Hot Potato Salad -- A Moveable Feast

I rarely make hot or cold potato salad the same way from one time to the next. It's my own personal Moveable Feast, or at least a moveable recipe.

One problem is that I don't make it often enough to remember that, "Oh, there is a can of black olives in the cupboard" and "Oh yes, I do have a red onion on hand after all." It was only in writing this blog post that I remembered the onion. (Is that a book or movie? -- "Remember the Onion!")

That said, I like potato salad, usually with as many ingredients as I can toss in. In the case of last night's salad (accompanied by salmon and broccoli), I added: thinly sliced celery, roasted red peppers, olives cut in half,  at least 1/4 cup of chopped parsley, and bits of leftover asparagus. Other times I add green olives instead of black, or chopped dill pickles or, sometimes, capers.

I frequently use a prepared sesame-ginger dressing (Newman's Own), but last night I made a mustard-mayo dressing and added some whole mustard seeds. I didn't add enough salt and pepper though and had to do that at the table -- it makes such a big difference.

I prefer potato salad cold, but as I think I've been mentioning, we are having record cold spring  temperatures in the Pacific Northwest that are not at all conducive to cold salads. I had already bought the celery and was determined to make potato salad, so hot it was.

One last question about potato salad. Why is it that kids traditionally don't like meals where everything is smushed together, but adults really do? More sensitive taste buds? Too much confusion?

Portobello Sandwiches -- A Vegetable Dinner

I think it's especially nice to have vegetarian dinners when I know we have had meat for lunch (leftover chicken in a sandwich for me and stir-fried chicken at the cafeteria for Don). Noted food writer Mark Bittman does the opposite -- he lost 40 pounds by being a vegetarian before 6pm every day, or a flextarian as he likes to say.

Last night we had portobello sandwiches, our first-of-the-season corn-on-the-cob and a green salad. Strawberries with sugar and a splash of orange extract and yogurt on top for dessert.

I did read recently in a magazine that portobellos were passé, but hey, I'm not exactly a cutting-edge,   molecular gastronomy, kind of cook anyway, so passé is actually OK by me.

I adapted this recipe a few years ago from a Rachael Ray 30 minute meal show. They are better I think with Manchego cheese, but it's just a bit pricey, so I use whatever cheese I have on hand. I use a combination of balsamic salad dressing, red wine and minced garlic for my marinade.


Rachael Ray marinates for only 10 minutes, but I try for 1/2 hour or so.



Cut the edges of the red peppers so you can smush them as flat as possible under the broiler.



I've been taking lately to drying fruits and veggies on dishtowels to reduce my paper towel footprint, if you know what I mean.

Done.



The peppers are inside, resting, steaming a bit and cooling off, waiting for me to peel off the blackened skin.



Pull off a bit of bread from both sides of the roll so the mushrooms, peppers and parsley will all fit inside.



It's not pretty, and is potentially disastrous if the tea pot were to tip over, but it works to squish down the mushrooms. Sprinkle on some salt and pepper after they finish cooking.



Slice the mushrooms and peppers into bite sized pieces or you'll have serious problems trying to eat this!



Enchiladas -- A Go-To Dinner When You Can't Decide What to Cook

Enchiladas are one of my go-to dinners. I always have a can of beans in the cupboard and tortillas in the freezer.

Last night I hadn't even gotten around to thawing the tortillas. I usually skip the step where the recipe says to dip the tortillas in the sauce before adding ingredients and rolling them up, but since the tortillas were frozen, I dipped them and voilà -- they were instantly thawed.

Making enchiladas is somewhat time consuming, but I'm fine with that because I love to be in the kitchen cooking--radio tuned to the local NPR station. I have to say though that Sundays are problematic--I am not a fan of Prairie Home Companion, and would much rather be listening to This American Life or All Things Considered or Fresh Air or The Writers Almanac.

While the ingredients vary, my enchiladas always have beans, usually black, sometimes pinto, in either flour or corn tortillas. Mostly, the filling consists of  beans, chicken and cheese. Other times it's potatoes and cheese (when I have the time to cook a potato ahead of time). I frequently add canned corn and occasionally sliced olives or green onions.

The sauce varies too. Mostly I make a roux and add a can of chopped green chilies and a little salsa. Other times it's tomato sauce and chili powder or chipolte chiles in adobo sauce.

Here's my recipe:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Make a roux with 3 tbsp. flour and about 1 1/2 cup or so of chicken or vegetable stock. Add 1 can of chopped green chiles after the roux has thickened ( I like the Old El Paso brand) and about 1/4 cup of salsa.

