Raspberry revels - berry salad

This was an early foray in using up my giant glut of raspberries, and was inspired by the amazing salads the Norse Goddess made for us while we were in Vancouver. She used a variety of ingredients in her salads, but they all had three elements which made them stand out:

1. Interesting leaves
2. Some gorgeously sweet fruit - mango was a highlight
3. a tasty dressing - we all liked the maple and mustard dressing from Veganomicon, which I haven't made before.



I've been making lots of versions on this theme since we got back, but this week (obviously) I tried it with raspberries. I wasn't altogether convinced in advance, but actually it was pretty good. The berries are sweet but also a bit tart, which was nice. I'd made a variation on the maple dressing, subbing flaxseed oil, and putting a garlic clove into the jar as well. It sits in the fridge and we just get it out and shake it up every time we fancy a bit of magic salad. I made another version a few days later which had diced raw courgette, cucumber and radish, some cherry tomatoes, some quinoa and leaves, plus the berries. I took it to work in a box and it wasn't pretty by the time I ate it, but it tasted good :)

Penguin and mushroom salad

I'm probably inviting all sorts of weird web search results with a title like that - what a world of difference a missing comma makes (as I said to my students this week in a seminar that rather worryingly had to turn into a grammar lesson on how to use an apostrophe). Needless to say, the penguin was only matched with the mushrooms in the course of writing this post, and neither was harmed in the process.


The mushroom salad was actually my entry to Lisa and Jacqueline's monthly No Croutons Required event, which was featuring chickpeas this month. Chickpeas are our favourite pulse (is that sad or with-the-moment?) so I really wanted to enter - but busy-ness got the better of me actually posting it before the deadline. I had paired my chickpeas with a marinated and grilled portobello mushroom, serving it with mixed leaves and sundried tomato, and with some home-made blackberry vinegar drizzled over the top. I would have added avocado too if I'd had any - I think that would be a nice additional texture. You can't really see the vinegar in the photo but it gave a nice fruity acidity. I kept the marinade simple as I didn't want the vinegar to get drowned - just a bit of shaosing wine, some balsamic vinegar and some garlic powder.

Inquisitive penguin

The penguin was another matter entirely. I started him quite a while ago but then didn't have any orange wool, so he sat rather sinisterly beakless and featureless for several weeks. Then I got some more wool and made him his beak, but didn't get round to attaching his wings or giving him any eyes. So when I finally got him all together I was pleasantly surprised at how cute he was. He's another character from my book of knitted toys, and the reason I was pushed to finally finish him, is because he's one of several ambassadors from my sewing group, to an exhibition of toys in Cardiff. One of our remote members lives there, so she will be taking them in, and hopefully seeing them in situ. They come back to their owners eventually, which I'm pleased about - I felt rather sad squishing him into the postbox to go off on his important errand.

Scholarly penguin

The Easter break starts at the end of this week so hopefully I will get a few more posts up - including an award from the lovely Johanna :)

Thoughtful penguin

Cooking Italian

A couple of weekends ago Munchkin Granny and I did an Italian vegetarian cookery course at the Vegetarian Society's Cordon Vert Cookery School. I used to see adverts for this school in the back of the old vegetarian cooking magazines which disappeared years ago, and always thought that you must have to be terribly well-off and serious about cooking to go on one. Well, roll forwards fifteen years, and there were MG and I, aprons on, hair tied back, sitting round a shiny metal table in the pro kitchen at the Cordon Vert (and for the record, we're neither terribly well-off nor serious cooks). We'd picked an Italian day, partly because the date worked out well, but partly because we both really like Italian food. We had an introductory talk from the tutor, and then between the group of about 9, cooked a three-course meal which we all shared, family style, at the end of the day. We all made pasta, which I've made before at home, but never so successfully, and divided the other dishes up between us. MG made a lemon risotto cake, and I did a tomato sauce for the pasta, and a Mediterranean chickpea salad. Other dishes included stuffed peppers, baked fennel in cream, focaccia. spicy courgettes, and for dessert, a really yummy marinated boozy orange dish with chocolate vegan ice cream and biscotti. The whole meal was really lovely and we all left weighed down with the amount of food we'd eaten, and full of enthusiasm to get back to our own kitchens.


