Salads – Page 5 – Rosemary and the Goat

Grilled Pork Chop and Roasted Apple Salad

Eat those greens!

Do you love your greens and vegetables? Did your parent always say “eat your vegetables”. I feel like I’m saying that to my husband these days as he just informed me, after almost 47 years of marriage, that he doesn’t really like most vegetables. He just eats them because I make them and if he doesn’t I guess there isn’t much left to eat other than meat. He does like salads though so I get to experiment a lot with recipes.

I love greens whether it is cooked cabbage, kale, chards, baby bok choy, spinach, lettuces, you name it I like greens. Have to admit, though, that I have never cooked collard greens. We have even grilled romaine lettuce and that’s delicious when you turn it into a chopped Caesar salad. I’ve mixed kale with mashed cauliflower, I’ve put it in turkey kale soup and I’m sure there are a lot of other recipes out there using greens in recipe that I haven’t even come across yet.

I love looking at menus and trying to recreate dishes. A friend of mine was in New Orleans last year and dined at K-Paul’s so I went to their website to see what she might be eating (weird huh). This salad sounded so interesting and there really isn’t a need for a recipe. After thinking about making this salad I decided to turn it into a main dish salad by adding the grilled pork chops that I glazed with some more of the red apple balsamic vinegar, then cut the chops into strips to put on top of the salad. I love pork and apples together and this way I did not have to come up with a meat to go with the salad. My daughter asked me if I had ever put pork on a salad and I thought “why not”, we put shrimp, chicken, steak, tuna, and even bbq on top of some shredded cabbage so why not a pork chop.

April 29, 2016 By Sherry

Salads

Cucumber Noodle Salad

Ever see green noodles? These are cucumber.

Do you have a lot of tools/pans in your kitchen pantry? I have way to many but I NEED them. Never know when I might need one of them to make something special. The spiralizer is my newest gadget. See picture of my pan pantry below and this doesn’t even include my gadgets hiding away in my drawer or mini tart tins and cookie cutters in pull out bins. I even have a strawberry huller/pinfeather plucker and I never intend on plucking a chicken.

I first tried making cucumber noodles when I made my Spiralized Veggies with Salmon; now, I’m on the search for anything to twist out of my Paderno Pro 4 Blade Spiralizer. English cucumbers definitely work the best if you can find them.

Yikes, it is almost swimming season and if we start heating our pool this month then I’m in trouble (the dreaded swimsuit season is here). Aren’t we all looking for new recipes for the summer to take to get togethers? Honestly, I don’t think I will ever get tired of cooking and trying out new recipe as long as there is someone around to try them out and with my husband I can always count on getting a thumbs up or thumbs down. I hope for a thumbs up, of course, and the thumbs down never make it on this blog.

April 14, 2016 By Sherry

Appetizers/ Salads/ Sandwiches

Smoked Chicken Salad with Cranberries and Roasted Pecans

Not for a sandwich kind of chicken salad.

Back when we were first married my husband always wanted me to put apples in our tuna fish salad sandwiches. Yuck, I would say, fruit doesn’t belong on a sandwich and if he wanted apples in his then he would chop some up and put on his sandwich. When it comes to any creamy type salad that goes on a sandwich my opinion is NO fruit.

But, I have changed my mind over the years (not about fruit on sandwich) about adding fruit to things like chicken salad. There are so many chicken salads that have fruit like grapes, oranges, pineapple and this one has dried cranberries. To me this type salad has to be eaten with a fork or in this case I’m using some endive leaves and radicchio as little containers and also some crackers on the side. And funny thing, the day after my bunco group ate this my husband wanted some for lunch and he said do you have any bread, and I said Noooo, you can’t have bread with that kind of chicken salad. I know that’s crazy but I gave him a fist full of crackers instead.

There are two things I always feel like make a salad recipe better, that is, if it calls for chicken or nuts you use smoked meat and roasted nuts. I do my nuts in the microwave on a Pampered Chef small baking stone and we always have something on the Kamado Joe Smoker I can use in a salad.

April 4, 2016 By Sherry

Salads

Blood Orange and Mango Salad

There’s nothing prettier than an orange salad made with a blood orange.

Can’t say I’ve ever been a big OJ fan. (I love the orange but just not in juice form.) I use to drink OJ when I bought it for the kids when they were little but I would have much rather had a glass of grapefruit juice. Have you ever had a grapefruit mimosa instead of one made with OJ. Once you have, you will never go back.

Did you ever get oranges in your Christmas stocking. I remember getting them, don’t know how often, or why I remember that but maybe that was a way of filling up the stocking; who knows.

Some of the most delicious oranges I have tasted were in Madrid. I’m not sure what they were called but they were candied. I attempted to make these after returning from that trip and the first time they turned out great (Second time I think I burned them.). These Candied Orange Quarters were the best thing I ever tasted. Ya know those little sugared orange slices you get in a bag for $1, well those are my husband’s favorite candy, but the candied ones were 1,000 times better than those and he loved them.

