Freaky Freekeh (Yes, You Read that Right)

We thought we knew every edible grain that the planet had to offer, but guest blogger Amy Friedman proved us wrong. Check out her recipe for freekeh (also known as "farik." (This is also a good example of the "try, try again" approach to cooking.)
Amy writes:
I did some experimenting a few weeks ago with freekeh, which is smoked, unroasted wheat (the same kind that's used for bulgur). Some friends had raved about it, so we bought some, but I hated it—just thought it tasted awful. So I decided to think up a way to make it palatable and came up with a solution that wound up being quite tasty.  Last night I cubed some chicken breasts and mixed them in, and it came out great. It's good on its own or as a side dish or quick lunch. (Next time I'll see if diced tofu works in there.) I suspect any hearty grain would work in the mix—just substitute cup for cup.


Freaky Freekeh

1 c freekeh, soaked per instructions
1 medium chopped onion
3-4 oz. mushrooms, chopped
1 8 oz can creamed corn
1 16 oz can diced tomatoes
½ cup (appx) chicken broth
olive oil for sautéingspices to taste: white and black pepper, red pepper flakes, garlic powder, cumin, fennel


Sauté onions and mushrooms in olive oil for three to five minutes over med-high heat.
Pour in creamed corn, continue to sauté until combined and starting to simmer.
Pour in diced tomatoes, continue to sauté until combined and starting to simmer.
Pour in the grain, stir to combine.
Pour in the chicken broth. Should feel like a thick-ish stew, not watery. Use less broth if it starts to get watery – you can add more later. 
Simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the grains seem cooked through. 

Make It Yourself: Vinegar

Yes, vinegar is plentiful and often cheap if you buy it in the store. And we do: rice, sherry, balsamic, pear, you name it. But we've had trouble finding a good red wine vinegar. The cheap stuff is sour and awful, and even the expensive stuff can taste a little harsh if you grab the wrong bottle, as we so often seem to do.

At the same time, we frequently end up with dribs and drabs of leftover red wine—the end of a bottle that never manages to get used for cooking, the half-glasses abandoned after a dinner party.

We were ruefully tossing a guest's half-full glass one evening when we remembered that back in Connecticut our friend Ruth Lively made her own red wine vinegar using a little oak cask she'd bought. We remembered that the little barrel made mellow, lovely vinegar. So we decided to get one of our own.

We turned to the Internet, which did not disappoint. Two-liter (and larger) casks were available at Oak Barrels Ltd.

The company recommends buying toasted oak for red, robust vinegar and non-toasted for white.

 The process of vinegar making is incredibly simple: Simply add your base (wine, cider), your starter (appropriately called "mother of vinegar" and also available online), and some water, and wait two months.

We waited eagerly for the weeks to pass, and after they had, the resulting vinegar was just as smooth and rich as we remembered Ruth Lively's to be.

So there will be no more wasted wine at this house, and lots more delicious salads.

* Photo from oakbarrelsltd.com/

Pantry Project: Great Cold Side Salad

In looking for a barley recipe (to use some of the multiple bags of grains in our overstuffed pantry as part of our pantry-reduction project), we stumbled into a great cold side salad recipe from cooking.com. It is one of those sides you could serve anytime, and it uses the sorts of ingredients that most people typically have around the pantry.

Our only problem was that our barley canister was short by a quarter cup. We quickly realized that this salad recipe's barley could be replaced by just about any grain or rice. We remembered that we had an overabundance of black rice, also called forbidden rice.

The consistency of black rice is about the same as cooked barley. You just have to make sure that you rinse it well so that the reddish-black cooking liquid doesn't color everything else in the recipe.

(We cold have substituted quinoa or faro or any of a number of other grains. But the black rice was crunchy and colorful.)

This salad would be particularly good in the summer, but it worked well in the cold depths of January as well.