I haven't tried making pasta again since then, but I was tempted to revisit the chickpea salad. On the day of the course I had made it exactly as the recipe stated, but at home I fiddled around a little. My first substitution was to replace celery with red pepper (neither of us likes celery), and the second was to reduce the oil in the dressing from 4 tablespoons to 1. To be honest, I think that the best would be somewhere between 2 and 4. The 4 Tbsp version did coat the salad more satisfyingly than the reduced oil one, although you still got the zingy flavours of capers, lemon and garlic which are sauted in it in my version. I suppose in my one the dressing was more like a garnish, but either way, the flavours in the dressing are what make the main salad ingredients really come together and stand out. I made it for lunch when Scientist Sister and family popped by and it was a hit with everyone. I had to serve the olives on the side to appease The Scientist's palate, but a little self-assembly never hurt anyone.


I'm sending this Italian salad to Jacqueline and Lisa for this month's round of No Croutons Required, which has 'Mediterranean' as its theme.


Italian Chickpea Salad (adapted from the Cordon Vert School's Italian workshop)
Serves 4

1 Tbsp olive oil (or more)
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 Tbsp capers, drained and chopped
1 Tbsp parsley, finely chopped
1/2 Tbsp dried red chilli flakes
1 lemon, grated rind and juice
1 can chickpeas, drained
6 sundried tomatoes, rehydrated (or from a jar)
half a pepper, chopped small
sliced green olives, to taste
1 bag mixed salad leaves, including rocket

1. Heat the oil in a small pan, adding the garlic, capers, parsley, chillies and grated lemon rind. Saute for 2 minutes.

2. Place the chickpeas, sundried tomatoes, pepper and olives in a bowl. Pour the garlic mixture and 1 Tbsp lemon juice over them.

3. Arrange the salad leaves in a serving bowl and add the chickpea salad.

Banana, lentil and pepper salad

Yes, that really is banana in my salad. I was thinking of ways to use up some leftover lentils, and fancied pairing it in a salad with some fruit and something crunchy. I had some small sweet peppers which would do for crunch, and some leaves and cherry tomatoes. I nearly went for mango for my fruit component but then I accidentally ate the mango (it happens). But then I remembered a very simple but tasty salad of banana and celery with curry powder some friends made for us a while back. That original recipe had come from am Oxfam Fair Trade cookbook, which I have since picked up in a charity shop - the recipe was donated by the singer Dido, who says it's weird but it works. It does. And it worked in this salad too. I stirred some plain yogurt and curry powder through the lentils, then added chopped pepper, tomato and banana, and tossed it all around with the leaves. I loved the fruity sweetness alongside the tang of curry powder and the crunch of pepper. And the lentils made it good and filling.


I'm sending this to Lisa and Jacqueline for this month's pepper-themed round of No Croutons Required.

A healthy interlude: salad lettuce wraps

It's been dessert central round here recently and I fancied a change from bread and dips, and cakes for my lunch today. I was all alone for the first time in ages - the Norse deities have departed and The Scientist was working at his office today.


My lunch was inspired in an effort to use up some lettuce. We find it hard to get through a whole head of lettuce but I hate accidentally letting it go to waste. I was going to make gazpacho soup with some other salad ingredients, but then I thought I could wrap my salad up in lettuce leaves and make a fun and tasty little lunch with almost no effort.


I used a round lettuce with quite floppy leaves which made the rolling up easier. The salad was made of stuff I had in the fridge - raw broccoli, carrot ribbons, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, a bit of feta, some sweetcorn, with some pumpkin seeds scattered on the top. I bet adding a grain would be good too. I made up an easy dipping sauce of soy sauce, rice wine vinegar and a tiny drizzle of agave nectar, though it turned out to be easier to take the sauce to the wrap rather than the other way round (my leaves weren't big enough to enclose the filling completely!)


It was colourful, crunchy and tasty, and a new perfect way to use up lettuce. While looking up ideas for the lettuce I found some great tips on making it keep longer at Pinch my Salt. Nicole swears by a salad spinner which we don't have, but it does apparently make a big difference. If only we had any spare space in our cupboards :( Next post, back to the desserts!

