Food Archives - Cheryl Brunette

2010-12-142017-05-19

Homemade Cream of Tomato Soup

My son recently moved to Cambridge to be with his Beloved who is finishing up her degree in architecture at MIT. They shop at the Haymarket where they get great bargains on produce. One of this week’s steals was 15 POUNDS OF TOMATOES FOR $2.

When I heard that, I emailed him:

“Sounds like Cream of Tomato Soup time. My grandma used to make it. Onions, garlic, tomatoes (she removed the skins first. It’s easy to do. Get a small pot of water boiling. Drop the tomatoes in and remove them in about 30 to 40 seconds and put into a colander in the sink. The skins should split and peel right off. If not, add 10 second increments to the immersion time.)

Saute the onions and garlic first. Add the tomatoes and cook them slowly (like a simmer) until they break down and are very soft. At this point you can puree the soup with a blender. My preference would be to puree about 3/4 of it. That would leave some texture. Return to pot, and add milk. We used cow’s milk and I don’t know the best vegan alternative yet. Rice milk? Soy milk? Heat gently (don’t bring to a boil) and serve.

[I just Googled vegan cream of tomato soup. One recipe uses unsweetened soy yogurt and another uses chunks of Italian bread, (like Italian Bread Soup). The bread one I know works well and tastes great.]

Somewhere in there add salt and pepper to taste and maybe some herbs if you’re inclined. Basil and/or oregano might be nice. Thyme for a different take on things. And I rather like parsley with tomatoes.

Haymarket sounds incredible. I love how you guys do things. We gain so much freedom by being thoughtful with our money.”

He made it that night and their response? : “MAN that soup was good.” I thought you might enjoy it as well.

Of course, they had grilled cheese sandwiches with it. One of icy winter’s favorite comfort meals.

You can use good canned diced or whole tomatoes if you don’t have fresh, but be careful. Once you try this you may never open a can of tomato soup again.

2009-12-122017-05-19

White bread

I never did finish my stories about white bread . . .

Already you know that I buy it only to make dressing at Thanksgiving. Sometimes I make dressing at other times of the year if my nephew (who is in the Navy and not always here for holidays) is in town, just because he likes it a LOT. I ask for turkey backs and necks at my local grocery (they don’t often have them) and freeze them so that I have them on hand for a dressing emergency. Only occasionally can I find giblets, and I freeze them as well to add to the mix.

But I have other experiences with white bread.

White Bread Story #1

The first one involves my Grandma. She went through a stage about 10 years before she died that can only be described as “vivid.” This was in the late 60s and early 70s and hot pink, lime green and tangerine orange were . . . well . . . available. Grandma started crocheting afghans that were loud enough to keep you awake at night. It turned out it was her cataracts. As things grew dim through her eyes she sought out the colors she could see. She had created artistic things all her life. . . the queen of craftdom . . . and she liked color. But now she could see only the neon varieties which I’m guessing looked like tasteful pastels to her.

During this period she discovered a new craft . . . White Bread Clay. She mixed half and half water and Elmer’s Glue and kneaded it with white bread (crusts removed) and some food coloring . . . that would be my mother’s professional cake-decorator colors that knocked your socks off if you weren’t careful.

Grandma patiently kneaded the mixture into a fine sculpting medium. It was the precurser of Sculpey it was so smooth . . . and she sculpted flowers. Small, delicate, one-petal-at-a-time, perfectly formed roses and tulips and zinnias . . . that looked like they came from Mars because surely the flowers are brighter there.

Once she had her cataract operation her creations settled back into colors that were more “acceptable.” I missed her color flamboyance, but her gifts started to match my decor better.

White Bread Story #2

When my son was about 4 years old, new people bought the property next door and they had 2 children only slightly older than he. This was a huge boon . . . to have kids “next door” to play with at any time.

One day he came running home, excited to no end . . . “Momma!!!! They have the best sandwiches there!!! You can squoosh’em down to real skinny. Just push on’em and they get flat.” Beloved Son had met white bread in its native form for the first time.

