dense salad Archives - Cheryl Brunette

2009-09-212017-05-19

Onion salad??? Yep and it’s delish!!

I’d better hurry up and post this before the Walla Walla Sweet Onion season is done. These are the large sweet, white onions grown in Washington State that have been available for the past couple of months. I’ve made this salad for 4 potlucks in the last month and it has been a smash hit at every one, partly because it’s so unusual. Any sweet onion will do and this dish is drop-dead simple to make.

For a large bowl, potluck size, you start with a couple of onions. Notice the larger one is really big. If you’re making this for yourself, start with a single, smaller onion.

Peel and chop the onion. If you do a large or medium dice (these photos are mediumish) it’s a salad. If you chop everything finely it’s still a salad, but because it has a relish-like consistency you can serve it with crackers as an hors d’oeuvre. Great for a “finger food” event.

(You will note that I was not Mrs. Blair’s star pupil in 8th grade Home Economics in the “uniformly diced vegetables” department.)

Put the onions in a largish bowl.

This is the first time I’ll mention bowl size but it won’t be the last. Always mix or prepare your food in a BIG bowl, much larger than the volume of the food you’re preparing. You do this because you need room to toss and mix the ingredients without them flying all over the counter and floor. This bowl is just under half-full.

Then you add crumbled feta cheese.

I have to say that buying the one on the left killed me because it cost $9.85 per pound (and it was the cheapest feta at my local large grocery) versus the $3.39 per pound for the one on the right from Costco. Almost 3 TIMES AS MUCH, but the first of these potlucks was a very special occasion and I needed it right then and the nearest Costco is 45 minutes away if I go a little, a tad, maybe 10% or 15% over the speed limit in the non-speed trap stretches.

Crumble the feta with a fork and add to the onions.

You can see that I fork-nibbled the corner of that 2+ pound block. By the time I was done I used about 8 ounces or half a pound for the amount of onions I had (those two you saw above). I determine how much feta to add by tossing it evenly and looking at it. It should look roughly like this in terms of proportions.

Then it’s time to make the dressing . . . once again, a vinaigrette. We start with a good extra virgin olive oil, or two in this case. I finished up the one on the left and opened the one on the right. The Spanish one on the left is lighter partly because I store it in the refrigerator once it’s open to keep it fresh, partly because it’s a lighter green oil.

And here’s one of the few times I use white vinegar for food. The onions are white, the cheese is white and I want the salad to stay that way so I add white vinegar.

I often use a measuring cup to mix my vinaigrettes but I don’t use it to measure. Instead, I use it to eyeball the proportions. This is about 3 parts oil to one part vinegar.

Add some dried basil and dried oregano which you’ve rolled in the palm of your hand to break it smaller and release fresh flavor.

Those of you with acute perception will notice an oddity about the last two pictures and I’m not telling you what it is. Comment when you figure it out.

You don’t need to add salt. The salt of the feta is the perfect complement to the sweet, yet a-little-bit-bitey onion.

Toss the dressing with the onions and feta.

Let it rest for at least 4 to 8 hours. Overnight is too much. This salad wants to be made in the morning and served that evening. Somehow, that’s the perfect amount of time for the vinegar to work its magic on the onion.

When you serve it, put it into a pretty bowl.

This particular tray went with me to a Blessings which always starts with a 5:30 potluck. Our spiritual work starts at 7:00 and goes until it’s time to stop, usually by 9:00. The cantaloup is a tiny, sweet variety grown by one of the island farmers. The plums are dead ripe, juicy and sweet. They would never make it to a grocery store because their ripeness cycle is short and perishable. I had picked them from a friend’s tree the day before.

My wish for you is that you are blessed with an abundance of good food and that you gather with your friends and family and neighbors to share it.

2009-09-122024-05-29

Dense salads . . . 100 ways or more

Autumn is coming on fast even though it’s supposed to get to 90º in Salem OR today and I am both home and wearing shorts. This happens only about 12 days a year and usually for less than 6 hours each of those days. Call me Milk Legs. And as the weather gets colder I switch from dense salads in the fridge to soups so I’d better finish up this thread for the season.

