sal­ads, sal­ads, everywhere

Don’t you find you get on food kicks? I do. I get an urge to cook scal­lops and then I have them one night with loads of olive oil, pars­ley, bread­crumbs and gar­lic. The next night I want them with beets, pota­toes and bacon.

Or pas­ta, when I cook riga­toni alla vod­ka sauce one night and then the night after that feel I can’t live with­out carbonara.

Won’t it be won­der­ful SOON when you can look up all these recipes on the mag­nif­i­cent INDEX that’s com­ing? Just yes­ter­day I sent my spread­sheet of cat­e­gories to my Blog Angel Julian, the dear young man who is going to drag me into the land of the Search Opti­mized and Google Pop­u­lar­ized. It will be sim­ply bril­liant for you, and for me, to be able to sim­ply click on “Main Cours­es” and find “Shell­fish” and there will be scal­lop recipe after scal­lop recipe.

But I digress. My point is, I’ve been on a “how to make more inter­est­ing sal­ads” kick this week. I start­ed with your basic “how many beans can you fit into a bowl” recipe, but then my pas­sion was whet­ted and, as well, John’s pho­to­graph­ic ambi­tions. And thus were born these two com­plete­ly lus­cious, ver­sa­tile, and yet com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent salads.

I have had read­ers sug­gest that I add grilled chick­en to them, that I add crispy tor­tilla strips to them, that I add a piece of light­ly toast­ed baguette with olive oil to them. To all these sug­ges­tions I shout HUR­RAY and also throw in: how about some seared fil­let steak? Some, dare I say it, sauteed scal­lops? Even some shaved Parme­san, to either one. These sal­ads are mar­vel­lous, and JUST the begin­ning. Just you use your imag­i­na­tion, and I don’t mean just your taste­buds. Imag­ine how they will LOOK, too, because I’m con­vinced, with sal­ads at least, that con­trast­ing col­or will auto­mat­i­cal­ly equal good fla­vors. I real­ly think so. Can you imag­ine adding togeth­er any two red and green things and hav­ing it not be deli­cious? Plus, what ingre­di­ents can­not be mar­ried with chilli oil and lemon juice? I chal­lenge you.

Red Pep­per, Cour­gette and Black Bean Salad
(serves 4 as a side dish, or 2 as a main course)

1 red bell pepper
1 large cour­gette (zuc­chi­ni)
1 soup-size tin black beans, well rinsed and drained
1 large clove garlic
juice of 1 lemon
pulp of as much of a lemon as you can gather
1/2 tsp sea salt
lots of fresh-ground black pepper
1 tbsp chilli oil
1 large hand­ful flat-leaf pars­ley, chopped

Dice the red pep­per and the cour­gette in same-size bites, then mix in a large bowl with the black beans. Mince the gar­lic WITH the lemon juice and pulp and salt (this com­bi­na­tion will break down the gar­lic into a mush, per­fect for eat­ing raw). Toss with the red pep­per and cour­gette and beans and chilli oil, and sprin­kle with black pepper.

Mound as high ver­ti­cal­ly on a plate as you can, and scat­ter the chopped pars­ley on top.

*********************

Beet­root, Goats Cheese and Wild Rock­et and Sor­rel Salad
(serves 4 as a side dish, or 2 as a main course)

3 medi­um beets
2 tsps bal­sam­ic vinegar
hand­ful wild rocket
hand­ful wild sor­rel leaves
hand­ful goats cheese in dice
1/4 red onion, diced
hand­ful chives, chopped long
1 tbsp chilli oil
juice of 1/2 lemon
fresh black pep­per and sea salt to taste

Roast the beets by wrap­ping them, in a group, in foil and cook­ing in a very hot oven (425F) for an hour and a half. Leave them in the foil on the counter for 10 min­utes or so before unwrap­ping and slip­ping the skins off (this time lapse allows the beets both to cool and to let go their skins by steaming).

Dice the beets and sprin­kle with the vinegar.

Arrange the rock­et and sor­rel on a pret­ty place and pile the beets on them. Scat­ter with goats cheese, onion, and chives, and sprin­kle the chilli oil and lemon juice on top. Sea­son as you like.

*****************

Try these when you feel you’ve had just too much red meat, or fried food, or have been away from home and feel dis­con­nect­ed from the fin­er, most basic things in life. And if your chil­dren don’t love sal­ads (Avery won’t eat any­thing with let­tuce includ­ed), just decon­struct it. Beets and goats cheese are two of her favorite foods. But not together.

Let’s see, part of what’s put a sparkle in my step tonight is the arrival today of John’s mom, a per­son we all hold so dear that all we can do most of the year is to avert our thoughts. We are sep­a­rat­ed for so much time that we can only enjoy the moments we are togeth­er, not dwell on the months spent apart.

She arrived this after­noon to a flur­ry of wel­comes, kiss­es and hugs and “Oh, I love these pho­tographs!” in the entry hall, and excla­ma­tions over the delight­ful cats, her cozy white bed­room over­look­ing the gar­dens of Ham­mer­smith, the small gifts we had left on her bed with its fluffy white duvet. As always, presents emerged from her suit­case: a tea tow­el for me say­ing, “After a good din­ner one can for­give almost all, even one’s rel­a­tives.” (Dear Oscar Wilde, such a clever boy.) And a gor­geous black shirt, and lots of clothes and pre­cious make­up for Avery… just like Christmas!

We set­tled down to the busi­ness of appre­ci­at­ing her, her spe­cial way of mak­ing every­thing we say seem inter­est­ing, our lives inter­est­ing, Avery’s accom­plish­ments remark­able (well, her school report WAS pret­ty spec­tac­u­lar). And to think we have two weeks of her com­pa­ny to enjoy. Maybe if we eat enough veg­eta­bles, we’ll live for­ev­er and have all the time in the world. Bring on the beets.