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Salads

Salads

Emerald City Salad

What does the Emerald City, May, and Wicked have to do with a Salad?

My Emerald City Salad aka Crunchy Romaine Toss Salad!

This past weekend we went to see our kids in Austin and my daughter, Alexis and I went to see Wicked. She gave me the theatre tickets as a mother’s day gift. It just so happens, her birth month is in May (Emerald birthstone), the Crunchy Romaine Toss Salad is GREEN and sitting in the theatre in Austin this weekend watching Wicked with all the green lights, green costumes and green face on stage, I kept thinking what kind of blog could I do that would be about something green.

Well, Crunchy Romaine Toss Salad (aka Emerald City Salad) is a salad that I have catered for, I think, around 17 years. It is from a Jackson Mississippi Cookbook, “Come On In” and it has been one of my most requested salad recipes since I have been catering.

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Salads

Peach and Arugula Salad with Pancetta Chips

Anything with pancetta on it just has to be good.

  Several years ago we were in Italy and had some of the most wonderful food. I packed a little menu dictionary to translate menu items from Italian to English. We kept seeing “rocket” salad on the menu and finally ordered it and found out it was arugula. We had been eating arugula for years, but “rocket” salad sound so much more interesting.

It was so much fun trying to pronounce things from the “Italian” menu (we never asked for the English menu), and all the waiters were so patient with us trying to work our way through reading the menus. If we pronounced something wrong, they would just smile and tell us the correct way of saying the item.

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Salads/ Side dish/ Vegetables

Kumquat, Corn, And a Few Other Things Salad

There are so many summer vegetables out now, it would be a crime not to try something different with all those wonderful things you may be picking up at your farmer’s markets in your area.

Kumquat, corn, avocado and a few other things makes this a great summer salad to serve with your steak which I am making tonight for my daughter along with a chimichurri sauce.

I teach technique classes at Williams Sonoma and earlier in the week I saw that I was suppose to make a roasted corn salad that tomatoes and feta. As usual, I started thinking of ways I was going to tweak this and I have made my version twice this week.

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Salads

Tomato Watermelon Salad

This is a fabulous summertime salad

You say, “Watermelon and Tomato”!  I know that sounds like a odd combination but believe me it is delicious and with all the summer tomatoes available you should be trying this asap.  I only make this in the summer when tomatoes and watermelon are the freshest. 

I have use heirloom tomatoes and just regular tomatoes.  It is the prettiest when you use, orange, red, yellow and green (these are ripe green tomatoes that I have found in the past).  The combination of the tomatoes, watermelon and the buffalo moz, basil and the frozen balsamic makes for a very interesting taste.

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 This is the first time I have made this that the vinegar did not freeze.  I put it in the freezer at 8:30 in the morning and by 6:30 that evening it was just kind of thick.  I have no idea why this happened.  This was a 25 year old balsamic that I got at WS so I know it’s a good one.  You mix this with a couple of tablespoons of water and it is suppose to freeze and then when you have it all arranged on a plate and ready to serve, you scrape this frozen balsamic over the salad and watch it melt all over.  This was still very good, but I’m still wondering why it didn’t freeze.  So if you have ideals, let me know.

This recipe was in a Food and Wine magazine a couple of years ago.  The first time I had this was at a friend’s house and I wasn’t sure if I would like it and I was surprised that the combination of all the ingredients was so good.  Hope you like it too. 

Tomato Watermelon Salad

Ingredients

  • 1/2 c. balsamic vinegar
  • 2 Tbsp. water
  • Assorted tomatoes cherry, grape, red, green, orange, yellow
  • Watermelon balls or chunks
  • 8 oz. fresh mozzarella sliced
  • 1/2 c. fresh basil
  • 2 Tbsp. olive oil

Instructions

  1. Freeze the balsamic and water in a small dish until frozen solid. Arrange the tomatoes and watermelon on a large platter and top with mozzarella pieces and fresh basil. Drizzle with olive oil.

    When ready to serve remove the frozen balsamic from freezer and using a spoon scrape over the watermelon/tomato salad. Serve immediately.