Quinoa, ugly and delicious
For real. I love incorporating quinoa into salads and showcasing it as a delicious and less likely side dish, but man, it’s hard to make it pretty. I tend to fancy it up with lovely vegetables or plate it with other good looking proteins or sauces. My favorite thing lately is a kitchen sink type of quinoa salad. I grill up a bunch of veggies (or better yet, use left over ones), cook and cool the quinoa, make a bracing and acidic dressing and shower the final mix with fresh herbs. If you make the quinoa before and grill extra stuff, it’s really fast to put together.
A few things-I have read a bunch about the best way to cook quinoa and here is what I know is true.
One cup of quinoa to 1 3/4 cup of liquid for cooking (I almost always use broth or stock).
Rinse and rub the hell out of the quinoa under cold running water in a fine strainer for a couple of minutes and then dry in a hot saucepan for a couple of minutes. (This takes away any bitterness)
Once cooked, I usually put the pan into an ice bath to cool it down so it stops cooking and doesn’t get gummy.
That’s it folks! Here is the recipe for a very popular quinoa salad that I actually think doesn’t look too, too terrible.
Quinoa Salad with Grilled Veggies and Red Wine Vinaigrette
Serves 2-3 as a side dish
Ingredients
1/2 cup quinoa (washed well)
3/4 cup broth, stock or water
1/2 teaspoon oil
1/4 cup grilled or roasted and diced red pepper
1/2 cup grilled or roasted and diced eggplant
1/2 cup grilled or roasted and diced zucchini or yellow squash
1/4 cup grilled or roasted and diced red onion
1 ear of corn, grilled or roasted, and cut off the cob
6-8 cherry tomatoes, cut in half
Dressing
1 teaspoon coarse mustard
1 teaspoon smooth dijon mustard
1 small mashed garlic clove
1/2 shallot, minced finely
1/4 cup minced fresh parsley
1 tablespoon minced fresh oregano (or a teaspoon dry)
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 cup olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
Method
Cook the quinoa by boiling the liquid, dumping in the quinoa and oil and bringing back to the boil. Turn down the heat to the lowest setting, cover and set a timer for about 15 minutes. When it’s cooked (taste it!), stick the whole pan in a large bowl of ice cubes and water to cool down. Once cool, fold in the vegetables.
Make the dressing by combining all of the ingredients in a bowl and whisking till emulsified. Alternately, you can throw them all whole into a vitamix or cuisinart and blitz them into a dressing.
Carefully add the dressing to your salad, tasting to make sure you don’t over dress. Add salt and pepper to taste and if you like, add another handful of herbs (chives or parsley) to the finished salad.
Summering Succotash
It’s Sunday and 5am. I’m tired as hell, ready for a day off, and what am I doing? Thinking, reading, and writing about food. Specifically, succotash. Honestly, I can’t believe I’m even admitting this in a public forum!
I did not grow up eating succotash, but I truly adore it. Curious about the origins of this dish, I just Googled it and was surprised to find out that the name is actually derived from a Narragansett word for “broken corn” which makes sense, corn being the main ingredient. My association with it as a southern dish is not unfounded, but it tends to be more of a catch all title for any kind of vegetable medley, involving corn.
Oh, corn! It is so good at this very August moment, but philistine that I am, I hate eating it on the cob. It literally drives my teeth insane. Because of this sad state, I am always looking for ways to eat corn off the cob. You can see where this is going, right?
But before I tell you how to cook the dish, I’m going to digress again and profess my love for flexible and easy going recipes. Also for recipes that can be prepped a bit in advance and finished off at the last minute. I also want to express adoration for a recipe that can be eaten cold the next day, uses ingredients that are local and seasonal, and (in my case) almost entirely vegetable. This recipe hits all the marks (please check out the additional suggestions below).
Summer Succotash
Ingredients
2 T butter or ghee
1/2 of a red pepper, cut in small dice
1/2 of a vidalia onion, also cut in small dice
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 link of good linguiça, cut into tiny dice
1 or 2 small patty pan squash, cut into small dice
2 T butter or ghee
4 ears of corn, shucked and kernels removed (I lay the corn on its side and cut lengthwise).
Around 12 good sized green or wax beans, quickly cooked in salty boiling water for a minute and then shocked in ice water and chopped into one inch pieces
1 C cooked Lima beans or edamame (I used edamame as there were no shell beans in at the farm)
A handful of minced chives
Salt and pepper to taste (careful with the salt-linguiça is salty!)