Ingredients

2 cups cooked rice, barley or other grain
2 cups frozen corn, thawed
1 red pepper diced, or 1/2 red pepper and 1/2 green pepper, diced
3 scallions, sliced or chopped
2 Tablespoons chopped cilantro or parsley

Dressing
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/8 teaspoon ground pepper

Recipe
Cook the rice, barley, faro or other grain. A good rule of thumb is to cook the grain in twice as much water or stock, with a little salt, and simmer for about 40 minutes. Toward the end you might have to add a bit more liquid or drain off any excess. Just taste for doneness with a bit of crunchiness.

In a bowl, mix the first five ingredients.

In a small container with a tight lid, mix the dressing ingredients and shake well. Pour dressing over the salad and refrigerate for a couple of hours.

Video: A Fresh Side of Pears, Cauliflower, Sage and Hazelnuts

Here's another recipe video from John Ross. He made it for Fine Cooking, the magazine and website. It features pears and cauliflower in a delightful side dish that is perfect for the holiday season — and very simple, too. Unfortunately, our layout cuts off part of the video, so we've included the link, so that you can go to finecooking.com to see it in wide screen.
Watch the video at finecooking.com

Arles, France: Land of Van Gogh and Spanish Influence

The city of Arles ("arl") is where Van Gogh painted sunflowers, starry nights and his apartment — and left part of his ear behind. The sunflowers are far past their prime in September, but Van Gogh's name is on many streets and businesses.

We happened to arrive on the day of the town's festival of the bull, which shows the influence of nearby Spain and the caballeros who work the nearby camargue on their white horses. Although we didn't have any, the meal of the day was paella, served as a special at every restaurant and the many street tents set up for the day.

The other dramatic influence here is in the form of huge stone amphitheaters and other buildings built by the ancient Romans, and still being used today in many cases. This is a rebellious part of France historically, much more Protestant than the heavily Catholic rest of France, and a place where the rulers in Rome or Paris could always expect trouble and an argument that led to violence.

But like the rest of France, the food is wonderful. We lunched on salads because we were still sated from our rich restaurant meal the previous night. Salad Niçoise is one of the regional favorites, and ours was refreshing, light and just the right amount to keep us walking and gawking.

More Hot-Weather Relief: Mango Salad

Though the humidity has backed off a bit, it's still late July in Northern Virginia, which means we're disinclined to turn on the stove or the grill. The solution: light, refreshing salads that make use of all the great produce that's available. All you need is a good knife and, if you're lazy like us, a food processor that can quickly handle the tedious job of shredding.

The other night we shredded a green mango and made a salad that was tart, sweet, a little hot, and completely delicious. This recipe makes two very decent portions; if you want to feed more people, it's easily doubled or even tripled.

Green Mango Salad

1 green mango (if all you have is a firm orange mango, go ahead and use that)
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
1/3 cup chopped basil
2 scallions, minced
1/3 cup roasted chopped peanuts

Dressing:
2 T. fish sauce
3 T. lime juice
4 t. brown sugar
1 t. chili garlic paste

1. Shred the mango, either using a grater or (much quicker) the shredding blade on a food processor.

2. Mix with the cilantro, basil, scallions, and peanuts.

3. Pour dressing over all, and serve immediately.

Serves two.

It's Summer: Greens, Greens and More Greens

Even if you don't receive a CSA box full of greens every week like we do, you probably either grow them yourself or you find your supermarket produce section sprouting some interesting leafy greens this time of year.

They're cheap. They're really good for you. And they're versatile if you use your imagination: in salads, steamed, cut up in soup or roasted into appetizer chips.

In last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Mark Bittman published a matrix of greens by type and offered dozens of ways to deal with them. Here's the gist of his article and matrix.

Romaine is fine. But dandelion, tender lettuces, chard and arugula (real arugula, not the “baby” kind they sell in most supermarkets) are all ubiquitous this time of year, and they can be as flavorful as the juiciest tomato. You can make a different salad every day for weeks without repeating yourself.

Whatever strange green you find in your kitchen this time of year, the article suggests a tasty way to eat it. 

