salad

Deconstructed Tomato: Tomato gelée with tomato coulis

maki — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 12:05:13 +0200

Have you ever made tomato water? It’s the clear liquid strained gently from a ripe tomato, and one of the best treats of summer. When made from juicy, vine-ripened tomatoes, it has a sweet yet green-tomatoey taste that is so intense that a little goes a very long way.

Making tomato water is very simple. All it requires is a blender or food processor, a fine mesh sieve, paper towels, and patience. What you do with the resulting water is up to your imagination. Here I have added a little gelatin to make it into a tomato gelée (or, to be non-fancy, jelly). Served on top is a tomato coulis made from the pulp that is left over after the water is strained. The only heat-adding cooking involved is in melting the gelatin. It fits in well with my minimal-cooking mood this summer.

This would make a very interesting first course for a summer meal, or an amuse-bouche if served in tiny portions. It would be a great in-between courses palate cleanser too, if you are having an elaborate meal.

The amounts given will yield about 4 small first course portions.

Tomato water

4 large, ripe and juicy tomatoes, heirloom variety preferred (my two favorite varieties available widely here to use for this are Berner Rosen and Coeur du Boeuf. I’d also use Brandywines if I had them.)
Large pinch of sea salt

Equipment needed: a fine mesh colander or sieve, non-dyed paper towels, a large bowl over which the sieve can sit, food processor or blender

De-stem and roughly cut up the tomatoes; place in the food processor or blender, seeds and all. Add the salt, and liquify.

Line the sieve or colander with about 3 thicknesses of paper towel; place over the bowl. Carefully pour the liquified tomato into the sieve. Leave in refrigerator for several hours or over night, until the water has drained into the bowl. Don’t try to squeeze any liquid through, or the water will become cloudy.

Tomato gelée

About 300ml / 1 1/4 cups of tomato water
3 leafs of leaf gelatin
Water

Soak the gelatin leaves in cold water until soft. Drain.

Put about 1/3rd of the tomato water in a small pan with the softened gelatin. Stir over low heat until completely dissolved. Add the rest of the tomato water.

Chill in the fridge until set. (If you have more or less tomato water than the amount here, adjust the amount of gelatin - you should have a rather soft set, not something you could bounce off a hard surface.)

Tomato coulis

Pass the leftover pulp from making the tomato water through a fine sieve to get rid of all the seeds and skin bits. That’s it! You can optionally add a bit of cream, but I find that the tomato alone has a creamy, intense quality.

This can all be made a day ahead and kept in the fridge, well covered.

To assemble the Deconstructed Tomato (do this just before serving to preserve the clarity of the tomato jelly), break up the set tomato jelly with a fork into small bits. Make a small mound, and carefully put a teaspoonful of the coulis on top. Garnish with a small basil leaf.

Other uses for tomato water and coulis

Serve the tomato water with a bit of vodka, very well chilled, in shot glasses as an interesting shooter.
Add finely chopped cucumber, celery, tomato, etc. to the jelly to make a salad.
Serve the coulis or jelly or both with boiled shrimp.
Leftover coulis can be made into a (warm) tomato sauce - just use instead of or in addition to canned crushed tomatoes.

Tabbouleh with heirloom tomatoes and shiso

maki — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 13:33:50 +0200

I haven’t been posting a lot of recipes here recently. This is mainly because I haven’t actually been doing a lot of full-on cooking, as in hauling out a lot of pots and pans and having the oven full blast and so on. It’s summer after all, and I’ve been enjoying fruits and vegetables as close to their natural, fresh, ripe state as possible. So this week I’ll be posting a few such recipes - requiring minimal active cooking, full of fresh summer vegetables, and nice to have on a warm summer day or evening.

The first one is my standard recipe for tabbouleh, with a twist - instead of using mint, I use shiso (perilla). Shiso has a slightly minty but wholly unique flavor which I really like in just about anything. I also make it with a lot less olive oil than most recipes call for, which I think adds to the fresh taste. We love to have a bowl of tabbouleh in the fridge for easy self-service lunch and snacks throughout the day - it tastes so healthy and is quite filling. It’s also a great side dish for a barbeque.