Congratulations on making chicken salad or it’s fancied up sister, curried chicken salad. These are among the more challenging of dense salads because you have to cook the chicken. If you tried one of them, everything else will be a snap for you.

There are hundreds of dense salad variations. All you need are “solids” cut or broken into bite-sized pieces or smaller and a dressing to bind them together. I never measure amounts for these. I just put in what looks good or what I have on hand or enough to take for a crowd or enough to last me a few days. Here are some combos I make (and I’m starting again with basic chicken salad because I’m a teacher. “Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Tell them. Then tell them what you told them.” Multiple exposures work.)

BASIC CHICKEN (OR TURKEY) SALAD
cooked chicken breast
celery
red or green onion
a tart, crisp apple
Dressing= a little cottage cheese mashed with the back of a spoon in a small bowl until smoothish and add a little milk to it. (or whirl it in a small blender). You could also use a good mayo or yogurt cheese.

CURRIED VARIATION
To the above solids add some raisins or dried cranberries, currents or cherries. Frozen peas that have just been thawed and drained are also great to add. To the dressing add some curry powder. (This one really impresses people. Good for a pot luck or someone coming for lunch.)

BASIC TUNA SALAD
tuna from a can, broken up
celery
a little onion
dill relish
Dressing=mayo

SALMON VARIATION
Same as above except with salmon. I use leftover cooked salmon or Trader Joe’s
canned Wild Alaskan Pink Salmon which is a great value. I keep it in the larder. And instead of dill relish I add capers.

COMPANY TUNA VARIATION
Same as the basic but make sure you have albacore tuna (all I have around anyway) and add sliced hard boiled eggs For this I cut everything a little bigger and mix very lightly. Dressing = vinaigrette made with a light-colored vinegar

Beyond these fish and fowl combinations there are grain, legume, and pasta variations. Choose 1 or 2 from Column A (all should be cooked before putting them into the salads), 3 or 4 or 5 from Column B, and a vinaigrette.

Two things:

This chart doesn’t have everything on it. It’s just a place to get you started.
You could choose 5 or 4 things from Column B, skip Column A and be done with it.

Column A

Column B

Vinaigrette

-brown rice
-wild rice
-pasta (any kind from whole grain to rice noodles, and there are lots of fun shapes)
-bulgur
-lentils
– beans (black, white, red, garbanzos etc. canned and rinsed makes this an easy add. If you make them from scratch it’s cheaper and don’t overcook them)
-quinoa (KEEN-wah)

-red or green onion
-celery
-carrots
-broccoli
-cauliflower
-sweet peppers (green, red, orange)
-mushrooms
-peas (thawed if frozen)
-corn (thawed if frozen)
-fresh parsley
-fresh cilantro
-nuts (almonds, walnuts, cashews, pecans, etc.)
-green beans (lightly steamed)
-grapes
-apple
-cucumbers
-tomatoes
-jicama
-raisins or other dried fruit (e.g. cranberries, currants or blueberries)

BASIC RECIPE
-1/3 to ½ cup oil
-1 to 3 Tbsp acid (vinegar or lemon or lime juice)
-salt and pepper
-herbs and spices of choiceand usually, one or more of the following:
-finely minced aromatics (garlic, scallions)
– stone-ground mustard
-a tsp of sweetener (sugar, honey, maple syrup, ginger syrup)

Put it all in a small jar (pint or so) with a screw-on top and shake it up.

THE VINAIGRETTE
So easy, fast, cheap and delicious that I forget why we have bottled dressing. Even mayonnaise is a variation of it: acid plus oil with a few seasonings.

The Acid
I just checked my stash. I have 5 kinds of vinegar: balsamic, rice, red wine, apple cider, and sherry.

I keep a sixth type, white distilled vinegar, under the sink for cleaning but I don’t use it in food very often. Vinegar keeps forever in the cupboard. If I had to choose only one it would be organic apple cider vinegar. Balsamic is very distinct in flavor and it would be my second choice. Lemon or lime juice (freshly squeezed) are fresh-tasting and lively and can be used alone or combined with vinegar or one another.