Bloody Mary Salad Dressing: Apéritif without the Alcohol

You never know where you are going to get inspiration for a recipe you love. On our recent visit to South Dakota — not typically a land of culinary distinction — we found two recipes we now love.

One was the result of a visit to a Vietnamese-run, Chinese-Vietnamese restaurant in Rapid City where the chef-owner showed us how she made the delicious sautéed tofu (recipe to come) we enjoyed.

The other was the Bloody Mary dressing served on our green salad at Jake's in historic Deadwood. Jake's is right on main street but is hard to find because the sign is small — but the reward is huge. We had a great meal. And, if this sort of thing helps you go there, it is owned by Kevin Costner, who fell in love with Deadwood while filming "Dances With Wolves."

Our green salad was bathed lightly in a Bloody Mary dressing that awakened our taste buds.
With a little experience making Bloody Mary's, a little imagination and some vague help from the waiter, we've reconstructed the dressing:

Bloody Mary Salad Dressing

4 Tablespoons juice from a can of diced or whole tomatoes
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 Tablespoon red wine or sherry vinegar
2 teaspoons horseradish
1/4 teaspoon hot sauce
1 teaspoons fresh squeezed lemon juice
2 teaspoons tomato paste
pinch celery salt
Salt and pepper, to taste

Shake the above ingredients in a small jar or container.
In a bowl, mix greens with a little feta (optional) and halved cherry tomatoes (optional), then dress with some of the Bloody Mary dressing.

And, of course, if you want some alcohol with your salad, this dressing goes nicely with a Sauvignon Blanc or a crisp Chardonnay.

Refrigerate the leftover dressing and use again the next day or within a week.

Crunchy Indian Salad

First off, we have to acknowledge that this salad isn't for everyone. Some people (mystifyingly) just don't like Indian food, and others might have trouble finding some of the ingredients. But if you love Indian flavors, you'll be willing to track down what you need, either at an Indian grocery or online.

The good news is, this has only a handful of ingredients and can be whipped up in about ten minutes. It would be especially good on a hot summer night, either as part of a bigger meal or all by itself. With complete protein, it offers all you need nutritionally.

The chief ingredient is bhel mix, which is more or less an Indian version of Chex Mix, with puffed rice, chickpea-flour crunchies (known as "sev"), and assorted spices. Indian stores usually have a gigantic selection of these bagged mixes, in varying levels of hotness. We've had good luck with the Gujarat blend, which is not overly spicy but provides a nice warm buzz.

We first had this in a restaurant (listed on the menu as "Bhel Puri") and were able to duplicate it pretty successfully at home.

Crunchy Indian Salad*

2 1/2 cups bhel mix
2 Roma tomatoes, diced
1/4 cup onion, diced
1/4 cup cilantro, minced
1 hot chili pepper, minced
3 T. tamarind chutney (or more, depending on dryness of salad and how much you like this sour flavor)
Lime quarters

Mix all ingredients. If you're feeling fancy, you can mold it into a small bowl and upend on a plate before serving. Squirt each portion with lime juice before eating.

Serves two gluttons, or four people as an appetizer.

* Some recipes call for about a half a cup of mashed potato, and although we haven't tried this, we bet it's good.

An Inexpensive Substitute for Pine Nuts

For decades we thoughtlessly tossed handfuls of fried pine nuts into salads and pestos, without giving a thought to price. True, a one-pound bag cost about $12 at Costco, but that bag lasted a long time.

That carefree attitude evaporated this year, when pine nuts disappeared from Costco's shelves for months, then reappeared with a shocking $30-a-bag price tag. Apparently, the usual suspects—supply and demand—are to blame. Crummy harvests combined with high summer demand sent prices skyrocketing.

Though we swallowed hard and bought a bag of Costco's $30 pine nuts, we now dole them out more carefully. We'll still use them in basil-based pestos, but the days of devil-may-care salad garnishing are over for the foreseeable future.

Thankfully, there's a cheap substitute: roasted, salted sunflower seeds. The seeds work well in salads, just as crunchy and savory as their hideously expensive pine-based brethren. And a one-pound bag costs less than $3 at Trader Joe's.

