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Baby Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing
0 Comments | Posted by Gwen in Main Course, Side Dish
Hello friends, remember me? It’s that old blog you’ve forgotten about. Today I thought I’d post some old-school deliciousness: spinach salad with warm bacon dressing. Here’s my spin on the 100-year-old classic. Traditionally its a wilted salad, but that’s because the recipe was concocted when there was only one type of spinach readily available: the giant, gritty full grown leaves. I prefer to keep some of the fresh crispness in the baby spinach to counter the rich, tangy dressing. BTW, this makes a great, speedy weeknight dinner for two.
Wowie wow, it’s been a while! Sorry for the delay in posting, but don’t worry, I still made it in time to celebrate spring veggies! As you’ve probably surmised from its frequent appearance as a side dish in my posts, the bf and I are biiiig asparagus fans. So when I saw that 3lb bag of asparagus at costco I thought, done and done. That night I whipped up a gorgeous asparagus soup that’s as delicious as it is elegant. So let’s get right to it, shall we?
Once again! HORRIBLE picture! I apologize internet food blogging posh world.
Nonetheless! This is a quick and easy dinner option. I personally love the taste of pork. It has it’s own complex flavors that I enjoy more than chicken but is definitely not as intense as beef. I’ve made versions of this recipe a few times and no matter what, it has always tasted amazing. You can add more sugar to the sauce to make it a little more sweet, add red wine, slice up some crunchy Asian/Korean pears or a crisp apple in with the onions. I love this recipe and so does Sean. Whenever we are feeling like an Americanski-riceless-not-so-Asian dinner, grilled pork with a balsamic sauce is the awesome.
I love veggies. My life/meal/body/face/soul feels incomplete unless I have them several times a day. Here is a quick and healthy way to get your veg on.
2 medium red potatoes, cut to inch squares
2 medium purple potatoes, cut to inch squares
half a head of cauliflower, divided to bite size
1 zucchini, sliced 1/3rd inch thick
1 teaspoon of olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Put it all in a bowl, mix, put into a baking pan. I like the heavier glass/pyrex ones. Place into the oven for 45 minutes. Toss them half way inbetween. SO EASY!
Ok, ok, so this recipe is almost straight out of this month’s bon appetit. Like, cover image, straight out. And the only reason it’s “almost” rather than “exactly”, is that I lacked some of the ingredients in my pantry and there were no sugar snap peas at the farmer’s market on saturday (maybe next week, i was told). The big difference is that bon appetit’s version is made with snap peas and pea tendrils. I swapped in pea sprouts since I had some in my fridge, along with some nice bloomsdale spinach from this week’s CSA veggie box. The salmon is marinated and then broiled on the same pan, which makes prep and cleanup a snap, and I’m pleased to say the finished dish truly looks glamorous enough to be on a newsstand.
OMG March 14th is Pie Day!
The “pie” does not win points on looks (neither do pictures taken at night from the iPhone) but it tastes so yum!
I was already using the oven and decided to throw a dessert together. However, I am pretty lazy and decided not to make a dough. Therefore, I decided to mash up a load of graham crackers to make the crust.
Once again, I apologize for the way it looks. Not very pretty, but oh the yum….!
I’m a big summer roll fan. No lie, I’ll take it over a deep fried spring or egg roll any day of the week. They’re light and super refreshing, and I enjoyed how, once you get over the intimidation factor, how incredibly simple they are to make and customize to your liking.
This is a recipe I was addicted to the summer after graduation, but I hadn’t really made since. That’s probably because I, along with my team of parental sous chefs, prepped over 100 of these alone for mine and V’s college grad party, and there definitely can be too much of a good thing. It’s based off of Tyler Florence’s recipe, but I’ve changed it up over the years. What I like most about Tyler’s spin on the summer roll is that it’s got the classic Thai elements, like cilantro and cellophane noodles and peanuts, and then some fresh Vietnamese ingredients, such as mint and mung bean sprouts, and also few delicious surprises, like the beets. So anywho, Jared and Robin’s oscar party seemed like the perfect opportunity to dust off that old recipe and give it an update. It’s a bit time consuming, prepping the veggies and rolling each individual roll, but man, it’s so worth the effort.
11
Columbia Restaurant’s 1905 Salad
1 Comment | Posted by Gwen in Main Course, Side Dish, Uncategorized
If you’ve never heard of Columbia Restaurant, it means you haven’t spent much time in Florida. It’s a chain of about a dozen restaurants that to my knowledge is restricted to the Sunshine State. To be perfectly honest, it’s not a very spectacular restaurant overall. It definitely caters to the tourists and the snow birds, and as a college student, I found it severely overpriced.
So why is it worth mentioning? Because they have a spectacular salad on their menu, called the 1905 salad, named for the year their flagship restaurant opened in Ybor City, a district in Tampa. The 1905 salad is Columbia’s big ta-dah, because all the servers know the recipe by heart and whip it up table-side. This should clue you in to how simple and fast you can prepare this for a weeknight dinner. The classic is with ham, which you can swap out for turkey or shrimp. I like the combo of ham and turkey, but rock it out to your tastes. Oh and did I mention it was really delicious?
Just a quick post tonight. I thought I’d share my recipe from dinner even though I didn’t take many pics.
You see, I’ve had a batch of homemade chicken stock sitting in the freezer, just waiting to be used. And since I spent so much time on it, I wanted to showcase it in a recipe that would be all about the broth. Hence the obvious choice, soup. All it took was Kim talking about soup today and I knew it was time.
This is my take on Italian wedding soup, partly inspired by a Tuscan soup called ribollita, sortof a minestrone thickened with bread with tons of local, cheap vegetables. And since we’re still getting our CSA veggie delivery we had a plethora of local, cheap veggies on hand. It basically came down to luscious chicken stock base with delicious, basily chicken meatballs, cannellini beans and lots of healthy, vibrant kale.
