In which Melisa finally talks food again

It's been so long since I've had anything great to share here. The days are flying by. We are, of course, still eating but what we're eating hasn't been all that memorable and time to write and photograph has been exceedingly scarce.

This holiday weekend, however, my lovely have been taken (by their lovely grandparents) to a hiking lodge in the gorge. I don't want to think about what they're eating but we are eating quite well. As soon as they left yesterday morning we headed out to the Flavour Spot waffle cart where I thoroughly enjoyed a tasty waffle wrapped, burrito style, around a creamy maple filling and topped generously with crunch toasted pecans. That kept me going nearly all day until a dinner at Por Que No made even tastier by the rum-laced mango agua fresca. We then headed out for hours of dancing and returned home ravenous. I don't know why I don't pack the car with snacks on the nights we go dancing as we are always starving when we leave but luckily I had a few of my father's heavenly sourdough biscuits tucked away and they hit the spot toasted and topped with Tillamook cheddar.

We had a very late Cuban style breakfast at Pambiche* complete with a basket of delicious pastries and cafe cubano. Their breakfast plates are full of nice little sides like friend plantain, tropical fruit salad, and other goodies so they are a bargain as you won't need lunch. What you will need is a walk and during ours we pretty much talked about....food.

I just borrowed Tessa Kiros' lovely Falling Cloudberries from the library for the second time. Nothing will pull you out of a cooking rut faster than one of her books. They are filled with gorgeous photos, family stories, and delicious recipes that are neither the usual humdrum fare nor terribly unfamiliar. The photos are spectacular enough that I would almost consider violating my admittedly lax standards of kashrut to try a bit of calamari. But not to worry, there are plenty of other dishes that I can happily eat either as written or with only slight modification.

After this morning's picadillo, a simple vegetarian meal sounded perfect. I've always wanted to try to make a pan-fried halloumi at home so that was a given and the chickpea salad with feta and cilantro sounded like a good match. What surprised me was just how nicely the cilantro went with the chickpeas. Onion and garlic-scented olive oil makes a simple, tasty dressing. I added the zast of the lemon I'd juiced but it occured to me later that some of the preserved lemons I have, finely chopped, might be a nice way to incorporate the lemon flavor. I took more than my fair share of "tastes" before getting this dish to the table and I think this will be a frequent dish this summer.

Of course I couldn't quite follow the recipe exactly given what we had on hand so my take on the recipe can be found here.

*click the link for a treat!

Winter Salad

It's almost the end of the term and, in our program, the end of the term means it's time for a party. ESL program parties are great because we get to try tasty foods from all over the world. I've had fabulous Cuban chicken and rice, Vietnamese spring rolls, Mexican tacos, and Turkish baklava made with homemade filo dough. All amazing stuff.

One of the Russian or Ukrainian students will inevitably bring a Russian salat, a layered salad of boiled potatoes, peas, carrots, cucumber, and hard cooked egg, carefully arranged and glued together with copious amounts of mayonnaise. It's not bad, but I find a little goes a long way.

I found a Central Asian take on the potato based layered salad in Darra Goldstein's The Vegetarian Hearth which is a wonderful resource for hearty, meatless meals for the colder months. The mayonnaise is replaced by a garlicky nut and herb based dressing which makes the vegetables positively sing.

I wish I could say this salad is a snap to make, but it isn't. It's fussy and there are beets involved. But it's the prettiest vegetable dish you'll ever find on a winter table and it tastes fresh and full of life. I hope you'll give it a try.

Printable recipe here.

Even when it's stupidly hot..

...you still need to eat. And not only sorbet. Sad, but true.

I had a mad craving for curried chicken salad yesterday and what I came up with was brilliant if I do say so myself: a lovely combo of creamy and cool, zippy, fruity, and crunchy with lots and lots of color.

I could have been deterred by the fact that despite my copious collection of Indian spices (seriously, you should see my freezer which is stuffed with things like curry leaves and mango powder and enough mustard seed to fill a small pillow) I had absolutely no curry powder in the house. But nothing was going to stop me from having my salad and nothing was going to force me out into the heat. I ended up making my own curry powder, and that may be why this salad was so lovely but then again, it would probably be just dandy with a good commercial brand of curry powder.

