Red and Green Tomato Salad

I made this recipe 3 or 4 times this year, since I had a lot of green tomatoes to use up. I really enjoyed it, although a few people I served it to were less than enthusiastic. It is a bit on the tart side, but a good way to use green tomatoes and very pretty!

Ingredients:
2 large very ripe red tomatoes
2 large green tomatoes
1 small red onion
1 red pepper, chopped (optional)
1 recipe French dressing

Instructions:
Slice or chop red and green tomatoes
Thinly slice red onion and add to tomatoes (I sliced it once and chopped finely the next time)
Add French dressing and chill for several hours before serving
I added orange bell peppers because I had them the last time I made it, and they looked really pretty in it.

Roasted Kale and Butternut Squash with Heirloom Jacob's Cattle Beans, Adobo Sauce and Feta Cheese

While researching the book I'm doing for NaNoWrimo, I looked for Puerto Rican recipes on Pinterest. This one, for kale salad, looked really interesting. However, I don't really like raw kale (I know, I know, I'm a freak of nature). I like the health benefits, though, so I thought I'd just cook the kale. The recipe was sort of strange, anyway, as it called for hot squash in a salad.

I have to say, making this was pretty time-consuming. I don't usually do 'fancy.' I do basic. So this made me feel quite accomplished. And it was sooo pretty (hence the photo overload) that I almost didn't want to eat it. It was really good though--and VERY filling. Even my husband couldn't finish a bowl full. It's a very fancy, filling vegetarian meal. The adobo sauce I made was good--I liked it heated up, although I guess it is supposed to be kind of the dressing for the salad. But it was a good seasoning for the dish, and I enjoyed it. I did sort of wing the adobo sauce, so if you're picky about that kind of thing, use canned stuff, or you can follow the link for my basic recipe.


Anyway, I adapted the recipe to make a vegetarian meal instead of a salad. Here's the full meal version.


Ingredients:

• 1 medium butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cubed (1/2-inch pieces)
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• salt and black pepper, to taste
• 2 tbsp red wine or apple cider vinegar
• 1 tsp dried mustard
• 1 tbsp honey
• 1-2 tbsp adobo sauce
• 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• 2 cups cooked Jacob's cattle beans (any other kind would do just as well)
• 1 large bunch kale, stemmed and torn into small pieces
• 1/2 c. feta cheese

Instructions:

Wash, stem and tear up kale and place in a large casserole pan (mine was the big pyrex pan, about 9x14 I think.

Seed butternut squash, peel if desired, and cut into approx 1/2 inch cubes. Mine weren't too exact. Also, I don't peel mine because I grew them and they're organic. But if you're unsure, peel. The skins are very soft and edible, so feel free to skip this step. Spread over kale in the pan. Drizzle olive oil over the squash and kale, as evenly as possible.

Bake at 400 for 30-40 minutes, until squash is very tender. If you're like me and your pieces aren't uniform, test the largest pieces. When they're done, so is everything else.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, stir together 1/2 tsp. salt, vinegar, mustard, honey, adobo sauce, garlic slices, and 1/4 tsp. black pepper.

When squash is done, pour sauce over it and toss in the casserole pan. Some of the kale may be crispy, and that's fine!

Add beans and mix well. Return pan to the oven for a couple minutes until heated through.

Serve topped with feta or other crumbled goat cheese.

Adobo Sauce

This is a quick and easy recipe for Adobo sauce, which can be used in a ton of things. Instead of going out and buying it, I made up a batch myself which was very quick and easy. You can use it to can chili peppers or chipotle peppers in. But I used it in a salad dressing.

I did not put chipotle in mine, because I don't have any and because I wanted to make a marinade sort of sauce. I had found the recipe while looking for Puerto Rican food, so I made an adobo that, according to the site, was a Puerto Rican versian. It had crushed garlic, olive oil, salt, black pepper, oregano, vinegar and paprika. I wasn't sure about measurements, so I sort of winged it.

Ingredients:
2 tbsp. olive oil
2 tsp. red wine vinegar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp. dried oregano (powdered is best, but you can use the leaves, if that's what you have)
1 tbsp. paprika
1/4 tsp. garlic powder

Mix all ingredients together in a small jar, shake and leave overnight to let the flavors mingle. It does not need to be refrigerated, as that will make the olive oil separate. Shake right before using.