Method
Get a nice big sauté or frying pan and heat over medium low heat for a couple of minutes, before melting the butter. Sauté the peppers,onions, and garlic for a few minutes, stirring and NOT browning. Add the linguiça and turn the heat up a notch. When some of the fat has rendered, crank the heat to high, add the squash and a half cup of water. Shake and cook for a minute or two. Add the remaining butter and then dump in the corn and both beans. Shake and cook for another minute or two, just to heat through. Taste for salt, generously pepper and sprinkle in the chives.
Suggestions
If you want to prep ahead, stop after the squash is cooked. When you are ready to eat, heat the remaining butter in a separate pan, quickly heat up the corn and beans and then add the squash misxture.
If you don’t eat meat, omit the linguiça and maybe throw in a spoonful of smoked paprika.
As mentioned, eat this cold the next day with a little salad dressing if you like. Or reheat and top with a fried egg and hot sauce for breakfast.
Broccoli Slaw
One of the curses AND gifts of being a private chef is that you have the freedom to make different foods everyday and to experiment with new recipes or ideas that intrigue you. I have made so many different types of slaws over the years-a few from glossy photos in magazines, some from those old timey church lady cookbooks, Instagram-inspired slaws (of late), and occasionally you make a slaw out of whatever it is that you can find in the vegetable bin at that particular moment.
On Nantucket this summer, the combination of terrible winter weather, cold and endless spring and foggy/damp summer has affected the growing season. While we are still not seeing field tomatoes at the farm stands, I have seen broccoli, and it is gorgeous! So, to make a long story short, here’s broccoli slaw!
Kitchen Sink Broccoli Slaw
Ingredients
About two cups or so of broccoli florets, cut as tiny as you dare
A large carrot, grated over the largest holes of the box grater
1/2 each of a green and red pepper, in a tiny dice
A good handful of red onion, also in a tiny dice, soaked in a few tablespoons of red wine vinegar for 5 minutes and saved (see below)
Dressing
1/3 C buttermilk
1/3 C Mayo (mine was homemade garlic aioli from another recipe)
1/4 C of red wine vinegar (include the vinegar you will drain from the onions)
A very healthy squirt of honey-I used hot honey, which is chili infused and costs the world at a fancy food shop
Two big fistfuls of fresh green herbs-parsley, cilantro, chives, tarragon, mint? Be bold and decide for yourself!
Salt and pepper to taste
Slivered almonds or any other nut, toasted to throw on top if you like (I had some and forgot!)
Method
Gently combine the salad ingredients and then whisk together the dressing ingredients and taste-add more acid or sweet as necessary. Thin with a little water if it seems too thick. Dress the salad carefully-start with less and add a bit at a time to avoid the overdress! Pile it in a bowl and chill. If you have something crunchy to top it with, do that right before you serve
New Tricks and Watermelon Tomato Salad
In the last year, I’ve become a great fan of the Instagram. At the urging of the young people in my life, I signed up around this time last year and have really grown to love the platform for sharing and showcasing my food and travels. Today, I took a plunge and signed up to do that magical trick, where it says “Link to recipe in profile” (you know what I’m talking about!). This will be my first post using that magic!
First step is a perfect watermelon!
Nantucket is known for her cool ocean breezes and beautiful summer weather (yes, she is a she!). As someone who grew up here, I’ll tell you that many summer days can also be chilly, windy, foggy, wet, grey and occasionally hot and muggy. Yes, muggy. That’s where we were at last week, when I decided to take the ubiquitous watermelon/tomato salad route for my client.
it felt like I was traveling back to 1998, making this little number, but the tomatoes at Bartlett’s Farm are beauteous, although still grown in their hothouses, due to the crappy winter and spring we had here. Watermelon must be seedless! The feta should be the best you can afford (I love the one from Cricket Creek Farm) and the mint is mintier when freshly picked out of a garden.
The Mise en Place is on point here...
This salad is all about the dice (small and uniform), the vinegar (something with a little depth), and the temperature (chilly!). I’m trying to get better at this recipe writing stuff, so here it goes...
Ingredients
For this dish which fed 4-6 people happily, I used:
3 cups of diced tomatoes (about 3 medium-sized)
3 cups of diced seedless watermelon
1 1/2 cups of diced feta
2 Tablespoons of good, aged Sherry Vinegar
2 big handfuls of chopped mint (chocolate mint took over my garden this year and it worked beautifully!)
A splash of olive oil to finish
salt and pepper to taste, and I’m serious about that taste part! The feta could make your salad salty enough or it could use more. Get a spoon and find out before you feed your tribe!
Method
Toss the fruits, splash with vinegar, and chill for an hour. If too much juice has accumulated, strain it out and save it for a delightfully fruity salad dressing. Add the feta and mint and toss gently. Do your tasting and add a little salt if necessary. A quick grind of pepper and a splash of your best olive oil to finish. Serve it in the prettiest bowl you can find-the salad’s colors deserve it.