The Oil
I have 5 types on hand: extra virgin olive oil, canola, toasted sesame, chili oil and coconut, all in the refrigerator except for the coconut which is solid at room temperature and a few ounces of the olive oil in a little dispenser bottle on the counter because it’s my everyday oil.

The canola (which is basically flavorless) is for baking or for part of a vinaigrette oil. I use the coconut oil (organic) primarily as a nighttime hand and face cream. I have a small jar of it next to the bed that I refill from the big jar. It’s incredible! Cheap, cheap, healthy, absorbs into the skin quickly and smells clean and wonderful. It’s also good for stir fry, especially Thai or other Southeast Asian-style dishes. The toasted sesame oil is both perishable and very strong. I use it in oriental style stir fries sometimes and in some marinades. The chili oil is VERY FIERY. I use only a drop here and there in a dish if I want to heat it up without changing the other flavors.

The standard ratio of oil to vinegar or acid is 3 to 1: 3 parts oil, 1 part acid. But you can vary that according to your taste. You might try 2:1 or 4:1. Experiment. You can see pictures of the process of making a lemon vinaigrette in “A refreshing slaw.”

A couple of tried and true salads to inspire you.

DARCY’S FAVORITE DENSE VEGGIES
broccoli
grapes (red are the prettiest. I cut them in half)
celery
bacon bits (a few crisp strips crumbled or the already cooked ones)
red onion
almonds
Dressing: small amount of mayo or vinaigrette

FAVORITE PEA SALAD THAT’S EXPENSIVE IN THE DELI
big bag of frozen green peas, thawed and drained
red or green onion
bacon bits (again, real, crumbled, crisp bacon. I know it’s not great for health but I don’t eat slabs of it, I’m not a food Nazi and I was raised by Austro-Hungarians. That and Norwegian Great-Uncle Art used to smoke bacon especially for us but that’s a story for another day.)
small cubes of cheddar (Optional, but then everything is for these salads. They tend to sog up a little after a day in the fridge.)
Dressing = a little mayo

The purpose of this post was, once again, to have you start thinking differently about food preparation. You don’t follow a “recipe.” Instead, you learn a technique (like roasting veggies), play with it a few times, and it becomes your skill that you can use without even thinking.

Quick! look in your fridge. What combination can you create today? Now do it. You can’t “make a mistake.” It’s just food, not dynamite.

2009-07-222009-08-22

A refreshing “slaw”

I had a quick email last night from mobim (my older brother in Michigan) asking me to send a recipe to his friend for a salad I made while I was there. This is what I sent:

Hi Pam,

My brother asked me to send you a recipe . . . I think it was the “slaw” you liked, right? I don’t have a recipe, really. It’s different every time I make it, but here is what I think went into it when I was there . . .

a small red and a small white cabbage, thinly sliced
a sweet onion (a red one or a Walla Walla or Bermuda or Vidalia will do) quartered and very thinly sliced (maybe just half of this onion depending on how much it bites back when you bite into a little piece)
grated carrots
I love to add very thinly sliced red, orange, yellow or green bell pepper or a little of each color but I didn’t that night because John’s and the girls’ digestions are disturbed by it.
I usually use jicama instead of white cabbage when I’m home. It’s readily available here.
about 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup of chopped cilantro depending on how big your pile of veggies.

I thinly slice, julienne these all into a large container . . . then I make the dressing which is a vinaigrette type. Because I don’t measure, I have to guess, but these are approximate proportions and amounts:

1/2 cup of oil, extra virgin olive mostly, with a little canola or other flavorless type
1/4 to 1/3 cup fresh lime juice and rice vinegar, mixed . . . I think I used 2 limes that night and made up the rest with the vinegar
a couple teaspoons of honey or sugar (natural is best)
salt and pepper
a little cayenne (very little if you’re serving the Brunettes)

Whisk the dressing ingredients together. Pour over the veggies. Toss to coat. Let sit for a few hours in the fridge (or longer) before serving.

Hope this is what you were looking for. If not, write me.

Cheryl

Cabbage is readily available year round, keeps well and makes a good slaw-type salad. It’s a “semi-dense” salad and especially refreshing in hot weather and the warmish weather which is about as hot as we get on the island.