Three Bean Salad with Mustardy French Dressing

Okay, so the other day (Thursday) is the first day I've missed a post. I was so busy this week with work, family, car trouble, etc, etc, and any spare moment I had (spare moment--haha, what's that!?), I spent working on my novel. So I apologize. I was really hoping I'd get a post done every day for a year, but life happens.

To make up for the missed day, I'm posting two recipes that go together today. Although of course you can use the French Dressing recipe for salads and other things, I used it on this, so I'm posting both recipes to catch up.

This three-bean salad is actually an adaptation of a recipe called "Kidney and Green Bean Salad." But I wanted three-bean salad, and I happened to have both kidneys and garbanzo beans in the closet at once (miracles happen) so I went ahead and made it a three-bean salad.

For this, you will need:
1 c. red kidney beans, cooked and drained
1 c. garbanzo beans, cooked and drained
1 c. green beans, cut into pieces roughly the length of a kidney bean, cooked and drained
1/2 small red onion, minced
1/3 c. mustardy French dressing (recipe below).

Toss ingredients together in a bowl and let sit at least an hour, preferably overnight or make in the morning and serve at dinner.

Mustardy French Dressing:
Combine in small jar and shake well: 
2 tbsp. vinegar (I used apple cider)
1/4 c. olive oil
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground pepper
1/4 tsp. garlic powder (or throw a crushed clove in the jar if you're going to let it sit a while...I made mine at the same time as the salad, so I used garlic powder)
1 tsp. ground mustard (or 1.5 tsp. Dijon if you don't have dried mustard in your spice cabinet)

Tomato, Green Bean and Carrot Salad

This recipe is LOOSELY based on a Fannie Farmer recipe that is made up mostly of green beans with a bit of tomatoes and no carrots. But since I still have lots of tomatoes that need to be used, and the green beans are just coming on, I switched their amounts and made a tomato salad with the other vegetables I had on hand (like carrots instead of celery). It turned out pretty well, and was definitely an interesting salad. I would probably make this again, as it was bursting with flavor and used a lot of tomatoes.

For this, I used:
3-5 medium tomatoes (about 4 cups, chopped)
1 c. green beans
1/2-3/4 c. black olives
2 medium carrots
1 very small red onion (or 1/2 medium)
1/2 c. vinaigrette dressing

1. Remove stems from green beans and cut to about 1 1/2 inch pieces
2. Put on to steam 5-10 minutes, until slightly soft but still a bit 'squeak' when bitten
3. Meanwhile, chop tomatoes
4. Put carrots and onions through a food processor or grate/mince them
5. Cut black olives if whole
6. Mix all ingredients together and dose liberally with vinaigrette/French dressing
7. Take green beans off heat and chill in fridge until cold, then toss into salad
8. Eat plentifully!

Avocado Appetizer

See the tiny grains of salt on the edge? I love my HTC phone camera!

This is about the simplest recipe possible. I had a few avocados leftover from when I made guacamole, so I looked in Fannie Farmer. She didn't have many recipes for avocados. Maybe they weren't very common cuisine in the 1890s!

Anyhow, this is one recipe I found. It's called "Avocados as the first course" in The Boston Cooking School cookbook.

Ingredients + cookbook.

Here's how to make it.

Cut an avocado in half.

Sprinkle with lemon juice and salt.

Fill the seed cavity with French Dressing.


And voila, a tasty little side dish, snack, or appetizer. This was the easiest 'salad' recipe ever. And delicious and healthy. Definitely will be making this again and again. Simply perfect, perfectly simple.

Honey Yogurt Salad Dressing

This recipe was for dressing, but I'm going to post the whole salad here. This dressing called for plain yogurt, honey, and lemon juice, but I had honey-lemon yogurt, so I used that. It turned out a bit sweet, and a bit sour, too, until it was on the vegetables. Then it was perfect, and the vinegar didn't taste quite so puckeringly sour.

Here's my adaptation of the Fannie Farmer recipe.

First, I put about 1/4 c. of honey-lemon yogurt in a jar.
I added about a tbsp. of apple cider vinegar.
Then I added salt and pepper and shook it all up.