[Side note: Beloved Son also met Kool-aid at this house. This family had plenty of money to buy real food and mom was home all the time. They only lived next to us 4 or 5 years and both children broke bones while they were there from small falls. Beloved son fell out of trees and tumbled 360º off his moving ATV (All-Terrain-Vehicle, his father’s idea when he was 10) and had bruises only. Good nutrition makes a difference,]

White Bread Story #3

From 1990 until 1998, every winter but one, we went to Baja California and other southern places for 2 to 4 months in the winter. We had a 20-foot 1970-something Minnie Winnie motor home. It had high clearance and took us to remote outposts. This was when Cabo San Lucas was a sleepy fishing village . . . no luxury hotels, free camping on the beach. Large (6″5″) husband, large dog (German/Australian Shepherd mix), me and Beloved Son. We had some adventures, I tell you, with hurricanes and washed out roads . . . but that’s a story for another day.

Remember I said that Ma’s Thanksgiving dressing takes about 1 and a half loaves of bread. I usually cheat and use one loaf of white bread and make up the rest with the good stuff . . . the real staff of life . . . but one of those years, along about 1993 or 4 I bought 2 loaves of white bread for Thanksgiving dressing. I used the requisite one-and-a-half-loaves and that left one-half loaf that I put on top of the refrigerator and forgot.

We took off shortly after Thanksgiving that year and returned 4 months later. The bread was still on top of the refrigerator. Now . . . granted . . . it was winter and cold in the house while we were gone. But it didn’t freeze. And the sun came in to warm things up on some days . . .

I saw the bread and said, “Geeze! I forgot and left this bread out.” (I hate to waste anything.)

It was in its original plastic bag packaging. I opened it up and called Beloved Son to witness what I had found . . . (Home-schooling Mom Syndrome. Everything is a teachable event.)

“Honey . . . look at this. This bread has been sitting here for 4 months and it has no mold. Mold is one of the lowest of life forms. If this stuff cannot support mold, it will not support your body.”

Except for dressing, Beloved Son does not eat White Bread. Neither do I.

2009-12-112017-05-19

An abbreviated “recipe” for Ma’s Thanksgiving dressing

Here’s an email I sent to my newest niece last year. Her husband, my youngest nephew, is very fond of his grandma’s dressing even though she died before he was born. This is basically an abbreviated version of my last post . . . more “recipe style.”

Dressing recipe to Gretchen

2009-12-102017-05-19

Wonder Bread and Ma’s Thanksgiving dressing

This week I want to talk about my experiences with store-bought white bread. First of all, we didn’t eat it in our house when I was growing up in the 1950s. My dad said that if you ate it it would make a dough ball in your stomach and gum up your whole system. It might even cause you to explode. We ate my Mom’s home-baked white bread and the local bakery’s pumpernickel and rye swirl.

My dad died in 1959 and that changed our diets considerably. We had much less money and Ma got to make what she darn well pleased and that included more gluten-rich Austro-Hungarian fare like chicken and dumplings . . . thus began the really good Thanksgiving dressing. Actually, I think this was always her dressing, even when Dad was alive but I only remember it as a pre-teen when I started to help her make it.

Ma’s Thanksgiving Dressing

The prelude to the holiday season in my house is the smell of white bread. It’s the only time of the year that I buy the stuff because it’s my job to make Ma’s dressing for Thanksgiving. If I don’t use the real (and, paradoxically, non-real) item the family will know and I will have failed my one puny job . . . so I do it.

I start a couple of days before the event by drying out the bread.

Buy a loaf or two of white bread (it takes about 1.5 loaves, but I cheat by using one loaf and supplementing with real bread.)
Dry out the bread. As in, get out as much moisture as you can without toasting or burning it. This is easy for me because I have a wood stove and I put the pieces on racks on the wood stove until they’re crispy but still white.

and here are my cheater breads . . . a nicely sliced baguette

and one of my tokens to health in this recipe . . . a whole grain bread full of various seeds.

As the bread dries, crumple it into a BIG bowl and when it’s all there and the big day has arrived, get out the other ingredients: pork sausage, celery and two MAMMOTH onions (they were a over pound each).

Oh . . . I forgot to tell you. A couple of days before I made the dressing I cooked up a couple of turkey backs with some water, a little salt, a small onion, quartered, and some big celery chunks. I picked off the meat, discarded the bones and skin and “defatted” the broth by putting it in the fridge and lifting off the fat that floats to the top and becomes solid with the cold (there wasn’t much). I didn’t photograph this process. It wasn’t until the next day that I decided I might blog about it. By that time the process was done. Sorry. But here are the results:

The broth, of course, is on the left. You can see big chunks of onion and celery in it. The little bits of turkey meat are on the right. My mom always used to say, “The meat’s sweeter close to the bone.” I think what she meant was that it was more flavorful, and that has been my experience.