Here’s one I made recently at home. Cabbage is the base, but whatever “dense veggies” I have on hand can go into it. In this case here are the ingredients sliced and grated to appropriate size:

slaw-ingredients

There is julienned jicama, thinly sliced red cabbage and red bell pepper, grated carrot, chopped cilantro, and chopped scallions/green onions. I happen to love cilantro but not everyone does. You can use parsley instead which is more commonly used in middle and northern European cooking. However, I really do think that the addition of a freshly chopped herb elevates the dish from “cole slaw” to something better.

Notice the combination of colors. Beautiful, no? Beauty is important.

Then I made the dressing. I generally prefer lime juice for the “slaw” that has cilantro and jicama, but I had only lemons in the fridge. I juiced two lemons with my mother’s old glass juicer . . .

juicelemons

Put the juice into a liquid measuring cup with some good, extra virgin olive oil . . .

lemonvinaigrette

Usually you use about twice as much olive oil as acid (lemon or lime juice or vinegar) but I’m a few pounds up and cheating on the not so much oil side these days.

Add salt and pepper to this mixture . . .

S&P-in-vinaigrette

Stir this dressing with a fork . . . be energetic about it . . . then pour it over the veggies and toss them all together so that the veggie pieces are coated with the dressing . . .

mixredslaw

Let the dressing and vegetables mingle for a few hours before serving. And when you do serve the salad, turn it out into a pretty dish . . .

serveredslaw

Beauty counts.

That and it’s delicious.

2009-07-112022-06-25

Yogurt cheese dressing instead of mayo

I seriously love fat. Not all types, but I’ve told my son that if I don’t get cremated I want to be embalmed in Challenge Unsalted Butter. I’m not sure it would work but I’d finally get my fill of it.

However, I don’t have as much muscle mass as I used to and I don’t always get as much exercise as I would like so I try not to have too much fat every day. One tablespoon of good, real mayo has 110 calories, of which 110 are fat. I love it and eat it but I often use something lighter when I’m dressing a dense salad. My favorite is nonfat yogurt cheese.

Nonfat yogurt cheese?!??

Yogurt is fermented milk. You take some milk from a goat, cow, camel, sheep, yak, whatever you’re milking that day, introduce some bacteria into it, keep it warm so they can multiply and bingo! In a few hours you’ve got yogurt.

Now that may sound gross to those of you who think that food grows in plastic containers, but if you stick around this blog long enough, you’ll toughen up. I was skinning rabbits with my grandpa when I was five and I raised beef cattle for 10 years. I’m not queasy when it comes to looking at real food sources.

There’s evidence that yogurt has been around for a long time. We can track it back about 12,000 years, and it makes good sense. Think about it. You milk the musk ox, leave the milk in a bowl near the hearth, bacteria floating by decide it’s an inviting place to land and the result is thick, tangy and delicious and it lasts a while. Refrigerated, it lasts a long time and it stays alive. Yogurt is a live food! This is a good thing.

Most of what’s sold in the U.S. as yogurt really just starts with yogurt. Then a whole lot of stuff is added to it: sugar, gelatin, high fructose corn syrup, fruit jams, pectin, pretend flavors, etc. Some of these “yogurt food products” have been heated in their processing in a way that kills the good bacteria. This is a bad thing. It’s not even honest to call them yogurt, but honesty is not a hallmark of the corporate food industry and, once again, I digress . . .

You can buy yogurt with the same fat contents as milk. Whole milk or yogurt is 4% fat content. Then there’s 2%, 1%, and nonfat. Nonfat organic yogurt is a staple at my house.

It can be gussied up a number of sweet and savory ways and is nutritious and satisfying. Oh . . . and one cup equals 120 calories. That makes it 15 times less fattening than mayo.

About this yogurt cheese thing?

1. Start with good, real yogurt.

YogurtCheese_1

2. Get out your tools: a strainer, coffee filter, and tall bowl.

YogurtCheese_2

3. Nest the tools so:

YogurtCheese_3

4. Add a cup or two of yogurt.

YogurtCheese_4

5. Let it drain a few hours or overnight. The longer it drains the thicker it gets.

YogurtCheese_5

This has drained for about six hours.