Hot Weather Got You Down? Make a Watermelon Salad

June in Virginia is jaw-droppingly hot, and yesterday the temperature topped 100 degrees. By dinnertime we could not bring ourselves to use the stove or the grill—that would be redundant, given that stepping outside was like sliding into a pizza oven. Clearly, the weather called for salad. A nice, soothing watermelon salad. For us, there's nothing better to eat, or easier to prepare, after a scorching day. Paired with some cool Chardonnay, this composed salad makes an excellent light dinner. It also makes a good first course for a summer dinner party.

Soothing Watermelon Salad for Two

A few large handfuls of lettuce—any kind will do, from crunchy Romaine to mesclun mix
3 to 4 cups cubed watermelon
2/3 cup crumbled feta cheese (you may want more or less, depending on how much you love it)
3 T. chopped mint
Juice of one juicy lime
Sea salt and fresh-ground pepper

1. Spread lettuce on two good-size plates.

2. Divide watermelon, feta, and mint, and arrange them atop the plates.

3. Sprinkle with lime juice. Half a lime per plate is probably plenty, depending on how juicy it  is. Try a cube of melon midway through the sprinkling to make sure you aren't making the salad too sour.

4. Season with salt and pepper, but be careful not to oversalt, given the feta.

That's it! Insanely easy, deliciously cool, and perfect for hot summer nights.

Bean Sprout Salad with Crunchy Peanut Dressing

One of the joys of living in this Northern Virginia suburb is shopping at the giant Asian market about a mile away: not only does it have every Asian ingredient imaginable, and many that we could never imagine in a hundred years, it also has excellent and inexpensive produce. No more do we have to make do with little bags of mushy, half-decomposed bean sprouts—we now get one-pound bags of crispy sprouts that last a week or more.

The only problem is, once we've used a couple of handfuls of sprouts, we still have almost a pound left. What to do?

As usual, the Internet has lots of good suggestions, including this recipe for a bean sprout salad that came from Henry Chung's legendary Hunan Restaurant in San Francisco. We thought that the author's recipe sounded tasty but a little on the wet side, so we slightly adapted it, with happy results.

Bean Sprout Salad with Crunchy Peanut Dressing

1 pound mung bean sprouts
1 cucumber, peeled and cut into small chunks
1/2 cup carrot, cut into small chunks

Dressing:
2 T. soy sauce
4 T. rice vinegar
1 T. dry white wine
1 t. cayenne pepper
1 t. sugar
1 t. dry mustard
1 t. salt
1 T. minced ginger
1 T. minced garlic
1 T. minced scallion
3 T. toasted sesame oil
4 T. crunchy peanut butter

1. Mix the vegetables in a large bowl.
2. Mix together the dressing ingredients. A blender works great for this.
3. Pour the dressing over the vegetables.
4. Chill, but don't wait too long to serve this, as it gets soggy the longer it sits.

Mock Tuna Salad: Don't Laugh Until You've Tried It

Ruth admits that vegetarianism has not always been easy. One of the hardest things to give up was tuna, a lunchtime staple since childhood. When she found Lindy Loo's recipe for fake tuna salad, she was skeptical—how could chickpeas possibly fill in for canned tuna? Tim was even more dubious, having been on the receiving end of many failed mock-meat dishes.

But this recipe has become a favorite of both of ours. It's amazing how much this mix of ingredients tastes and feels like tuna salad. Though Lindy Loo didn't bother to use the kelp in her recipe, we think it's crucial for the "tuna" flavor; we've used both kelp granules and nori seaweed flakes with good results. (You can get both products at health food stores.)

Even if you still eat tuna, you may want to cut back on your consumption to limit your mercury intake. If so, give Lindy Loo's recipe a whirl. You will not be sorry.

Given that our pantry stockpiles include several big bags of dried chickpeas, we plan to make Mock Tuna Salad a few times in the weeks ahead.

Wild Rice and Pecan Salad

After gorging on Thai food for what seems like weeks, we wanted something different last night—something dark, earthy, and festive, in honor of the winter solstice.

