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Green Goddess Dressing

16 Jul

This is a dressing I have been making for the Yoga Center Saturday buffets for a while now…  And a new resurgence of retro recipes has made it popular and chic once again…

I make several different version of this dressing, with the pale green color being the common denominator.

 

 Green Godess Dressing

GREEN GODDESS DRESSING

½ cup buttermilk
½ cup plain yogurt
3 tbs of white wine vinegar
2 tsp honey
¼ cup fresh spinach leaves
¼ cup fresh basil leaves
2 scallions, chopped
A handful of fresh parsley, chopped a bit
2 tsp mustard – Dijon or grain mustard will do
¼ tsp salt
A few grinds of black pepper
1 cup canola or olive oil

 

  1. In a blender, mix all the ingredients except the oil.  Blend well and add the oil thru the blender cap while the blender is still running in a thin stream.

 

Use it to dress your salad or as a dip for crudités…  if you’re using specifically for crudités, I may blend also 4oz of cream cheese to make it thicker.

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Tomato Salad with Goat Cheese Toasts

1 Jul

I LOVE tomatoes!!!!  I just love them immensely… they might well be my favorite vegetable.  I am stuck between potatoes and tomatoes as my favorite, and I am just realizing that possibly neither of them is actually a vegetable.

Oh well, vegetable or not, I have been receiving way too many tomatoes in my weekly CSA box that I have been finding creative ways to have them.  Although growing up I used to just slice a tomato as a way to add “a salad” to my plate and, to this day, I still do it when I am too lazy to wash lettuces and cut up other salad components.

Something I recently started doing (or stopped doing would be a more accurate expression) is to not place tomatoes in the fridge.  With the temperatures being so hot here in PR, I always believed tomatoes would spoil way too quickly if they were left sitting on a counter.  Well, they eventually can spoil, but you can safely leave them there for a good week and they will be perfect.  The taste of a tomato is definitely better and more intense if it’s left at room temperature.  Apparently there is a component in the tomato that is shuts down its flavor permanently if the tomato is kept in the fridge.

This is a tomato salad made to celebrate the lusciousness of tomatoes… 

 Tomato Salad 2

TOMATO SALAD WTH GOAT CHEESE TOASTS

Tomatoes – organic and local preferably to ensure their freshness and flavor
1 whole-grain demi-baguette, sliced on a bias
Salt/Pepper to taste
Drizzle of olive oil
About 2 oz of goat cheese – left at room temperature for a few minutes
About 1 tbs of Basil/Parsley oil

 

  1. Slice tomatoes as you wish – in slices across its equator, pole to pole… however you prefer.
  2. Drizzle baguette slices with olive oil, some salt and pepper and toast in a toaster oven until they’re golden around the edges.  Slather them with goat cheese
  3. Place sliced/cut tomatoes on a plate.  Drizzle basil/parsley oil and sprinkle with a bit of salt and pepper.  Place goat cheese toasts on the side…

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Left –Over Salad Dressing

20 Jun

This is a concept I learned from Katy at the Yoga Center… 

When we cook at the yoga center, salad is a big part of each menu and we do a home-made salad dressing to go along with it.  The first time I was “in charge” of the salad dressing I did not know what to do.  I have never made salad dressings in such bug quantities or know how to season it.  One rule we have at the yoga center is that we do not taste food before it is finished and “offered” to the Supreme Being.

Here comes Katy to the rescue…  She told me to check if there was any salad left over from the lunch service and to start from there.  What!?!?!?  Well, this is how left-over dressing came about.  The SALAD in the name is two-fold – it’s a salad dressing and it’s made from left-over salad…  The concept is to take what you have in the fridge, particularly a little bit of lettuce or a little piece of onion to season the dressing.  You season it and voila – salad dressing that’s natural and free of preservatives…

Because this is a concept made to use up any leftovers you might have in your fridge before they go bad, this is more a method than it is a recipe… so bear with me in regards to the ingredients list.

