Winter Salad

This is a tasty little invention of mine that I call winter salad because small oranges and pears are in season in the autumn and winter.

Ingredients:

  • Mixed spring greens
  • 2 or 3 Satsumas, clementines, or tangelos
  • 1 or 2 ripe pear(s)
  • Black currants (amount to taste)
  • Almond slivers or slices (amount to taste)

Peel the oranges, carefully removing the chewy white pith, and section them (don’t slice them, leave the sections whole). Cut the pears into small chunks. Put mixed greens and 3/4 of other ingredients in the bowl and toss. Sprinkle the top with the rest of the ingredients for presentation. Serve with a salad dressing of your choice – I usually go with something vinegar and oil based.

Note: You can get black currants and almond slivers or slices in the bulk aisle. Also, do NOT use regular-sized oranges. Only the small, juicy, intensely flavorful winter oranges listed above taste good this way. If you insist on using a big orange, cut the sections into chunks. That’ll help release some juices and flavor, but it’ll still be disappointing.

Spicy Thai Stir Fry

Asian food is delicious vegan. We had a dinner guest tonight who’s for all intents and purposes temporarily vegan, so I found this recipe for a Spicy Thai stir fry with tofu, red bell pepper, and spinach. Flavor was provided by garlic, ginger, green onions, fresh basil, soy sauce, fresh lime juice, and crushed red pepper. With chopping help it took only about 20/25 minutes.

Helpful additional notes: It’s easy to crush whole peanuts by keeping them in a plastic bag and just banging away on them (on top of the counter) with the bottom of a mason jar. Seriously. Go wild.

Things I would or did change: Nothing to the core recipe at all. I made rice to go with it and I had an eater who’s allergic to peanuts, so I just crushed them up and put them out as a condiment, along with lime wedges and Sriracha. (I made it decently spicy but it’s nice to be able to heat it up as desired.) Also, I cooked it too long due to a rice snafu. Don’t do that – it deserved to be crispier.

Would I make this again: Most definitely. Affordable but still delicious ingredients and mostly healthy, other than frying the veggies in 1/3 cup of olive oil.

Ratatouille

eggplant zucchini onions peppers tomatoes Ratatouille is a French Provençal vegetable stew, recently made famous by an adorable Pixar movie. Since I’m moving toward cooking vegetarian during the week (mostly), and the cold warrants some hearty meals, I thought I’d give this one a try. It also happens to be vegan (until you garnish with cheese).

I used this recipe from Epicurious on Tuesday, January 5, 2010. Key ingredients are eggplant, zucchini, onion, green bell pepper, garlic, tomato, and parsley and the whole process took me about 90 minutes of continuous activity.

Helpful additional notes: To peel tomatoes, cut a small slit in the skin and then throw them in boiling water for a few seconds to a minute. They’re ready as soon as the skin starts to split. Believe it or not, I had never peeled a tomato before.

Things I would or did change: In the winter, when tomatoes are less juicy, I would not fully seed the tomatoes. I had trouble getting them to juice. Leaving all the seeds in would make it difficult to boil down to a stew, so next time I’d compromise by doing a lazy job of seeding them (leaving some in). I also served it with grated cheese as a condiment, which worked really well to make it a little more complex, and a side of baguette for sopping up the juices.

Review: This dish isn’t going to win me any presentation prizes (see that green-grayish lump in the pot above), but it was surprisingly tasty. It calls for salt & pepper at several stages, and don’t skimp on any of them – those simple spices did an incredible job of boosting the flavor of the vegetables.

Would I make it again? Yes, for a veggie-loving crowd.