Tomato salad au Charles

Awww, you're all just so lovely :) Thank you for all the sweet comments after my return to blogland. I feel all invigorated to continue and am very pleased to be just managing to sneak in under the wire for this month's No Croutons Required. It's Holler's birthday edition, you see, so it seemed like an extra shame to miss it.


My salad is a very simple one, but the dressing makes it amazing. It's a speciality of my friend Charles, whom I visited yesterday. Charles and I go way back, right back to the first day of university, in fact, and I have him to thank for my initiation into the ways of toasted cheese sandwiches with pickles, how not to make stock, and how to dismount from a bike while it's still moving (actually I've never dared try that again after my debut). Charles' cooking skills have moved on from the cheese toastie days and both times I've seen him recently he's made a version of this salad. It's essentially a mix of lettuce, tomato and cucumber, with assorted other raw veggies and some fruit. The first time he used sliced apples, and this time it was grapes (I nearly made myself ill gorging on all the grapes!). The dressing is what brings it all together in a silky mustardyness, and was passed on to him by his dad. I hope I've remembered it correctly though I'm sure it would stand some customising. My own salad was a a bit of a pared down version as our fridge was a bit low on ingredients - some rocket and watercress, chopped tomatoes and cucumber, and some sliced pear. I added a lot of tomatoes since they are the theme of No Croutons Required this month. I love the smell of fresh tomatoes and am hoping that I'll have some more home-grown ones this year. They are (hopefully) germinating on the kitchen table, along with some peas, broad beans, herbs, and a small cucumber plant I bought on a whim today in the garden centre.


Since it's her birthday Holler has asked that we describe a whole meal to go with our tomato offerings. I'm sending over what I ate my salad alongside as it was fun: sauteed mushrooms, leeks and chard with some thyme and basil in a bit of tomato sauce, wrapped in pancakes. I served mine with some leftover sweet potato soup over the top as a sauce. It doesn't look too pretty but I think it was birthday-worthy. And just in case it's not, I'd bring out a luscious chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream icing as a dessert :)


Salad dressing au Charles
Put into a jar:
1 thumb of vinegar (not balsamic)
1 tsp English mustard
1 tsp salt
2 thumbs of olive oil

Shake and dress.

Simple lavender salad

I've mentioned once or twice that I've been growing things in pots on our patio, and one of those pots contains a small lavender plant. We had a big bush of lavender in our old garden in Sussex and it was partly nostalgia which made me buy some more when we moved. I've never used it for anything - not even drying and scenting drawers, much less cook with it, but when Holler announced that the theme of No Croutons Required the event she and Lisa host, was herbs this month, I thought it would be the perfect occasion to let my lovingly tended plant shine in a whole new way.


My salad is very simple - just some mixed leaves, some tomato and some spring onion, and I got the inspiration for the lavender dressing from a book called Herbs by Joanna Farrow. It was a birthday present from my friends Julie and Tracy years ago, when I first started trying to grow herbs, but so far I've mainly enjoyed looking at the pictures rather than cooking from it. The description of the lavender dressing in the book says that it has 'a natural affinity with sweet garlic, thyme, marjoram and orange'. Since I was using such a simple salad I didn't put any garlic in this time (though I imagine that some roasted garlic smushed in with a more robust salad would be a very nice addition). I just mixed up a little orange juice, honey, olive oil, thyme, marjoram, and the flowers from three stems from my plant. It was a lovely citrusy dressing, but the lavender scent really stood out and made it really unusual. I was actually glad I was pairing it with such a simple salad for my first attempt so that I could appreciate it. (By the way, you do need to check that your lavender is suitable for culinary purposes before eating!)

Intercontinental blog challenge - picnics

It’s time for another round in my occasional Intercontinental Blog Challenge with Lisa of Unique Little Bits. It was Lisa’s turn to suggest the theme this time, and she picked the very seasonal ‘picnics’. The idea is that we eat create a dish from the other’s cuisine, and it’s already introduced me to some interesting reading and cooking.

