Category: Salad

Gardens Gone Wild: Harvest Niçoise

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We’ve been traveling, attending a couple of family weddings and doing a little business along the way. It didn’t seem realistic to ask them to postpone their special events on account of our vegetable patch, so the consequences when we got home were, well, interesting…

First, beans were just nicely coming into bloom when we left. Which means Jack’s beanstalk had nothing on us when we arrived back. Beets are still growing, and we’ve already harvested potatoes. A few tomatoes were spared the post tropical storm blight that has attacked local crops.

All in all, we had the makings of a lovely salad (and roasted veg are in our future). The eggs, olives, and tuna are not our own, but the rest is absolutely home grown.

For two:

Cook 2 small red potatoes and 1 large golden beet (reserve the greens for the salad). Throw the beans in to blanch, just at the end of cooking.
Hard boil 2 eggs.
Chill all of this (we cooked ours at breakfast time).

Arrange the chopped greens on a plate. Top with the cooked, cooled veggies, some sliced tomato, olives, and good quality water packed tuna.

For the dressing, mix 1T/15ml each of Dijon, olive oil, and vinegar (your choice).

Enjoy!

Kitchen Sink Salad 2014

We make variations of this salad all summer long, as various vegetables come into season, either in our own garden or the Farmers Market. Start with a good glug of olive oil and vinegar, and a couple of tablespoons of Dijon. Whisk those together to make a dressing.

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Next, add some cooked beans or chickpeas (we made Jacob’s Cattle beans a couple of days ago) and some chopped onion (here, baby red and white ones). We had some sliced radishes as well.

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Next, two or three chopped hothouse tomatoes and a good handful of chopped greens (we had spinach, baby Romaine, and Swiss chard). Toss on a few olives or anchovies and some sharp cheese or Feta for tangy goodness.

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Stir together and let rest at least 10 minutes. It will keep in the fridge for two or three days, flavour improving each day.

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This leaves the kitchen cool on a hot day and is quick and easy to prepare if you are busy watching the World Cup!

Our Salad had "Taginessence"

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It snowed overnight, which we suppose is Mother Nature having the last laugh after we were so excited at yesterday’s promise of spring. We’re fighting back, though, by having a lunchtime salad that combines the flavours of a winter Tagine with the crunchy green-ness of spring.

On a bed of greens, we added celery slices and chopped up last night’s leftover lamburgers. The dressing consisted of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and maple Dijon mustard from Kozlik’s. To top it off, some feta, raisins, and pine nuts gave us a salty-sweet finish with just the right spiciness.

Nice Ideas from Nice

As February begins, we start to consider more springlike foods – the occasional bursts of sunshine and milder temperatures seem to mitigate the wintry desire for comfort and cocooning. The Niçoise salad seems to perfectly capture everything we look forward to – and this adaptation combines winter’s preserves, like capers and olives, with the local hydroponic lettuce and tomatoes that are appearing more frequently at the market.

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Awesome Burgers with Sesame Orange Dijon Salad

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The evenings are starting to cool off and the days are getting shorter. In just a few weeks I fear we will be faced with the f word…fall.

But for now there is plenty of tremendous produce in the garden to make salad, and we grilled these juicy burgers. Putting a dent in the middle (in tribute to our daughter’s man-friend, we call it “Paulito style”) keeps the patties from shrinking. They didn’t need much to top them off…tomatoes, pickles, a little grainy mustard and some relish.

For the salad dressing:

15ml/1T Dijon
15ml /1T sesame oil
30ml/2T orange juice

Whisk until smooth.

Spice Up Your Salad!

La princessa and her parents left this morning and now the house is eerily quiet. We’re so grateful to have had them with us for a few days, and glad they enjoyed our city by the sea.

Today is also the day we get our diet and exercise routine back on track – so here’s an easy meal to kick things off, for two:

Leftover grilled steak, about 250ml/1c, sliced thin

In a medium nonstick skillet, heat 5 ml each butter and olive oil, and cook, covered, just til tender:

1 sliced onion
2 sliced mushrooms
1 sliced green pepper

Add steak slices and a sprinkling of chipotle powder or a minced Jalapeño.

Serve over 500ml/2c mixed greens.

We’re fortunate to have greens from our own garden, but use a variety to make it more interesting.

Enjoy!

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We Grew Our Lunch…and Have All These Veggies Left Over!

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Spoiler alert! We grew neither the tuna nor the ingredients for the dressing ourselves. But we did grow everything else (All seeds from Vesey’s or Halifax Seed) – a satisfying lunch after a morning of post-vacation weeding and laundry! Any combination of veggies would do, but we used:

Simpson lettuce
Vulcan lettuce
Green and yellow beans, blanched
Black Chinese radish, blanched
Golden beets, cooked and chilled
Thinly-sliced red onion

For two, top each plate of veggies with 1/2 can solid tuna in water

Drizzle w lime maple dressing (recipe for 2 – mix all together)

10ml/2 t mayo
5ml/1 t Dijon
Zest and juice of one lime
5ml/1 t maple syrup (we get ours from our neighbours at Acadian Maple)

Now to check the larder and get a few staples before settling in to enjoy what’s left of our long weekend. Happy Natal Day, Simcoe Day, or anything else you’re celebrating!

Around the Corner from Nice

20130606-071912.jpg Our dinner plans were foiled. A couple of days ago we picked up some fresh green beans and a piece of salmon, expecting to make a slight twist on the classic Salade Niçoise. But some twists of fate kept the recipe off the menu for three days, and third-day fish is never a good idea. The beans weren’t looking so hot, either.

Not deterred, we gathered a basket of greens from the garden – tender turnip greens, arugula, spinach, chard, beets, and a few kinds of lettuce. Some pretty French radish. It would be enough. We made do with some good-quality canned tuna, a red pepper (locally hothouse grown) and free range eggs. Olives and a Dijon lemon dressing rounded out the meal. How can you be anything but grateful in the season when home gardens are springing to life with delicious surprises every day?

Take it Outside!

20130602-084335.jpg It’s foggy over the bay this morning, but yesterday was the first hot, sunny, really summery day of the year. We started with golf, then into the city to do some shopping and “summer hair”.

Local pork chops were secured from Highland Drive (recommended by Fred as The BEST) and grilled with a little chipotle powder and a light hand on the sea salt. On the side, steamed young turnips and radish, and a salad of greens from our garden – turnip, Vulcan and Simpson lettuces, Bibb, romaine, arugula, and Swiss chard. On top, some steamed young asparagus, and a dressing of Dijon, sesame oil, and Mirin.

Out to Pasture

It’s coming! Spring has nearly sprung. Today we were at the Halifax Seaport Market and picked up a delicious steak from Pasture Hill Farm. That, with a few blue fingerlings and a salad seemed like it would be a heavenly choice. We were just tallying up our purchases and we spotted them: local grape tomatoes from Den Haan’s. I wish there was a recipe here, but this is it: grill steak, boil potato, make salad, dream of sprong

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