And that was it. If you want to use plain yogurt, honey, and lemon juice, that will work, too. Also, you may want to use a different kind of vinegar if you have it--white or another kind. But this was good once it was all mixed up. I didn't have any lettuce, so I chopped up some tomatoes from the garden and some cucumbers my sister gave me from hers. I put the dressing on and voila! Easiest, quickest salad ever. And pretty tasty, too.

French Dressing (salad dressing)

Cool separating effect of oil, vinegar, and salt.

I've been so busy lately that it's hard to find a spare moment to cook. This evening I realized that after gardening, repainting the closets in our new house, and blanching 5 batches of cabbage, I hadn't cooked anything all day. So I threw together some salad dressing, which is called French Dressing according to The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, but is nothing like the red-orange French dressing you get on a salad bar. This is more like what I'd call Italian dressing, aka, vinaigrette.

The recipe (which I halved):
1/2 c. salad or olive oil
2 tbsp. vinegar
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground pepper
1/2 clove garlic

Add all ingredients to jar and shake. Remove garlic before serving.

For this one, I followed the recipe closely. I didn't think it had enough vinegar, so I ended up doubling that. And I like garlic, so I added a whole clove, cut in four.

It was pretty tasty, but will probably be even better the next day, once the garlic has sat in the oil a while. I have a couple other dressing recipes I like, but this one is super fast and easy, so I'd definitely make it again if I was in a hurry.

Salt effervescing.

Apologies for the many, many pictures, but this was so cool to watch as it came together. I usually make dressing in a bottle so I don't get to see the cool mixing process. It was really sweet watching it through the wide mouth of the jar.

 

Coleslaw

This recipe is very simple and goes with the recipe for old-fashioned dressing I posted yesterday. Really the recipe is so easy it's barely a recipe at all, aside from the dressing.

This side.

I had some trouble grating the cabbage, so I ended up using that side of the grater that's never been used before, the one with three wide slots. The regular large grating side made the cabbage too fine. But the wide slots gave a perfect coleslaw shred.

The Fannie Farmer Cookbook says:

• Shred cabbage or chop fine. 
• Chill in refrigerator. 
• Just before serving, mix with cooked dressing, using 1/2 c. dressing for each 2 cups cabbage. *The dressing recipe makes about a cup, so I used 4 cups of shredded cabbage (1/2 head).

Optional: add 1/2 tsp. caraway seeds or celery seeds, 1 tbs. minced onion or 1/4 c. finely cut green pepper.

I thought those were weird add-ins, as I've never had coleslaw with peppers. But maybe that's because I'm used to a typical southern slaw. This was a bit different, as it didn't have a mayo based dressing. The vinegar was very tangy. At the bottom of the recipe, it says:

"For variety, add grated carrot or a few slices of stuffed olives...celery, apple, or crushed pineapple..."

Okay, I've never had slaw without carrot. That's not 'for variety' in the south, it's a requirement. Pineapple is optional, I agree. But then, I have an ingrained opinion of what Southern food is like. Southern Slaw does not include olives. So much ew.

Overall, I would not really recommend this recipe, as it was sort of weird flavored and not what I'm used to. But if you've never had coleslaw, it's an easy one and you might like it.  

Old Fashioned Dressing

This is a good dressing that can be used on vegetable and fruit salads, according to The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. However, I'd find it very weird on fruit salad, I must say!

Here's the recipe:

Sift into a small heavy saucepan:

• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. dried mustard
• 2 tsp. sugar
• a dash of cayenne
• 2 tbs. flour

Stir in slowly:

• 1 egg
• 2 tbs. butter
• 3/4 c. milk
• 1/4 c. vinegar

Cook over low heat, stirring, until slightly thick. Cool.

Variations:

1. Cream dressing: Use cream in place of milk and butter
2. Tangy dressing: Add 1/4 tsp. celery seed. Thin with orange juice.

I made the regular old fashioned dressing to go on coleslaw. It wasn't a very typical tasting slaw, for sure. But, it was okay. I used apple cider vinegar, because that's what I had. It was very vinegary. I don't know if I'd use that much again. I might cut it by a tbs. or two. Also, I cooked it a minute too long I think, as it got very thick, almost like paste. I added a bit of milk and it thinned out, but be careful of cooking it too long.

I forgot to take pics, like I usually do of dressings. So I don't have one except the coleslaw pic.