We remembered one of our favorite recipes from the Greens cookbook—a recipe that we freely adapt, depending on what we have on hand. Sometimes we use hazelnuts; sometimes pecans. Sometimes we use lots of citrus; sometimes we rely on rice vinegar for the acid. But whatever we use, it's always good.

This recipe is great for a holiday dinner that includes vegetarians, as the grains and nuts provide complete protein. It also makes an excellent side dish.

Wild Rice and Pecan Salad

1 cup wild rice

1/2 cup pecans

1 tart apple

1 small fennel bulb

Dressing

juice and zest from one large orange

1 T. rice vinegar

3 scallions, minced

1/2 t. fennel seeds, crushed in a mortar or with the back of a spoon

2 T. chopped parsley

1/4 cup walnut oil

1. Boil the wild rice to desired doneness, about 30 minutes. (We like it a little chewy.)

2. Toast the pecans in a frying pan; if you like, you can add a little bit of olive oil to speed up the process.

3. Cut the fennel bulb and apple into dice—slightly smaller than 1/2-inch dice works well, though you can see from the photo that we're not that picky about it.

4. Prepare dressing.

5. When rice is done, mix with pecans, fennel, and apple. Add dressing while the rice is still hot.

Serves four as a side dish.

Tip: Making Your Salad Mix Last

Those one-pound clamshell packages of mixed greens can be a good deal if they're fresh when you buy them. Before you throw them in your cart, make sure to inspect the bottom of the package for signs of spoiling greens; if you can see yellow leaves or, worse, brown rot, don't buy it.

One problem with these packages is that the lettuce is crammed in, hastening the spoilage. And some of the greens in the mix—mizuna and baby spinach, in particular—spoil more quickly than the others, ruining the whole batch for anyone disinclined to spend a lot of time picking out the slimy offenders.

Fortunately, there's a way to extend the life of your salad mix. After you've taken some out to

make a salad, shake up the package to give the remaining leaves some air. If you diligently do this every time you create a little more room, your salad mix will stay fresh for up to two weeks.

Our local grocery is now selling a one-pound package of salad mix for $6.99, which we consider a bargain, compared with the unavoidable waste involved with head lettuce. Sometimes, though, the premixed packages are way overpriced—those five-ounce bags are particularly egregious. At these times, head lettuce is a better deal. If you find run-of-the-mill romaine and red-leaf too boring, you can liven them up by adding arugula and sliced radicchio.

Orange Salad

We like the seasonal switchover into fall for a lot of reasons—the crunchy fallen leaves, the freshly picked apples and freshly pressed cider, the Halloween costumes and November sunsets and Thanksgiving's pumpkin pies—but there's one thing about fall that makes us sad: the fruit.

Once summer's berries and stone fruits are behind us, we know we're in for months and months of bananas. Bananas on our granola, bananas in our yogurt, bananas sprawled on our kitchen table in various stages of under- and overripeness.

Every fall we forget that the season also brings citrus: heavy, juicy grapefruits; sweet clementines; and oranges. This recipe, from our last unpacked cookbook, Cooking in the Litchfield Hills (thanks for the long loan, Teresa; we'll return it soon!), makes delicious use of winter fruit.

Orange Salad Italia

8 large oranges

5 garlic cloves

1/2 cup olive oil

fresh oregano, chopped

salt and pepper

Peel the oranges, break them into sections, remove the pitch, and cut the sections in half. Peel the garlic, and chop it very fine. Place the oranges in a bowl; add the garlic, olive oil, oregano, salt, and pepper; toss.

Six servings.

Good Fast Food: Pseudo-Tabbouli

Between the Deadline and the Move, we haven't had much time to shop or cook. Fortunately, our share of a CSA box keeps us in produce, but the other day we found ourselves with little to eat beyond carrots, garlic, and potatoes. Though we could have devised a meal from those humble ingredients, we didn't have time to prepare one.