Fresh tomatoes are the key to a great tabbouleh in my opinion. You need ones that are ripe and full of flavor, yet firm. One of my favorite tomatoes at the moment are an heirloom Swiss variety called Berner Rosen - they are a rosy pink when ripe, and full of juice and flavor. (If you’re in Switzerland, Berner Rosen are all over the place at the markets right now.) If you can’t get hold of a good heirloom variety like this, use cherry tomatoes, which are usually reliably firm yet flavorful.

Tabbouleh with heirloom tomatoes and shiso

Makes about 6-7 cups

220g / about 8 oz (or about 1 1/2 cups) bulgur
250g / about 9 oz finely cubed cucumber (or one large English type cucumber, deseeded)
500g / about 1lb 2 oz chopped up tomato (or 6-8 medium to large ripe tomatoes, deseeded)
250g / about 9 oz finely chopped red onion (or 3 medium onions)
2 cups of flat leaf parsley leaves, finely chopped
1 large handful of shiso leaves, or a very small handful of mint leaves, finely shredded (go easy if you are using mint)
Juice of 3 large lemons
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper

Soak the bulgur in enough water to come about 1 cm or 1/2 inch above the surface. Cover and let soak for at least 1 hour.

While the bulgur is soaking, chop up the vegetables. It’s better to do this by hand, but if you use a food processor be very careful that it doesn’t all turn into a pulp.

When deseeding the cucumbers and tomatoes, reserve the seed part and pass through a sieve to take out the actual seeds but extract the watery pulp around them. This pulp is full of flavor and it will be added to the tabbouleh later. (Skip this step if you don’t want to bother.)

Drain the soaked bulgur very well and put into a bowl. Add all the vegetables and herbs, the sieved seed pulp, lemon juice, oil, and salt and pepper; mix well. Taste to see if it needs more salt (remember the saltiness will mellow a bit). Cover well and refrigerate for at least an hour, preferably overnight.

This will keep for several days in the fridge, mellowing every day. If you want to keep it longer than a few days, omit the onions. You may want to add more parsley leaves and/or shiso leaves when serving.

5-a-day lemon honey mustard salad pickles

maki — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 20:26:34 +0100

To finish out the week of instant tsukemono or pickles, here is a mixed vegetable pickle with the rather non-Japanese flavors of lemon juice and honey. Despite these flavors it does go pretty well with a Japanese meal, though you can drizzle a bit of soy sauce on top to make it more Japanese-y. It can be made in a batch, stored in the refrigerator, and eaten like salad until it’s gone (though you should try to finish it within 3 or so days.) Using lemon as the acid is a nice change from the usual vinegar, as is the honey as the sweetener.

I’ve called it 5-a-day pickles because that’s the recommended number of fruit and vegetable servings you’re supposed to eat every day, according to the UK National Health Service, but I often hear people complain that it’s hard to eat that many servings. A good sized serving of these mild, salad-like pickles would do the trick in one go.

I’ve used some winter vegetables since we’re still at the tail end of winter (and it’s been snowing hard here all week), but any vegetables in season can be used. You could use cauliflower florets, chard stalks, turnips, kohlrabi, celeriac, cabbage, etc. In summer I’m thinking of fresh cucumber, still-firm de-seeded tomatoes, green beans, peppers… Always blanch the tougher vegetables for a short time. Putting it in the marinade while still warm helps the vegetables to absorb the flavors better.

I love the idea of a big bowl of this ready and waiting in the refrigerator, so at least the veggie part of dinner is done.

5-a-day lemon honey mustard salad pickles

For the marinade:

1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 Tbs. honey
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 Tbs. dry mustard, reconstituted with a little water to form a paste (optional)
1 bunch flatleaf parsley, stalks and all
1 Tbs. peppercorns
1 Tbs. red pepper flakes (optional)

The vegetables:

1 medium fennel bulb
2 medium carrots
1 small head broccoli
1 celery stalk from the inner parts
1 medium cucumber

Combine the marinade ingredients in small pan. Stir over low heat until everything is dissolved. Take off the heat.

Heat up a large pot of water.