Spoon 1/4 cup of sauce in the bottom of a glass baking dish.

Dip each tortilla in the sauce and add all or some of the following ingredients to each one: 2 tbsp. beans, 1 tbsp. canned corn, 1 tbsp. cheese, 2 tbsp. shredded chicken and a few chopped green onions or sliced olives. For directions on how to shred chicken, click  here.

Roll up each tortilla, one-by-one, and place seam side down in the pan. Pour the remaining sauce over the top to thoroughly drench the tortillas. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes. Cover with foil if you like the tops of your enchiladas to stay soft.

Top with sour cream and chopped cilantro.


Into the oven

Last night's salad: chopped orange, red cabbage and sesame-ginger salad dressing.

Hitchcock on Bainbridge -- Gnocchi and Mussels

Whoa! That was one tasty dinner.

So tasty that most of my pictures are of half eaten food because I was so busy eating that I forgot to take pictures.

Hitchcock has been on Bainbridge for one year and we only just got around to visiting last night. It's a little pricey, so we need to be more careful about ordering or save it for special occasions (or, go for Happy Hour from 5-6 and for lunch, starting June 1st).

The picture above is of the profiteroles that Don ordered for dessert and the orange sorbet and hazelnut cookie I had. They were both really good.

Do you always forget what the difference is between sorbet and sherbet? Me too! In fact, I think different people have different definitions, but here's one.



Olive pits from the olives we ordered as an appetizer.

 

We also had grilled asparagus -- smoky and wonderful -- with a saffron hollandaise sauce. 



Don had potato gnocchi with asparagus and a yummy green sauce.

 

I had mussels--a bit too salty. I would try something else next time.



Taco Salad -- Vegetarian or Not

La Niña really gets in the way of salads for dinner here in the Pacific Northwest. Nonetheless, a person just wants to go ahead and have chicken salad or taco salad even when the temps are still in the low 50s.

I did know someone who used ranch dressing for her taco salad, but I haven't ever tried that. My daughter Kate uses tofu crumbles that she crisps up in a frying pan before using. I usually make ours vegetarian, but I had a chicken breast that needed cooking, so last night's salad had that too.

Ingredients vary for my taco salad.

If there are radishes in the fridge I like to slice those and toss them in. Sometimes there are olives in the pantry and sometimes not.  I did have a lone tomato that needed to be used, so that got seeded, chopped and added as well. I also like to add whole cilantro leaves, but I know that some people are genetically programed to think that cilantro tastes like soap, so if that's you, I'm OK with your leaving them out.

Beans, salsa and chips are a must-have of course.

We sometimes have an orange and red onion salad alongside or corn-on-the-cob if it's in the middle of summer. Last night it was just the taco salad and some Red Hot Blues tortilla chips.

Taco salad and Caesar salad require lettuce to be cut for some reason -- I think you just want smaller pieces of lettuce. I use whatever lettuce I have on hand. This recipe is for two people with enough left over for me to have for lunch. (People fall into two categories around here, those who will eat leftover taco salad for lunch and those who won't.)

I wonder what other people put into their taco salad?

Last Night's Taco Salad (amounts are approximate):

3/4 can of black beans, drained
1 cup sliced black olives
1 avocado, cut into cubes
1 cooked chicken breast, shredded
1 tomato, diced
Lettuce, cut, enough for two people plus extra
Cilantro, whole or chopped
Salsa
Sour cream
Tortilla chips

Cook the chicken breast in water that is just below a simmer (they call it "smiling") for 20 minutes.

Let it cool and shred the meat. Do this by holding the breast with one fork while pulling away pieces with the other. You can only do this by pulling with the grain of the chicken, otherwise you'll get nowhere and become frustrated and resort to dicing the chicken which is lots less tasty than shredded chicken for some reason.

Heat the beans and about 3/4 to 1 cup of salsa in the microwave for 1 1/2 minutes.

Combine all ingredients except the sour cream and tortilla chips, tossing well. I consider the salsa in this recipe as the salad dressing, and so I want plenty of it to moisten the ingredients and bring them altogether.

Serve with a dollop of sour cream (we use fat-free) and some tortilla chips to crumble on top. I sometimes make tortilla strips by cutting corn tortillas into small strips (you can see them in the photo) and toasting them for about 10 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

Schnitzel with Salsa

One of our favorite memories from four years of living in Germany was the sound of heavy thumping from restaurant kitchens when we put in an order for Wiener schnitzel, something we did with regularity. What that noise meant was that a heavy-set German woman was back there pounding the chicken into thin cutlets. I always pictured with her doing this with her fists, or maybe even her elbows.