It’s a good thing we give ourselves quite a while to plan these events as it usually takes a bit of mulling to come up with initial ideas and then find out whether they're actually in anything more concrete than an episode of Friends. My first plan was to do something terribly cultured and recreate an iconic picnic from American literature. But I couldn’t think of one. Then I got stuck on the fact that I couldn’t think of an American version of a sandwich which didn’t use a non-American bread like bagels or baguettes. Worried that I was just trying to Americanise an English picnic, I turned to our friendly family Yank, Eco Bro, and asked him what made up the picnics of his childhood. He looked at me as though I was crazy to need to ask such a question, and replied ‘barbeque, of course’. Apparently you just turn up at a park with a disposable barbeque and some burgers and buns, or use the ones they have there. I don’t want to imply that’s by any means unheard of here, but it didn’t leave me a great deal of manoeuvre for this veggie event. I took the general theme and ran with it though, deciding to make veggie burgers with buns and relish. I’m of the personal opinion that a picnic is not a time when you want a fancy home-made bun (though I could be persuaded for the right sort of picnic, I’m sure); instead you want some of those pleasingly squishy mass-manufactured buns, and only in white, of course. I made the other of our favourite burgers, from a Rose Elliott recipe, which we like to eat with tomato relish and salad. They’re firm enough that you could pack them and transport them to the venue of your choice, though you’d need to be a little careful with them on a barbeque.

Salad formed the other part of my foray into American picnics: potato salad and a corn, bean and avocado salad. Potato salads came up in every website I found on picnic food, and the traditional corn and bean combo seemed like another winner. Our picnic actually took place a couple of weeks ago as I wanted to share it with Eco Sis and Eco Bro, and so the chances of eating it outside were pretty small (who am I kidding – we planned to have a picnic this weekend and it wasn’t really warm enough then either!). As we so often have to do over here, we had our picnic inside, but I kept to the theme and laid the table out with a picnic rug and our best plastic cutlery. The salads were served out of Tupperware, and we drank out of plastic glasses. I love occasion food, even if the weather doesn’t oblige (and it’s better than miserably eating crisps in the English rain, or fighting with your siblings while you watch the windscreen wipers trying to clear the view of the beach)! Our little feast was still a success despite being indoors, and was a nice veggie take on what I imagine an American back-yard picnic might be like.

Lisa has already told me that she included Pimm’s in her picnic, so it sounds to me as though she’s pretty spot-on with her English theme. I just hope that she got better weather than we usually do here!

Spicy beanburgers (from Rose Elliot's Vegetarian Slimming)

Makes 8

1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped or grated [I grate because I like the texture better in the cooked burger]
1/2 green pepper, de-seeded and chopped
1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
1/4 - 1/2 tsp hot chilli powder (optional) [but good!]
1 tsp ground coriander
2 cans red kidney beans
50g soft wholewheat breadcrumbs
salt and pepper
100g dried wholewheat breadcrumbs, to coat
a little extra olive oil

Preheat the oven to 200 C/Gas 6

Heat the oil in a large saucepan, add the onion and stir. Cover and leave to cook over a moderate heat for 5 mins, stirring occasionally. Then add the carrot, green pepper and garlic, stirring occasionally. Add the spices, stir for 1-2 mins, then remove from the heat. Mash the beans and add to the onion mixture together with the breadcrumbs and seasoning to taste. Divide into eight, form into burgers and coat with dried breadcrumbs. Place on an oiled baking sheet and bake until brown and crisp on one side, then turn over to cook the other side. [I find this takes about 20-25 mins altogether] Drain on kitchen paper. Serve hot or warm.

Sprouts and bulghar salad

I picked up some sprouted beans at the international supermarket in Brighton last weekend with a few little plans in mind. I liked the idea of adding their crunchiness to a salad, and thought I'd try partnering them with a grain I've only ever used in bread so far: bulghar wheat. Actually no, I did make tabbouleh with it once but I found the combination of parsley, mint and lemon just too much and have never gone back. This time I soaked the bulghar wheat in some stock for some extra flavour, and then mixed in the sprouts and an assortment of other things I had in the fridge - cherry toms, cucumber, red onion and chives. I've stashed it in a box to take on a research trip tomorrow, but plan to drizzle a little oil and lemon juice over it before I set off. It tasted very good undressed, but I think that the dressing will add a little extra zing. The bulghar and sprouts together are a nice combination of bite and crunch, so I may even have laid the ghost of the tabbouleh to rest. This is my contribution to Lisa and Holler's No Croutons Required event, which features legumes this month.