Slice the fennel bulb thinly. Peel and cut the carrots into matchsticks. Cut the broccoli into small florets, and peel and cut the stem part into matchsticks. Cut the celery stalk into matchsticks. Deseed and cut up the cucumber into…more matchsticks.

Blanch the carrots and fennel in boiling water for 1 minute. Add the broccoli and boil for another 30 seconds. Don’t overcook - they should still be very crispy! Drain well.

Put the hot vegetables in the marinade and toss well. Add the celery and cucumber and toss some more.

Leave in a non-reactive container, well covered, in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours or overnight. You may want to stir or shake it around occasionally. Here’s my favorite container for this kind of thing, a big Pyrex Prepware 8-cup measuring cup with flexible, tight-fitting lid. (I have 3 of these jugs because I’m so afraid someone will break it and I wouldn’t be able to buy it again.)

To serve, scoop out some and eat like a salad.

Notes

If you’ve made the tsukemono seasoning mix, substitute 2 teaspoons of that for the salt, for added flavor.

If you examine this recipe you’ll realize that it’s very much like European or American style pickle, except that there’s no laborious canning and so on involved. In this day and age, unless you are dead set on only eating vegetables you’ve grown yourself or something and need to preserve your harvest for the winter months, there’s not much incentive really to put up jars of pickled vegetables for long-term storage. There is an incentive to make things like jam and tomato sauce for the freezer, but these fresh pickles taste much better than ones that have been sitting around in a dark corner for months. Plus it assembles in minutes. That’s been the main point of this week’s recipes - to encourage people to re-discover the sour-sweet-salty pleasures of pickled vegetables, but without the fuss. Perhaps, like Manne, you’ll be inspired to re-discover the pickles from your heritage.

That’s the last pickle recipe for now, though I’m sure I’ll be posting more as other vegetables come into season. I hope you enjoyed them!

Celery with chili pepper pickles (Serori no pirikara zuke)

maki — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 16:23:36 +0100

Celery isn’t a very Japanese vegetable, but with the addition of the right flavors it can be turned into a refreshingly crunchy pickle that goes well with white rice, which is the base criteria for determining whether a pickle fits a Japanese meal or not. Besides, I always seem to have some celery in my fridge (who doesn’t?), and this is a good excuse to use some up.

This is a nice salad-like pickle, that’s best eaten with some of the pickling liquid spooned like dressing over the top. There’s a nice bite and a color zing from the thin slivers of red chili pepper. (Pirikara means spicy-hot.) There’s a little sake and mirin in the dressing, which gives it a twist.

Since celery is more fibrous than cucumber, it needs to marinade for a bit longer. Give it at least 3 hours, or overnight. It doesn’t keep too well at room temperature, so reserve this for eating at home. It assembles as quickly as the other quick pickles in this series.

Celery with chili pepper pickles (Serori no pirikara zuke)

For the pickling liquid:

2 Tbs. soy sauce
2 Tbs sake
1 tsp. mirin
1/4 tsp. salt
1 Tbs. sugar
3 Tbs. rice vinegar

The vegetables:

4 medium length celery stalks, preferably the tender ones from the heart
1 mildly spicy red chili pepper

Addition at the end:

Toasted sesame oil

Equipment:

2 plates of equal size with flat bottoms
A weight of some kind, such as a can of tomatoes
Ye good old plastic ziplock bag

Combine the pickling ingredients in a small pan. Heat up while stirring to dissolve the sugar and salt. Let come to a boil (to evaporate some of the alcohol) and let cool.

Wash and cut the celery stalks into short lengths, and cut them into matchsticks.

Cut in half, de-seed and devein the chili pepper. (Don’t use a very hot chili pepper like habanero…you want something with bite but not mouth-numbing.) Julienne very finely.

Put the pickling liquid and the vegetables in a plastic zip bag, close up and toss well. Lay it down flat on a plate, distributing the celery out fairly evenly. Put the other plate on top. Weigh down with a weight on top of the upper plate. Let marinade in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours but no more than a day.

To serve, arrange on a plate, spoon over some of the pickling liquid, and drizzle with a little sesame oil.