February 24, 2016 By Sherry

Salads

Shaved Zucchini Salad

Shaved Zucchini Salad with Pumpkin Seeds Parmesan Cheese.

Are you looking for some new salad ideas to start the year off right?

You don’t have to wait for summer vegetables to make this zucchini salad. There is no reason to wait to make this salad since we can always find fresh zucchini and yellow squash in the market. Of course, if you had it growing in your back yard, then that would be even fresher/better.

Zucchini was developed in Italy in the late 19th century; and is a vegetable that is typically served cooked and has a delicate flavor and requires very little cooking in a little butter or olive oil. On the other hand, you always see zucchini on vegetable platters so it can be used in many dishes; zucchini bread is the best.

What attracted me to this recipe in the first place was the way the zucchini/squash was cut; most recipes you see for zucchini salad has it sliced in circles, shredded or cut into long thin ribbon pieces. I like the bigger slices because you can still tell what the vegetable once was.

I once worked for a catering company in Kansas City and I always remember how they always wanted vegetables, whether they were for a salad or for grilling, cut into large chunks/pieces because they thought it made for a better presentation. I agree.

This recipe came from Silver Oak Winery and they suggest it for a summer salad. I’m saying put with any grilled meat and you will have a great salad in place of your normal green salad you may serve.

January 20, 2016 By Sherry

Salads

Spicy Bean Sprout Salad

This is so easy, I’m almost embarrassed to tell you about it.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone and I hope every eats and enjoys the day without worrying about calories. When I decided to post this Asian salad it brought back memories of The Christmas Story (movie) (not this recipe but Chinese food) and how the dogs got into the house, ate the Christmas turkey and the family had to go out for Chinese food for Christmas Day. Well, that won’t happen at our house but this is a great little starter appetizer/salad to serve if you are doing anything Asian.

I love small plate restaurants, especially when you order lots and lots of small plates which we did the night we ate at this Japanese bar in Northbrook, IL. and this bean sprout salad was served to us when we first sat down.

I’ve had some unusual small plates recently — pig tail in Austin at Swift’s Attic and also Pig Cheeks also from there. The Pig Cheeks were great because they were fall off the jaw tender (ha, that’s funny) and served with crispy toast that we spread with fig jam, then Dijon mustard, then the shredded braised spicy pig cheek. Yum. Blistered shishito peppers is another small plate we have tried. Even though I have made those several times (after having them in Vego, Spain) I will always order them in a restaurant. Fried Eggplant Chips with Honey Drizzle was a small plate that we had in Seville, Spain and I had to recreate it as soon as we got home. We’ve tried tripe also on a small plate; I was glad that was a small plate.

November 25, 2015 By Sherry

Pasta/ Salads

Cubano Orzo Salad

The rice looking pasta.

This is another recipe using my Pappardelle’s pasta I bought at the Pike’s Market in Seattle last summer. (Can’t believe it took me a year to get around to using it.)

Years ago I tasted a rainbow orzo that I bought at Central Market in Houston. It had beautiful colors of purple, orange, green and white and for some reason it was discontinued and after that I could only find green, orange and white. That is until I happened upon this southwest blend that is made with blackbean, red pepper, red bell pepper and spinach and a lot of other flavors that make this beautiful and delicious.

For this recipe I am using what I remember from my favorite Central Market salad (and the ingredients were printed on the nutrition label, so how easy is that) but added in some of the ingredients from Pappardelle’s recipe they gave me when I bought the pasta.

August 7, 2015 By Sherry

Salads

Grilled Corn and Edamame Salad

Beautiful summer salad.

I think my favorite vegetables of the summer are corn and tomatoes. There is nothing better than a hot buttered, salt and peppered ear of corn in my opinion; and when you grill it and have those nice little black marks on it, it’s even better.

Take a little corn, add some steamed edamame and whatever ingredients you want and this salad will have you going back for seconds. Edamame is a soybean is low in calories and fat, high in fiber and protein and in just a little over a cup of edamame in the pods you get as much iron as in four slices of whole wheat bread. Here is some information I found on WebMD about soy.

So, what are you doing this summer? Do you have any new recipes you have tried for get togethers? If you have any favorite summer recipes, savory or sweet, leave a comment in the comment section to share.

We are still waiting to start our outdoor kitchen. Like always I thought this was going to be a fast build. We met back in April and now having to wait on permit so looks like it is going to be August before we ever get started. I’m really excited over the equipment my husband picked out. Alfresco 42″ gas grill with infrared burner, a power burner we will set low for turkey frying and other things and a cool teppanyaki stainless grill top that goes over the power burner which will be great for cooking pancakes, quesadillas, or the chef from Alfresco told us he turns his into a French cooktop and puts several saucepans on the top to keep or warm. We’ve also decided to add a warming drawer which will be really nice for keeping his bbq warm.