Looking through the pantry, we found a jar of bulgur that had been ignored for a long time, waiting to

be made into tabbouli. We had no time for that, but we remembered that bulgur can be cooked in just a few minutes by covering it with boiling water. So we did that.

Once we had the hot bulgur, we improvised: a drizzle of olive oil, a few squirts of lemon juice, salt, pepper. We still had some mint, basil, and parsley in the garden, so we chopped a few leaves and tossed them in, along with some crumbled feta cheese.

We loved the result. Though it didn't have the pungent greenness of real tabbouli, which normally includes a hefty dose of minced garlic and scallions, it did have the basic flavors, and the higher proportion of bulgur resulted in a heavier, chewy salad that went well with the sudden influx of fall weather.

We'll make this again, even after the Deadline and the Move.

Crunchy Kale Salad

We were happy to open our CSA box this week and see a big bushy head of kale sitting atop the scallions, potatoes, and corn. For a long time, we had trouble dealing with this vegetable, which is very nutritious but can also be fibrous, bitter, and difficult to cook properly. 

But last year Fort Hill Farm thoughtfully provided a recipe for a salad that marinates raw kale overnight, turning it into something ambrosial. Yes, we just used "kale" and "ambrosial" in the same sentence. We're hooked. The recipe works great with any of the stronger greens, including broccoli raab and collards, as well as softer-leaved vegetables like chard. 

Kale Salad

1/2 bunch of kale, stems removed, rough chopped

1/4  head of red cabbage, shaved

1/2 onion, thinly sliced and separated into rings                    

2 to 3 T. olive oil                                                          

4 t. Bragg’s Liquid Aminos  

2 T. lemon juice      

1 to 3 T. cider vinegar   

1 to 2 T. sesame oil                                                    

salt and pepper to taste            

1. Mix together the chopped kale, sliced onion, and shaved red cabbage in a large bowl. 

2. Whisk together the olive oil, Braggs Liquid Aminos, lemon juice, cider vinegar, and sesame oil in a small bowl.  Taste and adjust ingredients to your liking; season to taste with salt and pepper.  

3. Pour the dressing over veggies, toss well to coat, cover, and refrigerate overnight. 

Serve Chilled.

Clean-Out-the-Fridge Slaw

The CSA farm where we get our box of produce each week during the summer, Fort Hill Farm, is very good about including recipes for how to use the bounty. Getting a big box of vegetables sounds great, especially when you eat as many as we do, but it can be intimidating to keep up with two stuffed crisper drawers and loaded refrigerator shelves.

This week the Fort Hill Farm newsletter included instructions for something called "clean-out-the-fridge slaw." We followed the recipe somewhat, but the beauty of it is that you can substitute pretty much anything you've got. We managed to put a slight dent in our surplus.

Here's what we used:

4 small turnips

6 smallish carrots

1 small red onion (or 5 radishes)

1/2 red cabbage

1/2 white cabbage

Coarsely grate all the vegetables, then mix them together in a big bowl.

Dressing:

1. Dissolve 1 T. sugar in 1 T. water, then mix with 1 T. cider vinegar.

2. Add enough mayonnaise (or Vegenaise) to achieve the consistency you want (we used about one cup).

3. Add 2 T. dried dill, or 3 to 4 T. fresh dill; 2 t. celery seed; and salt and pepper to taste.

Toss the dressing with the veggies, cover, and chill for a hour or more.

Serves at least six. We had it with fish, but this slaw works with everything from barbeque to burgers to poultry—or, of course, tofu or veggie dogs.

The Box Is Growing Heavier

As we move into the heart of the growing season, our CSA box is getting much weightier, loaded with potatoes, garlic, tomatoes, squash, and more. Salad for dinner tonight, clearly.

Speaking of which, Mark Bittman has a great mega-column in the New York Times Dining section today, listing 101 salads as well as dressing suggestions. When we first saw it, we thought, "Who needs more salad ideas?" Then we took a look at the salad of shredded carrots, blueberries, and sunflower seeds and realized that we hadn't begun to explore this summer standby.