Sweet and sour cucumber and wakame pickles (kyuuri to wakame no amasuzuke)

maki — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 15:52:52 +0100

This Japanese sokusekizuke method of letting vegetables marinate in a vinegar-based marinade is similar to Western pickling methods, but there’s no canning and sterilation and things involved since these are meant to be eaten within a couple of days like all quick pickles. The vinegar marinade is simply meant to enhance the flavors of the vegetables rather than preserve it for long keeping.

These cucumber pickles are sweet, sour and a bit salty all at the same time. The flavor is quite mild and fresh, so I can eat these several days in a row and not get tired of them. The wakame seaweed can be left out if you prefer, but makes a nice contrast to the cucumber while adding its own umami to the marinade.

The pickles can be eaten anytime from a couple of hours after putting them in the marinade to about 3 days later or so, if you keep it in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Sweet and sour cucumber and wakame pickles (kyuuri to wakame no amasuzuke)

Note: this amount of marinade is enough for one large English-style cucumber - the long, relatively thin kind that often comes shrink-packed in plastic. If you’re using other cucumbers, aim for about 4 to 5 cups cut up.

The marinade:

8 Tbs. rice wine vinegar (not sushi vinegar - read the label)
1/2 tsp. dashi soup stock granules, OR 1 4 inch square / 10 cm square piece of kombu seaweed
1 1/2 Tbs. sugar
1 tsp. sea salt
4 Tbs. boiling water
1 whole dried red chili pepper (optional; leave out if you don’t want any spiciness)

Combine and mix until the sugar is melted.

The vegetables:

1 large English-style cucumber
2 Tbs. dried pre-cut wakame seaweed (fueru type or the kind that just requires soaking)

De-seed and cut up 1 English-style cucumber or equivalent other kind of cucumber. (Japanese cucumbers don’t need de-seeding.)

Put the marinade in a small glass, ceramic or plastic bowl (not metal) or the good old ziplock plastic bag. Put the cucumber and wakame seaweed in. Stir or shake around, seal well and let marinade in the refrigerator for 2-3 hours or overnight.

Drain off the marinade and serve in small bowls. This should be eaten within 2-3 days.

Notes

You can reuse the marinade once: let it come to a boil, cool off, and put in fresh vegetables.

Besides cucumbers try sliced turnips, carrots, daikon radish, regular radish, etc.

Introduction to quick Japanese tsukemono (pickles)

maki — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 15:07:12 +0100

In Japan, tsukemono or pickles are used as hashi-yasume, literally “chopstick resters”, side dishes that have a totally different texture and flavor. So for instance if you had some grilled meat with a sweet-savory sauce as the main course, you might have some simple, crunchy pickled cucumber slices to go with it.

This week I’ll be posting some quick Japanese vegetable pickle recipes. Japanese pickles can be very loosely divided into three kinds: the kind that take some time to ‘ripen’, but then last indefinitely, rather like Western style pickles; the kind that is ready in a few days, but which require a pickling bed that takes time to make and to maintain; and finally, the quick and easy kind that can be made and eaten within a day. The last two kinds do not keep well - just like fresh vegetables, they must be eaten within a short time.

Quick pickles, called sokusekizuke (instant pickles) or ichiya-zuke (overnight pickles) depending on how long they take to come to full flavor, are very easy to make as their names suggest. They are a great way to prepare vegetables without having to add any additional fat, though a few recipes do call for some oil.

Key components of quick Japanese pickles

The vegetables. Choose very fresh vegetables, preferably in season. All kinds of vegetables can be used alone or in combination. The most popular pickling vegetables are Chinese / nappa cabbage, regular cabbage, cucumbers, turnips and daikon radish, but many other vegetables can be used - carrots, celery, various greens, etc.
Salt. Salt is used to extract the moisture from the vegetables as well as for flavor.
Umami ingredients. These are added for extra flavor and to bring out the natural flavor of the vegetables. The most common umami ingredient used is kombu seaweed. Other ones include tiny dried shrimp, bonito flakes, and dried shiitake mushrooms. Sometimes instant dashi granules or ajinomoto (MSG) are used too.
Other flavoring ingredients. Varying these can give character and interest to pickles. Some common flavoring ingredients include: shiso leaves, fresh or dried; various citrus zests, flavored oils, citrus juices, vinegar, and aromatic vegetables like ginger and green onions.