July 17, 2015 By Sherry

Salads

Watermelon Salad with Goat Cheese

It’s watermelon time again! and just in time for the 4th of July.

It’s that time of the year again and I’m hoping you’re taking advantage of all the different types of watermelon that are available. One memory I have of watermelons, when I was kid, was that my grandfather use to haul watermelons in a 18 wheeler; not sure where his driver took them to but just knew we would be eating some good watermelon.

Back in the 50’s and 60’s when we went to Florida every summer with our grandparents we either didn’t have Interstate highways or either he took the back roads. I’m sure the 50’s and early 60’s we had to take the rural roads to go from Missouri to Florida. Anyway, I guess my point is that driving through all the small towns along the way there were always farm stands and we always would stop at one the closer we got the Jacksonville Beach (our usual destination). My grandfather would have to taste anything he was going to buy, especially peaches and watermelon. I remember him “thumping” watermelons to test for ripeness; and back then I had no idea what all that thumping meant.

July 2, 2015 By Sherry

Salads

Cauliflower “Potato” Salad

No potatoes in this picnic favorite!

So, it is Derby day in Louisville and it’s our fifth grandson’s 1st birthday (He was born on Derby Day last year). We are in Austin helping to celebrate and if you are looking for something yummy to make today for a party, try out this twist on a picnic favorite.

How many cookouts, bbq, birthday parties, outdoor events will you be invited to this summer? Probably quite a few and if you want to please those people who are low-carbing, or people who want to cut a few calories, or people who are adventurous to try something new, try this new take on an old favorite.

I’ve made potato salad the same way all my life. I need to preface that by saying I use to make it like my grandmother and then I sometimes made it like my mother. One (my grandmother) mashed her potatoes for the potato salad because that’s the way my grandfather liked it and my mother always chunked her potatoes and left them in chunks. I didn’t want to favor one of their methods over the other so I would give the chunked potatoes a few quick mashes and left the rest alone and then continued with my recipe so I had a little bit of them both in the way I made my potato salad.

How many different kinds of potato salad could there be? There’s Hot German potato salad, a mayonnaise based, mustard based, baked potato salad and I’m sure about a hundred different ingredients people put in their’s.

May 2, 2015 By Sherry

Salads

Garlicky Greens

Beautiful salad and so fresh tasting.

When I first saw that Nancy Fuller was having a show on Food Network (Farmhouse Rules) I didn’t want to watch because I felt she was taking over Paula Deen’s spot. After watching a couple of her shows I grew to like it. What’s not to like about a grandma making food for her kids and her grandkids and then watching them run all over the farm.

She catered for 20 years (hey, I did too), a chef, business woman and co-owner of Ginsberg Foods. Her farm is in Hudson Valley, New York and I love seeing the farm and her outings to get foods.

I changed just a few things in her recipe. I really like radishes and her recipe calls for 4; I used the whole bunch. Also, I didn’t want to cube my cheese or use yellow cheddar so I used a white cheddar and shaved it with a vegetable peeler. I also wanted a little bacon taste so I baked 8 slices of proscuitto until it was crisp and crumbled that into the already tossed salad. The salad dressing had three ingredients, sour cream, buttermilk and roasted garlic. Now, you can’t get much easier than that. Her recipe called for two whole heads of roasted garlic. I roasted two heads thinking there was no way I would need that much. So, at first I put only one head, tasted, (I hardly even tasted it) and it wasn’t garlicky at all so I added the second bulb of sweet roasted garlic. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you only need 2 cloves — roast the two “heads” and use them all.

March 27, 2015 By Sherry

Salads

Rainbow Chicken Apple Slaw

Crunchy and full of color.

I was searching around for some new recipes for a dinner I was planning and came upon this beautiful slaw. Tattooed Martha did it as a sandwich and grilled the marinated chicken breast then topped with the slaw but I immediately thought of mixing everything together for a nice little salad.

And, as usual I thought of trying this out on my bunco ladies. I only made one mistake, sorry girls, but the night I took the salad, I had everything ready and was going to toss the dressing right before going out the door. I guess my mind was on rolling the dice that night anticipating that I would bring home “big” money, which I did not bring home not even one dollar and I forgot to julienne and add the apples. So what was eaten that night could have been improved greatly by the addition of apples.

I use to be a great multi-tasker when I catered. I could have things in the oven, the mixer going, something sautéing on the stove top and keep everything straight in my head; but not this day.

Luckily I still had some of the undressed slaw mixture and some chicken I had not eaten yet and one apple that was miraculously still in my refrigerator; so I mixed up another batch of the slaw and then talked my husband into eating it so I could have an opinion of the slaw the way it was suppose to taste. He added more salt and said it was good. I have a problem with the apples disappearing from refrigerator too; along with bananas that I was saving for banana bread. I need to have a his and her crisper drawer in our refrigerator so he knows what he can eat and things not meant for him.

December 16, 2014 By Sherry

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