The Bitten Word

In Praise of Milquetoast: Cucumber Salad

Cooking Light (June 2013)

Cucumber salads come in a number of forms.

There's the incredibly bracing sort, so tart from vinegar and acid that your face puckers a bit. 

There's the cucumber salad that pits bracing against sweet in an epic battle to see if it will first pucker your face or rot your teeth (kind of our favorite, if we're choosing). 

And there's the bland, the watery, the "is there any dressing on this or did you just serve me a bowl of sliced cucumbers?" salad. 

We picked up a bunch of cucumbers at the farmers market recently, and while trying to figure out what to do with them, we ran across this recipe in Cooking Light. We've never featured a cucumber salad here on the blog, so we gave it a shot. There's nothing out of the ordinary about this recipe: sliced cucumbers and green and red peppers get tossed with oil, white wine, lemon juice, sugar, salt and pepper, as well as some herbs. It's a pretty basic take on the dish. 

But here's the thing about this cucumber salad -- we find it to be perfectly balanced. It's not too sweet, not too tart. The dressing doesn't overpower the vegetables. There's no secret, star ingredient smuggled into the mix to set your taste buds on fire. It's a standard, very good, absolutely ordinary cucumber salad. And we loved it for that.

Strawberry, Almond and Pea Salad

Bon Appétit (June 2013)

We spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about vinaigrettes.

Because we have so many salad greens at our disposal right now, from the garden and our CSA, almost every night we do the vinaigrette hokey-pokey: you put a little of this in a jar, a little of that in a jar, and then you shake it all about.

Our basic vinaigrette tip: Use a basic ratio of 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar. If it doesn't taste good, just keep adding ingredients until it does. Eventually, you'll get there (or you'll need to find a bigger jar). 

With vinaigrette on the brain, we were very pleased with the one on this Strawberry, Almond and Pea Salad. It's a simple mix of white wine vinegar, whole grain mustard, poppy seeds, sugar and vegetable oil. It's unlike our typical vinaigrettes, which are darker and heavier. It's really a simple, sweet poppy seed dressing. (Normally, we're not huge poppy seed dressing fans. The store-bought varieties can tend to be off-puttingly sweet. But we adored this one. Perhaps because it's paired with such amazing flavors.)

 

Baby Kale and Steak Salad

Food & Wine (May 2013)
 

Do you have go-to late night food?

We live in a neighborhood with a stretch of very busy nightlife. On weekend nights, there are lines of people snaking all up and down the street.

And there's an established post-bar ritual. After the kids (yes, we're calling them kids) leave the bars, they queue up for Jumbo Slice Pizza. 

What, pray tell, is Jumbo Slice Pizza? It is, by most accounts, the biggest piece of pizza you will ever be served for five dollars. It's huge, greasy, and when you've overindulged, it is phenomenal. (Word of advice: never, ever eat the Jumbo Slice in daytime hours. It is not up to sober food standards. Believe us, we have tried.) 

Our Jumbo Slice days are behind us. Mostly.

On a much classier note, Food & Wine's May issue has a beautiful, dark spread about late-night chef food. The chef is question is Paul Qui, the nicest-seeming Top Chef winner ever. The magazine features Paul and his fiancee cooking late-night dinners after they get home from his restaurant in Austin. 

Needless to say, Paul's not returning home to fire up the oven and make a Jumbo Slice. Instead, he makes thingd like this Baby Kale and Steak Salad. 

Miso-Glazed Cauliflower and Kale Salad

Vegetarian Times (May 2013)

Our friend Rachel, of Buffalo Chicken Dip fame, recently sent us a decidedly un-Buffalo-Chicken-Dip-like email:

I know you probably get suggestions like this all the time, but if you're looking for a food magazine to fill the EDF-shaped hole in your life, may I suggest Vegetarian Times. I bought a subscription a few months ago. I'm one issue in and totally hooked. Great classic vegetarian options plus if you want to get crazy, there are vegan and raw recipes as well. I made a veggie burger from lentils that was amazing (and oddly the consistency of ground beef. It also froze really well. I could go on.)

Rachel wasn't the first person to suggest we check out Vegetarian Times. Many readers have recommended it to us over the years. So we picked up a copy of the April/May issue when we were in a bookstore recently. (Kids, ask your parents what a bookstore was.)

What we found was a very enjoyable cooking magazine that just happens to not have any meat in it. Maybe it's partly because of the time of year -- it's full-on spring, and we've got fresh veggies on the brain -- but there are actually a host of dishes we'd be eager to make from the current issue. There's a feature on spring cooking in Ireland (from the Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork), with a gorgeous-looking Pea and Coriander Soup and a simple Cabbage, Sultana and Fennel Salad that looks delicious.