Pickling book

I’ve only found one book in English totally dedicated to quick Japanese pickles: Quick & Easy Tsukemono: Japanese Pickling Recipes by Ikuko Hisamatsu. It’s pretty good with lots of colorful and helpful photos, and given the price I would recommend it to anyone who likes the flavor and concept of an alternative way to prepare fresh vegetables besides making a salad. It is a translation from a Japanese book though, so you do see some ingredients that are commonplace in Japan but aren’t elsewhere. There’s no explanation of those ingredients so it could be a bit confusing.

I’m going to try to stick to ingredients that are fairly easy to get outside of Japan, or at least can be easily bought from mailorder sources, for my recipes this week (as always).

Care with instant pickles

I’m repeating myself but just to emphasize: instant pickles are not meant to be kept for a long time. They should be eaten within a day or so, and stored in the refrigerator.

Most instant pickle recipes are rather salty, so if sodium intake is a concern you may want to decrease the amount and increase other flavoring ingredients, or add a bit of vinegar or citrus juice.

And here’s the whole series

Japanese Potato Salad

maki — Sun, 28 May 2006 15:14:00 +0200

Cool potato salad is one of the great summer dishes, though I can eat it on any day of the year. Every culture that eats potatoes probably has its own unique recipe for potato salad. While potatoes are not really part of traditional Japanese cuisine, it's now a fixture in everyday cooking. When I was in junior high in the suburbs of Tokyo, our school's sandwich concession even had something called a 'vegetable sandwich', which was actually a mound of potato salad between two slices of white bread. Potato salad is often tucked into a corner of an obento box (lunch box), and it's also a popular beer or sake snack. My ideal Japanese-theme picnic would include onigiri (rice balls), some chicken karaage, and potato salad for sure.

Japanese potato salad has a mild, creamy flavor, with no acidic undertone; unlike American or German style potato salads, no vinegar is used. It's seasoned only with salt and a little pepper, and lots and lots of mayonnaise, and is just a bit sweet from the other vegetables mixed in - boiled carrots, thinly sliced cucumber, and onion. Some people even add a little sugar. Chopped boiled egg adds to the richness. It's really designed to go well with rice (as are most Japanese savory dishes).

The ideal mayo to use is a Japanese one of course; Kewpie Mayonnaise is classic, but there are other (and some say, better) brands too. Look for them at your local Japanese or Asian grocery store. If you make your own, use a flavor-neutral vegetable oil such as canola or safflower, not extra virgin olive oil. ("Extra Light" olive oil is fine.) Lacking access to Japanese mayonnaise or the time to make your own though, any commercial mayo will do as long as it's not too heavy on the vinegar flavor. Salad cream should not be used however.

Japanese Potato Salad

3 medium boiling (firm) potatoes, well scrubbed
1 small carrot
About 10 cm / 4 inches of a seedless cucumber
1 small onion
1 egg
Salt and pepper
3/4 to 1 cup of mayonnaise, Japanese or homemade preferred (see notes above)

Boil the potatoes in their skins until tender (you can poke a skewer through one without any resistance). Boil the carrot, unpeeled, in the same pot. Boil the egg until hard boiled at the same time.

In the meantime, slice the cucumber and the onion very thinly. Sprinkle both with a little salt, and let sit for a while (10 minutes or more) until the vegetables exude their juices. Squeeze firmly to get rid of the juices.

When the potatoes and carrot are done, drain peel them while still hot (holding each in a kitchen towel to peel them helps). Cut the potatoes into small pieces, and slice the carrot. Toss with a little salt and pepper and leave to cool.

Peel the hard boiled egg and chop up finely.

When the potatoes and carrot mixture has cooled to room temperature, mix in the cucumber, onion and egg. Mix in the mayonnaise. Cover with plastic wrap and cool in the refrigerator until serving time (ideally at least one hour).

If you are bringing this to a picnic be sure to pack it in a cooler - it will keep better, and taste better chilled than at room temperature. If you are packing it in an obento box, make sure the rice and other ingredients have cooled before tucking in the salad, or carry the salad in a separate container.