But . . . to the process . . . and there is both nostalgia and practicality involved in this. My almost newest nephew is miles from me he will deep fry the turkey and I’m making the dressing . . . ergo WE DO NOT STUFF THE TURKEY. It’s perfectly fine if you stuff your turkey but, contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to have a turkey to make stuffing. As in, you can make the dressing off site of the main event.

Starting over again at #1) get out The Dressing Pot . . .

It’s aluminum. It’s the only aluminum pot I own and the only time I use it is to make dressing at Thanksgiving. It was Ma’s and she used it to make dressing . . . what can I say? It’s big, can go into the oven, and I’m a sap for tradition.

2) Put the pot on the stove, turn on the heat (mediumish) and add the pork sausage to the pot. Break it up into small pieces and stir it a lot. (I used my wood stove. It was hot-enough-to-cook-it, whatever temperature that was.)

After it’s cooked through it looks like this:

3) Add those 2 pounds or so of yellow onions that you’ve chopped up. I leave the pieces pretty big.

and stir them around, cooking them until they’re softened. They look a little translucent.

Next, I added the small turkey bits.

I let those warm up while I chopped some celery . . .

which I then added to the pot. I don’t cook it much at this point, just stir it well to distribute the ingredients evenly and then I remove the pot from the heat source.

4) Next, I added the dried bread, mixed it up with the the other stuff, and poured the warm (not hot) broth over the whole shebang.

You can see the very cooked onion and celery that were in the broth. They’re soft and will disappear when you do the next step which is to mix it by hand . . . as in, you simply must put your hand in there and start kneading it together. Your broth can’t be too hot or else you’ll burn yourself.

Now . . . every year, at this point in the process, I can hear Ma in my head . . . “You should do this the day before so that all the bread has a chance to absorb the moisture,” she says. And, of course, she’s right. But unlike her, I’m not always on top of the food-scheduling thing, and for the most part, my dressing is pretty good.

How much broth to add? Well, you want your dressing to be kind of gooey. It’s what Ma called “wet dressing.” It sticks together but it doesn’t have excess liquid. Therefore, I don’t add all the turkey broth at once. I add it as the bread absorbs it. It’s usually about a quart total. If you didn’t want to make your own broth you could add a quart of chicken broth. This is a good brand I get at Costco:

But really . . . you need those little turkey bits to make it taste like turkey dressing. If you want the real deal you need to boil up some backs or necks and pick off the meat.

Also . . . salt . . . I taste the dressing as I’m squishing it together and add salt to my taste if it needs it. The breads have salt in them and I can’t be sure how much. I tend to “under salt” as I cook. People can always add what they want at the table.

Now . . . a true confession . . . I love to eat the dressing at this stage. I loved it as a kid. My mom would shudder and say, “You’re eating RAW dressing!!” but she let me do it. It’s not really raw at this point, except for the celery.

However . . . before I serve it to the family I bake it at 350º for about 1½ hours. Cover it for the first hour and bake it uncovered for the last half hour. When it’s done it looks like this . . .

For the record? Most of my family loves the dressing more than the turkey. Me too.

2009-10-192017-05-19

Saying grace before meals. . .

Catholic Church

photo by foxypar4

I grew up in a Midwest Catholic household. Dad was from French-Canadian stock. He seldom went to church but his sisters were zealots. They frowned a lot. Ma was devout but not as strict as her sisters-in-law. She went to Mass every Sunday, made hundreds of rosaries “for the missions” out of nickel wire and plastic beads and made her children go to church and catechism every week. Also . . . no meat on Friday, not even for Dad, who laughed a lot.

I spent much of my childhood worrying that Daddy would go to Hell for not going to Mass on Sundays. In the 1950s, this was a “mortal sin.” Ma explained it away by saying he had “a heart condition,” which he did, but even as a kid I wasn’t buying that excuse. He could go to work. That meant he should go to Mass according to Sister Mary Joseph. But Dad was a generous man. The priest would come to our house to have a drink and solicit a pledge for some drive or another. Dad would write a check. I believe these contributions gave him an exemption from eternal damnation.