Here's a gratuitous picture of The Scientist's tecchie sidekick

Sprouts and bulghar salad

Serves 2

Put 1/2 cup of bulghar wheat in a bowl and cover with boiling water. Add some stock powder and stir. Leave to soak up the liquid for 10-15 mins until the grains are soft.

Add assorted sprouted beans, some chopped cherry tomatoes, cucumber and red onion. Snip in fresh herbs of your choice - I used chives though parsley and mint are traditional.

Before serving, drizzle over some olive oil and lemon juice.

Wednesday cricket equals courgette feast!

The Scientist has started playing cricket on Wednesday evenings. He used to play most weekends when we lived in Cambridge but he let it slide when we moved to Lewes as it tended to take over the whole weekend. He missed it though, and he didn't need much persuasion from our friend Paul to join his mid-week club when we moved here. I'm glad he has a hobby he enjoys, and a happy plus side is that his absence on Wednesdays has ushered in a whole new era of Lysy-friendly dinners he wouldn't go near. I knew I wanted tonight's dinner to feature the poor little courgette I had languishing in the vegetable basket, and had initially planned a courgette-crust pizza I've had bookmarked for absolutely ages. But I had a departmental Away Day today and wasn't sure how late I'd be back, so I had a last-minute swerve and went for a courgette, quinoa and avocado salad I found yesterday on one of my favourite blogs, 101 Cookbooks. Its author, Heidi, has published a cookbook, but she's generous enough to post loads of tasty, healthy and home-devised dishes on her blog, too. The salad appealed both on looks and ingredients, plus I could also make quite a bit of it in advance in case I got back late/too cross to cook (in fact the Away Day was quite fun and I was back at about 6.30, but it was nice not to have to worry about more than making the dressing and grilling the courgette).


The salad consists of my new favourite superfood, quinoa, cooled and mixed with a dressing of avocado, yogurt, water, garlic and basil (my substitute for coriander as it had survived not being watered for a week while we were on holiday, while the woosy coriander carked it). This is topped with grilled courgette, hard boiled egg, and some cheese - Heidi said goat's, but I used gruyere as I'd just picked some up in the supermarket. She also added pine nuts but I don't like them. I'm sure that my changes removed some pleasing crunch and creaminess, but it was very nice nonetheless. I always like a good range of textures in a salad, and this one absolutely delivered. The dressing wasn't too obtrusive but added creaminess and richness to the quinoa. The egg yolks were still slightly soft which was really nice - I followed Heidi's directions on timing them exactly, and mean to adopt it for all future hard boiling occasions as it was so successful. I grilled the courgette in the George Foreman, and it was the only hot part of the dish - another nice contrast. I might try it again with grilled aubergine for a Scientist-friendly version. So, the courgette pizza's still on the to-make list - but there's a good few Wednesdays left in the cricket season yet...

Quinoa and grilled courgette salad (From 101 Cookbooks)

[Heidi notes that this quantity makes more dressing than you need for the salad]

1 large avocado, ripe
juice of 1 lime
1/4 cup lightly packed cilantro [I used basil]
1 clove garlic
1/4 cup plain yogurt
3/4 cup water
1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt

3 large eggs

1 large zucchini, cut into 3/4-inch thick coins
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
couple pinches of fine grain sea salt

2 cups quinoa, cooked, room temperature
1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted [I omitted these]
1/4 cup goat cheese, crumbled [I used gruyere]
a bit of chopped cilantro for garnish

Prepare the cilantro-avocado dressing by blending the avocado, lime juice, cilantro, garlic, yogurt, water, and salt in a blender (or us a hand blender). Set aside.

