bunch at the farmers’ market a few weeks ago. I emailed the produce manager and was told that there just weren’t enough to buy. The local producers were all growing specialty varieties. I would have bought those!

The other thing that derailed my efforts was a last-minute trip to Walla Walla (my second in a month) to see my sister while she visited with my dad. (He further lured me with the promise of picking pears from his tree, which I happily took him up on.) So after Wednesday I wasn’t even in town. I took the girls with me so my husband played bachelor all weekend, attending fancy Pearl District parties and a co-worker’s birthday celebration. This meant he did not eat any of the greens in the fridge. And they are starting to get that less-than-fresh feeling.

Thus, I made soup.

This is definitely a hearty soup and one that I would usually make in the colder months, but I had a bushel of collard greens to use up. And since I am this week a sales rally widow and my husband wasn’t home for dinner I had to choose a recipe that would use a lot of collards. The kids didn’t eat the collards at all since they were still a bit tough even after simmering in the broth for 20 minutes total. But this soup has so much else in it they were full and happy and went right to bed without much whining. Which, when you’re a sales rally widow, is a very, very good thing.

There was at least one time-out during the making of this dinner.

This recipe would also probably work nicely with kale or another sturdy green, and you could add potatoes or turnips or other root vegetables.

It's festive-looking, no?

(Gotta Use Up These) Collard Greens Soup

-3 tablespoons olive oil
-2 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
-1 small (2 cups) white onion (I used Walla Walla sweet, since I’ve still got ‘em coming outta my ears)
-1 teaspoon fresh fennel leaves, chopped (see note)
-2 small carrots, chopped
-1 small zucchini, chopped into quarter rounds
-1 teaspoon dried marjoram
-3 - 4 cups beef broth (see note)
-1 15 oz can kidney beans (see note)
-1 cup cooked pasta, such as penne or macaroni (optional)
-3 cups of packed collard greens, stemmed, de-ribbed and sliced into 1 inch strips
-salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat the oil on medium. Sauté the garlic for 1 minute. Add onion and sauté another 2 minutes.
2. Add fresh fennel leaves, carrots and zucchini and sauté for 1 minute.
3. Add stock and marjoram. Let simmer uncovered for 10 minutes.
4. Add collard greens and kidney beans and let simmer another 10 minutes. Greens may lose their brightness, but you’ll want to let them go the whole 10 minutes to soften them up.
5. If adding cooked pasta, do this now. Turn the heat to low (or off) and let the pasta heat up, about 5 minutes.
6. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Note:
1. I just had some fennel hanging around and wasn’t sure what would happen if I put chopped leaves in as I’d never put chopped, fresh fennel leaves in anything, and I think it’s technically a garnish. It worked! I tasted the soup as it simmered and I think the flavor was enhanced by the fennel. Not sure what would happen if you used dried.
2. For a vegetarian dish, use vegetable broth, but change the beans to a white or green bean.

She won't eat potatoes covered in her favorite cheese, but she'll *chow* on this soup.

I just scooped the whole parts out for her. This one will basically eat anything.