We always ordered chicken schnitzel, and I’m not sure if we ever actually saw Wiener, or veal, schnitzel on the menu. Schnitzel was most often served with pommes frites, or French fries. One restaurant served the pommes for children in a swan shaped piece of tin foil – very chic.

My brother calls this dish chicken Milanese, which as far as I can tell is the same thing as schnitzel, or as we say in the states, breaded chicken cutlet.

 Mark Bittman, author of “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian,” has a recipe for vegetarian cutlets made from a bean or tofu mixture using the exact dipping and breading method. He suggests serving them either 1) with lemon wedges, 2) Parmesan style with tomato sauce, mozzarella and Parmesan cheese, or 3) wrapped in large lettuce leaves and drizzled with a lime-ginger-garlic sauce or a basil dipping sauce.

The Germans served schnitzel with lemon wedges, so that’s what I do too. Tonight we had salsa on top as well and I must admit that I liked that even better than the lemon.

Everything is neat and tidy to begin. Dip the chicken pieces first in egg whites and then in panko bread crumbs.

Things become a bit messy as the process continues.



Cookbooks say to let the cutlets air dry for a minute or two.

 

You can't beat cherry crisp for dessert. -- so easy with frozen cherries. (That's thickened yogurt on top. Recipe here.)



Fajitas -- Using Meat as a Condiment

Don't you love to say "fajitas" (fa HE tas, for those who don't speak Spanish)? I use chicken, but my daughter Kate uses chicken seitan strips for a vegan version.

There's something about fajitas that is just . . . fun, for want of a better word. Of course, it's the word itself, but maybe it's also about putting your food together by hand at the table, or  that fajitas remind me of restaurant food -- only better, if I do say so myself.

On top of that, fajitas keep our meat consumption under the USDA Dietary Guideline's recommended 4 oz., with just one chicken breast making a dish for two people (with a bit of leftovers for my lunch today).  The red pepper and onion slices stretch out the dish.

I usually buy a lime at the grocery store when I do my once-every-two-weeks shopping, just in case I feel like making fajitas. I also use limes for tortilla soup, but don't make that as often as I do fijitas.

When we have fijitas, we frequently also have roasted sweet potatoes and a green salad with orange segments, or sometimes sauteed kale.  Last night I had some red cabbage that a friend gave me, so I sliced a green apple to go with it and we had that instead of a salad. Occasionally I'll add one-half a can of black beans to the fajitas mixture as well.

Fajitas:
Cut the chicken breast into strips and marinate for a couple hours with one-half of an onion, thinly sliced, two minced cloves of garlic, some olive oil, juice of one or two limes,three or four dashes of Worcestershire sauce and a few shakes of chili powder.

Wrap the tortillas in aluminium foil and place in the oven for 10 minutes at 300 degrees.

Saute one red pepper in oil over medium heat.

Turn the heat up and add the chicken/onion mixture. Saute for awhile until everything is cooked.

Serve on warmed tortillas with sour cream and whole or chopped cilantro leaves.

Thickened Citrus Yogurt – An Alternative to Ice Cream

  

For the longest time, we had fruit with ice cream for dessert and called it good.

Then we switched to soy ice cream, then to Yoplait vanilla yogurt, and now it’s thickened yogurt. They’re all great.  Plus, in my book, if you have fruit and dairy in a 3:1 ratio, then the dessert definitely counts as healthy.

I do dress up the yogurt in a fairly regular way, with juice and zest from one orange, 1 tsp. orange flavoring, 1 tsp. vanilla and honey to taste. Maybe next time I’ll try switching to lime juice and zest and try that over pineapple or strawberries.

You might like your yogurt really thick and skip the orange juice, but I like a looser texture.

Thickened Yogurt

Position a piece of cheese cloth or a loosely woven dish cloth with 6 or 7 clothespins over a deepish mixing bowl.

Pour in the yogurt and let it sit overnight in the refrigerator. I have done this even just for one or two hours to remove some of the yogurt liquid if I’ve forgotten to do it the night before. The yogurt does thicken up a bit.

Put the bowl on a large plate or you’ll end up with sticky whey all over the refrigerator shelf, as it seeps up the dishcloth and drips off the edges.