Hard boil the three eggs. Place the eggs in a pot and cover with cold water by a 1/2-inch or so. Bring to a gentle boil. Now turn off the heat, cover, and let sit for exactly seven minutes. Have a big bowl of ice water ready and when the eggs are done cooking place them in the ice bath for three minutes or so - long enough to stop the cooking. Set aside.

While the eggs are cooling start preparing the zucchini by tossing it with olive oil and salt in a medium-sized bowl. Prepare your grill (medium-high heat). If you are worried about the zucchini coins falling through the grill you can thread them onto kabob skewers (stab through the green skin). Grill until zucchini are tender and cooked through, roughly 5 minutes on each side. Remove from the grill and cut each zucchini coin into quarters. [I just grilled them in the Foreman]

Crack and peel each egg, cut each egg into quarters lengthwise. Assemble the salad by tossing the quinoa with about 2/3 cups of the avocado vinaigrette. Top with the grilled zucchini, pine nuts, eggs, goat cheese, and a bit of chopped cilantro for garnish.

Serves 4 to 6.

Super (foody) sproingy salad

Did you notice how I snuck the superfoody thing in the title there? I'm hoping I can get it past the Eco Sis medical radar by not implying it has actual superfood qualities :) I seem to have got a bit stuck on quinoa in my foray into new and nutritious ingredients, but it's because I was so surprised and taken with it. I had just never imagined any food could have that degree of 'sproing' to it. Also I have a bad habit of wanting to rush out and buy new ingredients whenever I read a new recipe, and I'm trying to keep it in check for the sake of our cupboards not being Scientist booby-traps.

Even though there is rain falling from the sky in sheets as I type, I am really enjoying the long light evenings we're having now. I feel so much more lively when the dark isn't closing in mid-afternoon, and it's lovely to sit and chat as we cook dinner with the curtains still open and a nice view of our 'verdant' (The Scientist's word) 'completely wild' (my word) garden. It also makes me much more inclined to based meals on salads, and I've been trying out some new fruity ones. I've already written about the strawberry, mushroom and poppyseed one, and we had a pear and watercress one after we went to the Alfresford watercress festival. This time I gave a Veganomicon quinoa and mango one a go, after seeing some reduced mangoes in Tesco (I'm still a bit dubious about this policy of buying more exotic fruits if they're otherwise going to be thrown away - I am still supporting Tesco selling them, after all, and that's the only feedback mechanism they care about... and while I think about it, the quinoa and black beans were hardly local. Sigh. Bad ethical salad.)


So the salad's ethics may not have been great, but it did taste very nice. Isa and Terry, the inimitable authors of the book, point out that it's really just a mix of quinoa, a vegetable, some beans and a fruit, so I felt fairly confident that I wouldn't be ruining it by using asparagus (British, thankfully, clawing back some eco-credibility) instead of pepper. Apart from that I pretty much stuck to the recipe, although I used hemp oil instead of grapeseed, and cut back on the quantity. The nicest things about this salad are its freshness (from the mango) and the range of textures - sproing from the quinoa, softness from the mango and crunch from the asparagus (which I steamed lightly in the microwave and then cooled). I halved the recipe but there was loads left. We ate it with orange-marinaded tofu (based on the Veganomicon tangerine baked tofu) which was also wonderful, and got the carnivore thumbs up, too.

I accidentally cooked far too much quinoa though, and am now in a dither as to whether to turn it into the Veganomicon quinoa and almond muffins which I've wanted to try for a bit, but which use milk of which we don't have much left and we're going on holiday tomorrow. Or, to make some quinoa and bean croquettes using the leftover black beans from the salad, and freeze them. I'm off to fret about that for a while now, and if I don't get round to posting about our 'pick of the fridge' inventiveness to use up everything else before we go on holiday, I'll be back in a week. We're going to Ireland, so expect soda bread, champ and boxty galore on our return.