 

 Leftover Dressing

LEFT-OVER SALAD DRESSING

A handful of whatever salad greens you might have… I have even used a bit if shredded cabbage for coleslaw, red cabbage, mesclun, arugula, icebrg lettuce, you name it…
½ carrot – if the salad already has carrots, you don’t need to add more
1 tomato – again, if the salad you have left over has tomatoes, no need to add more…
¼ onion
½ cubanelle pepper
1 tbs salt
1 tbs garlic and herbs seasoning
3 tbs vinegar or the juice of 2 lemons/limes
About ½ cup olive oil – I rarely measure this…
About ¼ cup water – to thin it out a bit… it may end up being too chunky
Optional add-ins:
1/3 cup yogurt
4 oz cream cheese
 ¼ cup egg-less mayonnaise

 

  1. In a blender add the salad, onion, carrot, pepper, tomato, vinegar or lemon juice and seasonings.  Add the olive oil and blend together well.  If you feel the mixture is too thick, add the water in little increments until it reaches your desired consistency. 

I sometimes add all the ingredients except the olive oil and drizzle it slowly through the chute on the blender cover to make sure the oil emulsifies and that it does not separate afterwards.

 

You can use this as a sald dressing over greens or sometimes I also like to drizzle on top of steamed/boiled veggies, like potatoes, sweet potatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, etc.

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Salade des Haricots Verts

13 May

Last week, the Serious Eats site released the challenge of making a great weekend meal by cleaning out your pantry.  I was so inspired by the idea I made two… well, it was really a whole meal composed of the main course, Spinach Puffed Empanadas, and this side salad with French green beans and lettuce, directly from by CSA basket.

  Salade Haricots Verts

SALADE DES HARICOTS VERTS

a handful of French green beans or haricots verts, trimmed of the stem end
5-6 leaves of lettuce, I used a local “del país” lettuce, but any buttery lettuce will do
½ tomato, chopped
½ cucumber, peeled if it’s not organic and chopped
The juice of ½ a lemon
Extra-virgin olive oil                                                                                                                    
Salt and pepper to taste

 

  1. In a small to medium covered sauce pan, bring about ½ inch of water to a boil.  Salt the water with about ½ tsp of salt and place the green beans.  Cover the saucepan again and wait about 1 minute.  Turn the heat off and let the green beans steam for about 4-5 minutes.
  2. Mix together in a salad bowl the lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and cooked green beans.  Pour over it the lemon juice and olive oil. Sprinkle salt and pepper to taste and toss to combine.

 

 Spinach Empanada 5

Serve alongside a Spinach Puffed Empanada or the main course of your choice…

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Thousand Island Dressing

30 Apr

This is another of the recipes related to my Foodbuzz’s 24,24,24 April event – A Very Veggie Experiment…  where I fixed dinner to my finicky friend Mariví and her 4 oldest kids – Ignacio, Diego, Kamila and Daniel.  The littlest one, Sergio, who’s just 3 months old, was spared of our experiment this time… 

I knew giving a side salad as part of dinner to Mariví’s kids was going to be the most difficult one to “sell”.  They are just not used to eating salad. But I had to give it a try…  I remember reading in the book Deceptively Delicious that even when you “sneak in” vegetables and other goodies into kid’s meals, it is important for them to learn that eating salads is key to good nutrition. 

I used organic romaine lettuce and organic cucumbers.  I bought mini cherry tomatoes and told them these were tomatoes specially made for kids.

                                                        c2ad6ae1c305402c1             1007288_cherry_tomatoes

I made them a Thousand Island Dressing to go along with the salad.  That used to be the only dressing I liked when I was a kid, so I figured they might prefer that to any vinaigrette I could make.  I started with a Mayo Ketchup base and added some sweet pickles.

 

 thousand-island-dressing

THOUSAND ISLAND DRESSING

½ cup eggless mayonnaise
¼ cup ketchup
4-5 sweet pickles or sweet pickle relish
About ¼ tsp Garlic Salt

 

  1. In a small bowl whisk together the mayonnaise, ketchup and garlic salt.  Add the pickle relish and if using larger slices of pickles, just chop them up as small as you can.
  2. Serve on top of your favorite salad… iceberg lettuce seems to work very well with this creamy dressing.

 

Some of the kids tried the tomatoes only but they were not impressed.  I can’t believe it because in my household, a sliced tomato was considered enough salad for a typical weekday meal when I was growing up.

It was so sad to see all the salads left almost intact…  I was the only one who really ate the salad.  Everyone else, including the mom, left salad on their plates. 

This was the real challenge… but I will not give up.  I will make them eat salad if it’s the last thing I do for that family…

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