I left the Church when I left home to go to college mostly because I thought it was sexist and I found the doctrine contradictory. That and I was adamant that I was going to use birth control until I wanted a child.

I am, however, grateful for having been raised Catholic. There was beauty and drama and ceremony and ritual that served my soul. The archaic Latin . . . candles . . . incense . . . changing the priests’ vestment colors with the seasons . . . Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. I still value ritual and a sense of reverence.

One of our rituals at home was saying grace before meals: “Bless us Oh Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty through Christ, Our Lord, Amen.” It rolled out of our mouths like a single word.

My current favorite grace was introduced to me by Beloved Son several years ago. Whenever he and I eat together, we say it and I try to say it as often as I remember. It is from Thich Nhat Hanh.

This food is the gift of the whole universe, the earth, the sky, and much hard work.

May we live in a way that makes us worthy to receive it. May we transform our unskillful states of mind, especially our greed, our judgmentalness, our fears, our aggression, and our defensiveness. May we take only foods that nourish us and prevent illness. We accept this food so that we may realize the path of love and compassion.

I’m not “religious,” but I am connected to Spirit every day. Water and food, our most essential elements of survival, are gifts. I like to say thank you for them. I don’t remember to do it all the time. But when I do . . . my world feels clear and grounded.

2009-10-162017-05-19

Food . . . it’s more than what you put into your mouth

Humans are animals. We need water, food and shelter. Our skin is tender, we’re slow moving, our offspring need years of care before they can fend for themselves, we can’t fly, and our teeth and fingernails are lousy weapons. But we have BIG brains. And we use them to figure out how to cover our skin to protect ourselves from temperature extremes and how to make tools to kill animals. We figured out which roots and leaves and berries were safe to eat. We learned to harness fire. We’re pretty darned smart.

Humans, like dogs and wolves and most other animals, need connection with our own kind. There is a whole catalog of words that describe communities of particular animals. My favorites include:

a murder of crows
a scold of jays
a convocation of eagles
a clutter of cats
a covey of partridges

Human groups have names like family, clan, village, community, sorority, fraternity, congregation, neighborhood. . . city. Hmmm . . . cities. How were they formed? What is their relationship to food sources? Huh? Food and cities are related? You betcha!

Carolyn Steel is an architect. Here she talks about how food has shaped our cities. It’s a brain-stretcher if you’ve never thought about it before, but why do you think you have a brain? It’s the best tool you have for survival and it needs exercise as much as your legs do if you want to keep walking.

My passion right now is to empower young people to feed themselves nutritiously, deliciously and inexpensively when they go out on their own . . . but food is way more than just putting fuel into a body. Food connects us . . . to ourselves, our family and friends, our community, to our species and to our home planet. It connects us to our history and DNA.

Heck . . . understanding our relationship to food may uncover some of the most important keys to ensuring the survival of our species.

Tomorrow I’ll travel for hours to Seattle to eat a vegetarian Greek dinner prepared by a close friend. I’ll spend the night at her place and we’ll play a little the next morning. I love and miss her company so just going to see her would be enough . . . BUT . . . (or maybe it’s AND) . . . it’s a dinner party. She is creating an event to bring together friends from different parts of her world. It will be delicious (she’s a killer cook), elegant (and a very classy lady), and the conversation will go on for hours over food. She’s bringing together parts of her community that are geographically scattered and building new connections. She’s using food as the glue. She is a Wise Woman.

Connecting to others by sharing food has been an important experience for humans for thousands of years.

How do you connect to yourself and others with food? What does food mean to you?

2009-10-032017-05-19

The 21st century North American hunter-gatherer . . .

“Hunter-gatherers hunt game and collect plant foods (called foraging) rather than grow or tend crops. Hunter-gatherers is the term used by anthropologists to describe a specific kind of lifestyle, that of all human beings until the invention of agriculture about 8000 years ago.” (About.com)

Unless you “grow or tend crops” that provide almost all of your own food, you are a hunter-gatherer. The important questions for you are . . .

where do you hunt and gather your food and . . .
what do you find?