[Update:] A not-traditional but still tasty vegan version of this potato salad

Masterchef challenge day 8: Seared tuna, arugula and basil linguine

maki — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 22:37:43 +0100

It's day 8, and the end of week two of MasterChef. The ingredients were:

Tuna steak
Fresh basil
Fresh (?) linguine
Potatoes
Olives
Parmesan cheese

Potatoes, again! This week potatoes have been in the list every day. I decided to go with the linguine instead - I was missing pasta anyway.

There are quite a lot of ingredient notes for this dish, but it's really quick to assemble.

For this dish you do need sushi-grade, or very fresh, tuna. In my opinion cooked tuna should only be seared, and should be raw in the middle as it is here. Do not ever cook tuna through so that it's turns all white. Otherwise you might as well use canned tuna and save your money! I do like canned tuna, but it's quite a different beast from the fresh tuna. (Luckily Migros City in Zürich usually has some very fresh tuna, especially on Fridays when I actually made this meal. Migros is the biggest supermarket chain in Switzerland.)
Garlic with tuna might sound strange, but grated raw garlic actually goes very well with tuna, bonito and similar raw or just-seared fish. My stepfather actually prefers to eat his maguro sashimi with a little grated raw garlic instead of wasabi. If you prefer though, you can use just wasabi, but go easy on it!
The voiceover on the show said "fresh" linguine, but they showed a picture of what looked like regular dried linguine. Since I had a box of linguine already, that's what I used. I think that dried pasta stands up better in a salad.
I used a pack of baby arugula leaves that I had and needed to be used up, but you could also use any kind of slightly peppery but tender leaves, such as mizuna, cress, or escarole.
Dried wasabi powder is available in Japanese or Asian food markets. You can also get readymade wasabi in a tube, in which case use 2 teaspoons. (or save the huge lump of wasabi that comes with takeout sushi for this.)
Ponzu is a citrusy soy sauce based sauce that you can find in Japanese or Asian markets. (It is also, I fear, currently rather 'trendy'.) It makes a nice change from regular vinegar for salad dressings. Lemon juice mixed with soy sauce can be substituted, but it will taste different.

I really loved the fresh flavors of this dish. I might cut up the tuna into cubes the next time though.

Unused ingredients were olives (though if I had some really fresh ones I might have chopped them up and added them), Parmesan cheese, potatoes.

Seared Tuna Pasta Salad

For 4 servings:

About 225g / 8 oz piece of sushi grade tuna (maguro, or the lean red part)
200g / 8 oz dried linguine
3 Tbs soy sauce
2 whole garlic cloves
1 1/2 tsp. dried wasabi powder
about 120g / 4 oz baby arugula leaves, or other peppery small salad leaves
10 fresh basil leaves
3 Tbs. Ponzu
1 Tbs. olive oil
Salt for cooking the olive oil

Put a pot of water to boil to cook the pasta.

Grate the garlic. Add droplets of water to the dried wasabi powder in a small bowl until it becomes a paste. Combine both with the soy sauce, and pour over the tuna. Marinate in the refrigerator for at least 20 minutes.

Wash the arugula leaves and basil leaves. Chop the basil roughly.

In the meantime, cook the linguine in salted water. When the pasta is done, drain and then toss aggressively in a bowl with a little olive oil, the arugula, basil and ponzu. (The aggressive tossing is to cool it as rapidly as possible while you're tossing! Just don't hit the ceiling. Also, the arugula and basil will wilt a bit from the heat of the pasta, but that makes it a bit tastier, in my opinion.) Taste it at this point and add a little more ponzu if you like (remember then when the pasta is chilled, the flavor will diffuse a bit.) Spread out as flat as you can in a container that would fit in your refrigerator, and put it in there to cool as rapidly as possible. (Note, if you aren't trying to make this all within 40 minutes, just cool to room temperature then put it in the refrigerator until ready to serve.)

Heat up a grill pan or a nonstick frying pan. Take the tuna out of the marinade, and quickly sear it on both sides. Cut the tuna into thin slices, or into cubes.

To serve, put a little mound of the pasta on each plate, and place the tuna on top. Pour any remaining marinade over the tuna.

