January 2013 – eats for one

I’m just getting around to writing about our leftover Thanksgiving turkey.
If we don’t serve a turkey on Thanksgiving, Carol likes to buy one anyway, just to have turkey leftovers. I’m no fan of sandwiches — as you must know by now — so I’ve made Turkey Pot Pie which is pretty good, and other kinds of soups and stews. This year, I was attracted to the Dish it Up column in the Reno Gazette Journal (RGJ) for Turkey Barley Soup. That column is written by Nancy Horn, owner of Dish Cafe and Catering in Reno. As you shall see, she writes about home-style food that tastes good.

The RGJ has a really good food section that appears on Wednesdays. It usually has five full pages and covers things interesting enough that I usually read it all. This week — January 23 — for example:

Do they cut the Mustard: We blind taste 11 national brands…
Dish it Up: Pantry Raid! Southwestern black beans
Courtney’s Kitchen: Chicken won tons, Orange beef by Courtney Barnes of Gourmet Rooster
In One Ear: Tidbits, sightings and buzz from Northern Nevada’s food and drink scene.
Tilapia steamed with soy sauce, ginger by Sara Moulton (AP)
Sweet potatoes loaded with cheese and kale by Elizabeth Karmel (AP)
Poached eggs over ricotta and arugula by J.M. Hirsh (AP)

Surprise! The the Dish It Up column for the week of November 27 was for Turkey Barley Soup. I wouldn’t be writing this if the soup weren’t incredibly good and EZ and the leftovers great. It seems as though it would freeze well, but ours wasn’t around long enough to try that.

start chopping… onion, celery, carrot

Continue reading →

How do you like YOUR salad?

By now, I’m resigned to the fact that I usually eat differently than other folks. You’ve seen plenty of examples in my BKFST posts. Now for salads.

I think my best salad experiences were in Jerusalem, where Israeli or Arab salads were the norm. As you can see, the wikipedia definition for each is pretty similar. Indeed, chopped tomato and cucumber is the base salad. In practice, many small plates of chopped vegetables often found our table, and one would take something from each. At breakfast in the hotels, the buffet followed the same principles.

I’m not a fan of lettuces or greens (derisively called leafs, by some non-foodies); although a good ceasar salad, properly made, is pretty hard to beat. At the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in San Francisco — oh, how I miss that — hearts of romaine were available most of the year, and endive — crunchy and mildly bitter — for much of the year. Those kept well in the crisper drawer of our refrigerator and formed the basis for salads that I made. Arugula and frisee and radicchio — especially grilled — are okay, too.

Carol’s sugo with spaghetti and my salad

Last night, Carol got a container of her Sugo out of the refrigerator and said, “We have two endive, why don’t you make a salad for dinner?” At about the time to put pasta in water, I chopped the endive, threw it in my favorite wooden two-person salad bowl and rummaged around to see what else to throw in. I sliced some red radishes and tiny baby carrots we get from a guy at the winter market — Sundays 10am to 2pm, indoors at the Garden Shop Nursery. Reno is cold just now, but there is plenty of sun and he grows his vegetables (including chard) in a heated cold frame.

those baby carrots and radishes

Core, peel and cube a pear, that’s good for something sweet. If I didn’t have a pear, an apple would do. Slice in a couple of scallions and cube a fabulous pickled yellow beet.

I tossed all that together and put on a little more than a tablespoon of Marzetti Simply Dressed Ranch Dressing, just enough to coat and moisten everything, but not add a lot of taste. If I hadn’t had that, I would have used Newman’s Own salad dressing — or my own concoction of vinegar and oil and lemon juice. I seasoned with salt and pepper and just a pinch of sugar to make the beets and pear happy.

You’ve seen these beets on my breakfast plate. We get them at the Great Basin Coop, roast them for about 50 minutes at 400°F, cool, peel and put them in a jar. I mix 1/2 cup fresh orange juice, 1/4 cup red wine vinegar, 1 tablespoon sugar, 1 ounce Pastis and a good pinch of salt and pepper mixture in a saucepan, heat to boiling and pour over the beets. Refrigerate for a day and they’re ready to eat. (That’s for the yellow beets, for red beets the vinegar of choice is balsamic.)