I’ve lived in the same place for almost 30 years but prior to settling here I bounced around like a ping-pong ball. And one of the first things I did at each of the dozen+ places I lived as a young adult was to find my local food sources. I’ve been a hunter-gatherer most of my life and I suspect you are too.

So what are your food sources? McDonald’s? Safeway? Kroger? The Saturday morning Farmers’ Market? Costco? Your neighbor’s garden? Your mom’s cupboards? The dormitory cafeteria? The cafeteria at your work? Whole Foods? Family Market? Elevated Ice Cream? Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery? Don’s Pharmacy (which has a lunch counter)? Starbucks? Pedro’s Fiesta Jalisco Restaurant? The convenience market at the local gas station?

I decided to look back at my food sources for the past couple of weeks. The variety and abundance of my sources are stunning.

Let’s see . . .

I visited 2 friends in 2 days and each gave me food. Get a load of these beautiful gifts:

The eggs and tomatoes are teeny-tiny and were given to me by a dear woman who is, herself, teeny-tiny.

The Asian pears (two varieties) and corn (two varieties) were from a married pair of friends. He grew the corn, she tends the orchard. The pears were juicy and sweet and the corn . . .

The red one was so beautiful (look at the red in the corn silk) that I shucked it . . .

sat down in the sunshine next to my porch angel . . .

and ate it raw. It was sweet and delicate and tender.

I roasted the other ear with some zucchini and the rest of the purple cauliflower

and. . . FOR THE FIRST TIME IN ALL MY VEGGIE ROASTING EXPERIMENTS I FOUND ONE THAT DIDN’T ROAST WELL. Roasting the corn after it was shucked made it tough and not so good. I have eaten this same variety roasted on the barbecue in the husks after it had been soaked in water and it was delicious.

You can try it and see what you think, but I’m going back to my Midwest family way of preparing it. Grandma put the water on to boil before Grandpa went out to pick the corn. By the time they shucked it the water (which had a pinch of sugar, not salt) was boiling. Drop the corn in. Bring the water back to a boil. Let it boil for only 3 or 4 or 5 minutes and you’re done. Take the corn out of the hot water and put it on a platter. Roll it in butter. Salt and pepper it and . . . enjoy a taste of Heaven.

But back to the point . . . looking at food sources.

I have two neighbors on the island who grow fruits and vegetables and sell them from stands. Neither is certified as an “organic” farm, but both use organic, non-chemical practices to grow their food. That, and a lot of love.

One is self-serve (put your money in the cigar box) and at the other, which is right next to their house, you get a mini-visit and some conversation. This is my haul from both a couple of days ago:Three kinds of tomatoes or more (I’m very fond of tomatoes), mild peppers (like poblanos but I forget their names), a couple of zucchinis and a couple of small and wonderful “winter” squashes and a large bunch of parsley (I’m embarrassed to say I don’t have parsley growing at home . . . I mean I have over 3 acres . . . but that’s another story and I’m grateful I can buy very fresh and very local.)

OK . . . those are my quaint and colorful sources . . . but within the past couple of weeks I’ve also gotten food from the Port Hadlock QFC , the Nordland General Store (I go here almost every day because this is also the home of my post office where I receive my mail and daily connection to my community), the Food Co-op, Costco, Sunny Farms , World Peace Produce and at least one restaurant.

This is a lot of resources. Part of it is that I’m over-buying food right now. It’s high harvest time and I come from a family that “put up” most of their own food to last through the winter. I’m freezing and storing and years ago I was making sauerkraut with my ma and grandma and aunts at this time of year.

The other part of over-buying is that I’m feeling anxious. I”m researching and writing about food and even giving advice which I generally do not like to do, and I feel myself drifting toward a vegan diet. Yet I’m still teaching people how to make chicken soup. In fact . . . I bought two chickens on a deep sale yesterday ($.69 per pound versus the regular $1.79 per pound), put one in the freezer and will make a BIG pot of chicken soup with the other and will post about it.

This conflict will resolve itself, I’m sure. Meanwhile, I’m not sleeping as well as I usually do. Change is never comfortable. Not ever. And yet, if we don’t change and grow we are, essentially, dead. And sometimes change feels more dramatic than at other times. I’m in one of those “big shift” phases.

But about you . . . where do you get your food? Do you even think about it? (I didn’t until I wrote this post.) What about the quality of that food? How much do you prepare? How much is prepared for you? How much is real food? (Let me reiterate . . . real food does not come in a box and chemicals are not a food group.)