There's a feature on cooking with fresh herbs that's truly packed with tips ("10 more ways to use basil...," "10 more ways to use rosemary...").

And there's a vegan-cooking piece from Mark Bittman (who is literally everywhere -- we have a working theory that he's some sort of vegan vampire), which has a vegan burger recipe we might even consider trying -- no small statement after our last attempt at homemade meatless burgers.

But for our inaugural recipe from Vegetarian Times, we decided to go whole hog (er, uh, whole tofu?). We picked something from the feature on raw foods.

 

Crisp and Lemony Go-To Salad + Everyday Food Returns

Everyday Food (March 2013)

Our friends Regi and Kate came over for dinner this past weekend. We spent a lot of time trying to decide what to make -- it had been a while since we'd seen them, and we wanted to serve something interesting. We decided on a fairly elaborate and decadent entree -- coming soon to a blog near you! -- so we wanted something light to kick off the meal. 

We went simple, choosing this Crisp and Lemony Go-To Salad from the March issue of Everyday Food. More about the salad in a moment, but first: Everyday Food is alive!

Or alive-ish. 

After publishing the final regular issue in December and promising to come back as an occasional supplement to Martha Stewart Living, Everyday Food hit mailboxes this month for Living subscribers. (We're not sure if you get it if you purchase Living on newsstands -- we're assuming no.) 

The magazine is noticeably different, mostly in that it's thinner. Most previous issues were around 150 pages -- this is 30 pages filled with 25 or so recipes. The recipe content is very similar to before -- dressed up versions of basic recipes appropriate for any night of the week. There are roast chickens and cookies and casseroles -- it's a nice collection of recipes, even if there aren't many of them. 

 

Broccoli Stalk Salad

Cooking Light (February 2013)

We've been eating a lot of broccoli in the past few months. And why not? It's packed with good nutrients, it's cheap, and it's just about the quickest vegetable side you can make. 

If we've got a little time, we'll chop the florets, toss them in olive oil and roast them in the oven. (That takes about 25 minutes.) If we're in a hurry, we'll chop the florets, steam them over some boiling water, and add a squeeze of lemon. (That takes about 4 minutes.)

But somewhere along the way, we asked ourselves a question. "Hey, selves," we said. "Why are we only using a third of each bunch of broccoli?"

And that's when we started eating broccoli stalks.

Shaved Rutabaga and Turnip Salad with Scallions

Fine Cooking (February 2013)

Forget endive.

Discard your red leaf.

And leave your radicchio in the cripser. 

It's shaved raw vegetable salads that are very "on trend" right now in food magazines. 

Over the last four months, Food & Wine (November), Bon Appétit (January), Martha Stewart Living (February) and now Fine Cooking (February) have all featured recipies for shaved salads that incorporate readily available cold weather produce -- think root vegetables, carrots, and winter squash.

The first time shaved salads really popped up on our radar was last summer, when Martha Stewart Living featured a Shaved-Squash Salad, and with it, featured a handheld Kyocera Mandoline that we couldn't resist purchasing ourselves. 

Let's talk first about owning a handheld mandoline. 

 

Warm Shrimp and Escarole Salad

Bon Appétit (February 2013)

We've been making lots of salads these days, mostly to atone for this, but also because in the crop of February magazines, it's the salad recipes that looked best to us.

Some are shaved salads; others make use of some unusual ingredients. But in this case -- a Warm Shrimp and Escarole Salad -- we loved the idea of a salad that won't chill your bones on a cold winter night. 

Mixed Herb Salad with Pickled Radish Vinaigrette

Food & Wine (December 2012)

There's something about a bracing winter salad that can be so satisfying for the holidays. It's like a clean knife cutting through all the heavy, rich, sweet flavors that dominate the menu this time of year.

When we had four friends -- Drew, Ralph, Ken and Jeff -- over for dinner last week, we served that wonderful Roast Lamb with Fennel and Apples, and we finished the evening with the Peppermint-Meringue Brownie Cake.

This Mixed Herb Salad was a great way to kick off that meal.

Chili-Lime Roasted Butternut Salad

Everyday Food (December 2012)

"I need a great side dish that's easy and will feed a crowd, but something that'll still impress people."

We've heard that question dozens of times, and we usually give the same answer: Fajita sweet potatoes. They're phenomenal, and phenomenally easy. In fact, we just made some again this past weekend.

The spicy-sweet combo that makes those Fajita Sweet Potatoes so great is the same thing at work in this yummy salad from Everyday Food. (And no we're not ready to talk about how this is the last monthly issue, so let's just pretend eveything's fine and the same as always and we'll deal with that another day.)