Lamb's lettuce salad with walnut oil dressing

maki — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 01:09:06 +0100

These little dark green leaves are known by various rather different names: in English the most common name is lamb's lettuce; in French, it's mâche; in Hochdeutsch (standard German) it's Feldsalat, or field salad. I think the Schwiizerdütsch (Swiss German dialect) name for it is the best though: Nüsslisalat - little nut salad, since it does have a subtle nutty taste. It grows wild in our garden, where we can usually pick a big bagful a few times a year from the many weedy spots. It's very easy to grow from seed too. The flavor is enhanced by frost, like other dark greens such as komatsuna, so it's best to sow this in late fall/autumn and enjoy them in the early spring.

Unlike other salad greens such as arugula, watercress or even mizuna, lamb's lettuce does not hit you with its bite; it has a very subtle taste. I like it best on its own, though goes very well in a mixed salad too. Here it's dressed with a subtly nutty oil that enhances its flavor. This is a perfect foil by the way, for the very rich mac and cheese in the previous post.

If your lamb's lettuce is not hydroponically grown or prewashed, wash it very carefully in several changes of water, since it grows close to the ground and can be gritty. Dry carefully with several paper towels or clean kitchen towels.

For the dressing: make a oil and vinegar dressing with an 8 to 2 ratio of light walnut or hazelnut oil to lemon juice - as opposed to the usual ratio of 7 to 3. Whisk these together (or shake together in a jar) with salt and pepper to taste. You do not want mustard in this dressing since it can overwhelm the flavor of the lamb's lettuce, and go easy on the salt and pepper too.

Scandinavian cucumber salad

maki — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 17:16:05 +0200

One item that can be a killer when you're trying to reduce calories, and thereby your circumference, is salad dressing. The problem is that most traditional salad dressings are 60 to 70% oil in weight. But when I look at recipes for salad dressings from the weight-loss brigade sources and see measurements like half a teaspoonful of olive oil, I wonder what planet these people live on. Half a teaspoon of olive oil on a big salad is not going to add any sort of discernable flavor. You might as well go without it.

On the other hand, it is quite difficult for most people to eat raw vegetables with just a squeeze of lemon juice and salt or something. The role of salad dressing is to coat the veggies with a layer of flavor, and to add a certain moistness or lubrication. It seems a bit strange to think that you need to add "moistness" to vegetables, which are almost all water in weight, but the human palate is a strange thing.

So, what I've been looking for is ways to add the "moistness" and flavor coating to a salad without the addition of oil. Or, if I do add oil it is really going to count in terms of flavor.

Cucumbers have a delicious juice, that really gets perked up by a little salt and/or a sour ingredient like vinegar or lemon juice. I've been making this salad, which has a rather Scandinavian sweet-and-sour flavor, for years now, and it gets rave reviews every time because it really has a wonderful fresh, refreshing taste and texture. It has no fat at all, and if you are avoiding sugar all together you can substitute artificial sweetener for the 1 tablespoonful of sugar. Substituting honey for the sugar gives it a subtly differerent flavor too. This salad goes well with just about any kind of meal.

Scandinavian cucumber salad_

1 long English-style cucumber, or the equivalent amount of other seedless or low-free cucumbers (Japanese cucumbers for example)
1 small celery stalk
small bunch of parsley
Fresh dill
1 Tbs. sugar
2 Tbs white wine vinegar
1 tsp. salt

Slice the cucumber thin, but not paper-thin - about 2mm or so in thickness. Put n a bowl.

Chop the celery very finely. Chop the parsley and dill also. (Note: you can really add as much parsley as you want, but you want up to about 1 Tbs. of dill. You can omit the dill too.) Put in the bowl with the cucumbers.

Combine the sugar, vinegar, and salt and pour over the vegetables. Dont worry if the sugar and salt don't completely dissolve - they will eventually. Mix well with your hand, squishing the cucumber a bit to encourage the juices to come out. Cover the bowl and chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour. Mix again before serving.

Makes 4 side-salad servings, 2 salad-course servings, or 1 large main salad.

Fat content: none
Sugar content: 1 Tbs.

Variations: Add thinly sliced radish. Add a can of tuna packed in water (the cucumber juice goes very well with tuna).