For the next week (or even two or three) please pay attention to your food sources. Then tell me about them in your comments. I am curious about how you experience your hunting and gathering. This is such a fundamental part of being a human and yet we usually do it on automatic pilot . . . at least I did until I started getting serious about this project to help young people feed themselves inexpensively, simply and nutritiously when they go out on their own.

Thank you for being willing to help me understand the complex relationship we have to food in this time and place.

2009-09-162017-05-19

Grandma’s chicken and dumplings

I’m posting this to fill a request from someone who read The Power of Food #2 post. . . and because Grandma would be tickled by the thought of me passing it on to the world . . .

Chicken and Dumplings . . . Fegyvernek Style

For the “stew” part:
one chicken, cut up into pieces
a medium onion, yellow or other sharp variety, chopped
a little bacon fat or lard (I use an olive oil/butter mix nowadays)
parsley, fresh or dried (a couple of tablespoons if dried, twice that if fresh)
paprika (sweet, not hot, Hungarian paprika)
salt and pepper
water

For the dumplings (a large batch. You can halve this recipe.)
4 eggs
about 1½ cups of water
½ teaspoon salt
3 to 3½ cups flour

Lightly brown the onion in the fat you’ve chosen in a large pot. Then add the paprika and stir for a minute or so. Add the parsley, chicken pieces, salt and pepper and enough water to barely cover the chicken. Cover and simmer until done, about ½ to 1 hour depending on the size of your chicken pieces. Remove the chicken from the pot and put it in a bowl. Cover to keep it warm.

Add more water to the pot (an inch or so, maybe two or three if you make the whole recipe for dumplings), put the cover on and bring it to a boil as you prepare the dumplings.

Beat the eggs and salt with a fork in a plastic bowl. (You can use any bowl but it’s good if it’s lightweight because you’re going to hold it over the boiling broth as you drop the dumplings into the pot.) Add about 1½ cups water to the eggs mixture and beat again. Add the flour and beat until it has a “sticky” consistency. This is wetter than regular bread dough.

Uncover your pot of boiling broth and hold the bowl of dumpling dough just over it. Tilt it toward the pot. Dip a teaspoon into the hot broth, then go up to the bowl and scoop about ½ teaspoon full of dough and drop it into the broth. Repeat, dipping the spoon into the broth and scooping a little dough into it until all the dough is gone. Move the bowl around so that you drop the dumplings more or less evenly over the whole pot. DO NOT STIR THE DUMPLINGS YET!

Cover the pot and let it boil about 7 to 10 minutes. NOW YOU CAN STIR THE DUMPLINGS. Cook them for another 5 to 10 minutes, add the chicken back into the pot and reheat it for a few minutes. You’re ready to serve. (I like to sprinkle on a little fresh parsley at the end, but Grandma didn’t do that.)

Family food feud

When my dad was alive (he died in 1959) we didn’t eat these at my house. He called this style of dumplings “bullets” and wasn’t having any of them. As a French-Canadian, he knew dumplings as fluffy clouds that floated over beef stew. But I ate them every time I stayed at Grandma and Grandpa’s and that was often. My mother deferred to Dad’s tastes and always made him his fluffy, with-baking-powder, favorites, and always over beef, not chicken, stew.

I’m not sure why but I never asked Ma how to make fluffy dumplings. But I learned, as a very young girl, how to make bullets because I loved them. In that wonderful alchemy of genetic stew that makes a baby, I ended up with straight blonde hair and blue eyes. My dad had wavy brunette hair and hazel eyes. I adored him . . . but I’ve always loved the bullet dumplings best . . . and I never halve the recipe.

2009-09-132022-06-25

Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food

This article was sent to me by a Blessings sister. Please . . . read it. This is not about economics (though it is). This is about the survival of our species. I’ve been following this subject for over 40 years and I’m grateful that it’s finally coming into the consciousness of popular media.

Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food

Every time you put a piece of food in your mouth you are making a choice. Every time go to a restaurant or fast food place you are making a choice. Every time you buy food or drink at a grocery or other store you are making a choice. You have more power than you know.

Please . . . read it.

2009-09-122009-09-17

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 White 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 choice

and 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.