YogurtCheese_6

When I turn it out on a plate you can see it’s more solid than regular yogurt.

YogurtCheese_7

I can even slice it.

YogurtCheese_8

6. Put it into a clean bowl.

YogurtCheese_9

7. Add some curry powder.

YogurtCheese_10

8. Mix well.

YogurtCheese_11

And voila! You have the dressing for your chicken salad.

2009-06-252024-05-29

Dense salads continued . . .

A pithy review of the last post

Dense salads . . .

consist of small pieces of real food plus a dressing (also real food).
are easy. It’s hard to “make a mistake” while preparing them.
are good “fast food” because they keep in the fridge a few days and we can nosh on them any time. They help keep us out of the cheesecake and chocolate (mostly).
are good for you. You make them out of REAL FOOD.
are infinitely (or close to it) variable so you don’t have to get bored eating them.
can be very economical.
Commercially prepared dense salads (like those in plastic containers or the big grocery chain deli) may have chemicals in them. Yuck! Chemicals taste bad and they are not a food group.
You learned how to make Basic Chicken Salad. If there’s anything you didn’t understand, or any steps you don’t know how to do, write me a comment and I’ll clarify it for you.

I know I didn’t say all those things in exactly those words, but those were the explicit and implicit lessons.

Basic Chicken Salad dressed up to impress the neighbors

Michelle commented yesterday “Sounds like my “Instant Karma” chicken salad. I add some curry and raisins instead of apples. It’s addicting and good for your soul!” I love that name. She anticipated today’s post . . .

Curried Chicken Salad

“Curry” refers to a savory sauce seasoned with the yellow powder we associate with sitar music and aging hippies. We aren’t going to make a sauce but we are going to use the powder.

It’s not a spice but a mixture of ground herbs and spices. There are probably as many combinations as there are Indian grandmothers but they all contain turmeric which gives them that yellow color. Other ingredients may include a bunch of C-words—cardamon, coriander, cumin, cayenne, cinnamon, dried chilis—and maybe some ginger and fennel and mustard seeds. You can grind your own but I get it in small amounts from The Food Co-op bulk spices and herbs area though you can buy it at any grocery store. It can be mild or pack a lot of heat. I suggest you buy mild and add cayenne if you want it hotter.

To make “Curried Chicken Salad” follow the basic salad procedure except add some raisins like Michelle, or I like Craisins (sweetened dried cranberries) because I love the dark red with the bright yellow dressing. I usually add coarsely chopped almonds or pecans, and I leave in the apple (if I have one on hand).

Add some of the curry powder (a spoonful or two) to your mayo, blend it well, scrape it into the bowl with the small food chunks and toss the whole thing. By that I mean toss the ingredients in the bowl until everything is covered more or less evenly. Use a couple of forks or a spoon and fork. You want it sort of “fluffed up.” (I know, how can a dense salad be fluffy? The ingredients are dense, the salad is lightly combined. Don’t push all the air out of to stuff it into a container, for example.)

If you present this in a pretty bowl lined with lettuce leaves your neighbors at the annual close-off-the-street-potluck will be so impressed that they’ll smile and wave every time they see you for the rest of the year.

On second thought, it may not fly in some neighborhoods, but it’s very pretty nonetheless and when it comes to food . . . beauty counts.

2009-06-232022-06-25

Opportunistic eating #1: dense salads-chicken

Opportunistic Eating (Noshing)

Unless I’m with friends or family I seldom eat “a meal.” Instead, I nosh. That’s a Yiddish word for grazing or grabbing a snack like a bowl of soup or a chunk of chocolate (organic dark).

When I feel a hunger tug I do not want to wash lettuce, spin it dry, tear it up, chop accompanying veggies, make the vinaigrette, etc. I just want to eat and I’ll go for the chocolate every time unless I have cheesecake in the house. In other words, when it comes to food I’m like a Beluga whale, an opportunistic feeder. I eat almost any real food and will choose the most available thing that I can find at the moment.