My other imrov move was using dried mangoes instead of fresh. Fresh woudl be delicious, I'm sure, but again, the heat. I stayed put and rehydrated some dried mangoes from Trader Joe's and they added the perfect bit of sweetness to the salad.

This was a huge hit at my house, enough so that I think I will be making it again very soon. There's really no end to this heat wave in sight, so I'm pretty happy to live on salads, smoothies, and sorbets.

Printable recipe here

Picnic Perfect

Picnic season is here in the Pacific Northwest and I couldn't be happier! We've been making the most of sunny days with lots of outdoor meals. I love to pick up little containers of delicious things at the New Seasons deli but that adds up pretty quickly so I'm trying to keep that to a minimum (though their smoky/peppery fromage fort is a new addiction).

When we packed up to celebrate my husband's birthday last weekend, we had so much good food: bread, lentil salad, cheeses, carrot salad, crackers, chips, fresh fruit and a few different spreads and dips (also a fabulous cake--more on that soon). This wildly diverse feast had no particular theme--it ranged from Tex-Mex to Mediterranean and it was all good.

The recipe I want to share with you today is always a huge hit. I was given this recipe years ago by a lovely homeschooling mom who has since, sadly, returned to Texas where this dish is apparently quite common. The recipe she shared for Cowboy Caviar is made with black eyed peas, avocado, tomato, and other tasty additions, along with a liberal splash of Louisiana style hot sauce and the resulting mixture is about the best thing you could ever put on a corn chip. This stuff is crazy good and a snap to make. I hope you'll try a batch soon, ideally on a picnic blanket beneath the shade of old trees on a sunny day. The recipe is here--enjoy!

Barley Salad

My goodness it's been hot here the last few days. Really hot, the kind of heat that I take personally. There is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for this as far as I'm concerned and it makes me lethargic and grumpy. And strangely hungry. Because the fact is, there are only so many cool drinks and smoothies I can consume before I realize that I really haven't eaten much of anything at all.

I'm always on the lookout for a good, substantial salad that can be made ahead and kept cool in the refrigerator. No one in my family will touch potato salads and pasta salads seem to get old fast. But leafing through my new copy of How to Cook Everything Vegetarian I came across a salad that looked substantial and and cooling with its dressing of lemon juice and fresh dill tossed with cooked barley, scallions, and chunks of cucumber.

We ate this the other night on the patio along with freshly baked challah, homemade mozzarella, marinated carrots, lemony-garlic chickpeas, and fresh fruit. The barley salad was crunchy and toothsome and the yogurt and cucumbers somehow seemed to cool down the sweltering air.

This would make a lovely traveling dish, whether for a brown bag lunch, a potluck, or a picnic. The recipe is here. Let me know what you think.

Central Asian Carrot Salad

It's funny how a carrot dish could start with turnips, but sometimes things work out strangely.

Late winter is hardly the high season for farmers markets but when The Spouse and I found ourselves unexpectedly free on a recent sunny afternoon we decided to include the lone east side winter market in our walk. As expected, greens featured heavily along with some lovely baked goods and some downright weird sauerkraut crackers.

Off to the side of the main action was the Hayat Farm stand whose offerings consisted of one lone table heavily laden with nothing but turnips. Normally I'm not a turnip fan but I really wanted to support this particular farmer whose family is one of the Meskhetian Turk refugee families who have recently moved to Portland and whose teens have studied in my classroom.

If you've read my not-food blog you'll have come across stories of these kids, some of whom have been among my most memorable students. They've not had had easy lives and I'm happy to support their communiy by buying their produce, even if that happens to be turnips.

Hayat Farm hands out recipes for much of their produce, but we couldn't get any suggestions about how to use the turnips as Farmer Idrisov's English is pretty minimal and my Russian isn't much better. But I did end up using their recipe for a carrot salad that was just delicious.

I don't think a person can have too many carrot salad recipes. Carrots are super nutritious, always tasty, and they keep well so they're always on hand at my house. This dish is flavored with deeply browned onions and their oil along with a liberal amount of ground coriander which give the dish an exotic twist. The recipe can be found here, at the end of a great article about Mr Idrisov and his family.

As for those turnips? They became a lovely curry courtesy of Mahanandi and they were pretty darned good. For turnips.