And because I want to stay healthy and keep my weight reasonable, I’ve devised strategies to keep me out of the cheesecake (which is about the easiest thing in the world to nosh. You just go after it with a fork.) In cold weather I make big pots of soupstews (thick, savory, creative pots o’ goodness.) In warm weather I make big bowls of “dense salads.” I keep them in the fridge, front and center.

Introducing “The Dense Salad”

A dense salad is a mixture of veggies, meat, fish, grains, fruit, pasta, cheese, legumes, hard-boiled eggs, all cut into small pieces and tied together with a “dressing.” You don’t put all those things into one salad. You just pick a few things that go well together and dress them properly.

Go to the deli department of the supermarket and you’ll see many combos. They’re pricey and the dressings are “prepared,” meaning I can taste chemicals and weird non-real-food aftertastes. So today we have our first lesson on dense salads . . . .

Your Basic Chicken Salad

Chicken breasts are widely available. They’re not very flavorful which makes them a perfect choice for salad. The boneless, skinless kind are the most expensive, but probably the easiest to try if you feel unsure about setting out on this adventure. If you’re willing to pick over the meat to remove the bones and skin, you can save money.

Get out a wide, flat saucepan or fry pan with a cover. Rinse the chicken breasts and put them in it with about 1/4 inch of water. Cover, turn the heat on and bring to a boil. When it gets there (it depends on your heat source for the time so you need to pay attention. When you have constant big bubbles and lots of steam, that’s a boil) turn the heat way down. After a couple of minutes it will settle into a gentler bubbling called a simmer. Simmer for about 15 minutes.

You can insert meat thermometers (160 degrees) and all that to see if your food is safe to eat but just use common sense. Does it look like “cooked chicken” all the way through? If you can see any transparency or red or blood when you cut into it, simmer some more. Don’t simmer it for hours or it will be as tough as an old fighting cock, though even that doesn’t matter much when you’re making a salad.

What to do once the chicken is cooked

Cool it. The chicken, I mean. Remove it from the pan and put it into a bowl. Put the bowl in the fridge after you cover it with plastic wrap or a big plate.

While it’s cooling let’s see what you have in the larder that goes with it. Celery and onion are the most important. They both keep a long time so I always have them on hand. The only caveat is that the onion needs to be sweet or light. That would be “green onions” or scallions which are short lived, red onions which last longer but have more bite, or one of the “sweets,” Vidalia, Walla Walla, Burmuda or some others I don’t know.

Wash and chop up some celery and put it in a big bowl. Glass or ceramic is best. Chop up some onion and add it to the celery.

I know I haven’t given you amounts, like a cup of this and a pound of that. I learned to cook from my Grandma and Mom and other old ladies who seldom used recipes. And that’s a key to learning to feed yourself well. Pay attention to what’s in front of you not what’s on paper. So you got too much onion or it’s chopped too big . . . so what? This is not open-heart surgery. No one will die from it and next time you’ll adjust it a little to suit you better.

How to peel an onion or chop celery? Google them. There are tons of resources that already teach that. My goal is not to duplicate that information but to adjust your attitude toward “cooking” and eating.

[onion addendum added in 2022: I forgot to tell you this earlier even though it’s a technique I’ve used for years.. Chop or slice your bulb onion of any sort (i.e. not scallions) and put the pieces onto a bowl. Cover in cold water and let them float around for about 15 minutes. Drain the onions well and then add to the salad. This takes some of the bite out. As I’ve gotten older I like raw onion to be a little more gentle.]

Off the soapbox and back to the bowl

Time to take out the chicken and chop it up and put it into the bowl with the celery and onions.

Other things you might add

. . . a chopped up apple, especially a green one, chopped dill or sweet pickle or cucumber.

Time for the dressing

Lot’s of choices here. The quick and dirty (and delicious) first choice is to dollop in some GOOD, REAL mayonnaise. How much? Well, you don’t want it swimming in it and you don’t want it dry. Again, use your judgment. You can’t start to trust it until you exercise it. Add some salt and pepper (that will be a whole blog entry by itself but I’m in a hurry tonight). Toss it all together and serve on a lettuce leaf or eat it out of the bowl with a fork.

I’m starting a theme here and it is always and foremost EAT REAL FOOD.