Quinoa salad with black beans and mango (aka sproing salad) (from Veganomicon)
Serves 4 to 6

1 mango, peeled and cut into small dice
1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced as small as you can get it [I used lightly steamed and cooled asparagus]
1 cup chopped spring onions
1 cup fresh coriander [I thought we had some but we didn't so I had to use dried]
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp grapeseed oil [I used hemp oil and halved it]
1/4 tsp salt
2 cups cooked quinoa (this is 1 cup dried cooked in 2 cups water for about 15 mins until water has been absorbed)
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
a few leaves of lettuce for garnish [I added quite a bit of lettuce]

Combine the mango, peppers, spring onions and coriander in a mixing bowl. Add the red wine vinegar, oil and salt and stir to combine. Add the quinoa and stir until everything is well incorporated. Fold in the black beans. You can serve immediately or leave to sit for a bit for the flavours to meld. To serve, place a few leaves of lettuce on a plate and scoop some salad on the top. This tastes good chilled and is even better at room temperature.

Spring barley salad

I’m pleased to say that my first day of working at my old-new desk has been very successful. I haven’t yet had the chance to cover it in paper so it feels nice and serene, and my only problem has involved having to improvise a prodding device so that I can reach the radio buttons while not disturbing Mausel (the radio is now so much further away because the desk’s so big!).

One of the many benefits of working from home is the easy access to the kitchen and garden. It opens up a whole vista of lunch opportunities (and procrastinatory ones, though I do try to avoid those). It was such a lovely day today that I really wanted a nice salady spring lunch, so I had a look at what was in the cupboards and plumped on a barley and mushroom variant of a recipe from The wholegrain diet miracle. Since The Scientist doesn’t like barley it seemed like a good way to get my tasty selenium fix. It was very easy and colourful – I just let the barley cook during the morning, apologetically scraped it off the bottom of the pan in my tea break, and put the other ingredients together at lunchtime. I was going to substitute grilled mushrooms for the corn, but the picture in the book looked so tasty that I quickly got some sweetcorn out of the freezer mid-morning and let it defrost. The quantities I used were all very rough, but I suspect it’s a very forgiving recipe! I simplified the dressing and just mixed a little flax oil with some cider vinegar and a little English mustard. For the first time, I ate my lunch in the sun on our deck – we moved here in September so this is a new treat we’re keen to indulge in. It was lovely. The salad was nice and filling – I’m sure it would be lovely with goat’s cheese too (in fact the original recipe had goat’s cheese and not mushrooms) but I knew I was planning a mushroom and goat’s cheese supper and didn’t want to duplicate entirely (more on that tomorrow, I hope)!

And this is what I was looking at as I ate my lunch: do you remember those poor little naked stick trees The Scientist gave me for Christmas? Look how they've grown! The apple tree even has a flower - oy, I'm so proud.

Sweetcorn, barley, mushroom and rocket salad (adapted from The wholegrain diet miracle)
Serves about one and a half Lysys, which is a bit of an inconvenient amount (though probably one normal person!)

About 35-40g barley
Handful of rocket, coarsely chopped
A handful of sweetcorn
A big flat mushroom

Splash of flax oil
Bigger splash of apple cider vinegar
Small dollop of English mustard

Place barley in a saucepan, cover with water, and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low, cover and simmer for 45 minutes, or until chewy but tender (for the sake of proportions, the original recipe had 100g barley to 500 ml water). Remove from the heat and leave to stand for 10 minutes covered. Transfer to a bowl and chill.

Grill the sliced mushrooms

In a large bowl mix the chilled barley with the rocket, corn and mushroom.

Whisk the oil, vinegar and mustard in a small bowl. Pour the dressing over the barley mixture to coat.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

No croutons at all

This month's theme in Lisa and Holler's No Croutons Required event is mushrooms. Yay! I am pleased about this. In fact, there are so many brilliantly themed blog events coming up that I am going to have to re-set my running level of enthusiasm for fear of exhausting my readers.

Much as I love mushrooms, mushroom soup is not actually up there on my list of best dishes. I pretty much never order it when we're out as it's so often a disappointingly un-mushroomy bowl of scented cream. At home I do have two mushroom soups I like to make, but one is really a squash soup with marinated mushrooms floated on top, and the other is mushroom and barley, which has appeared quite a bit in blogland recently already. Luckily, Lisa and Holler have broadened this month's requirements, however, so that it can be either soup or salad. When faffing about on Cooking Light for some completely other reason that I can't even remember now, I found an interesting-sounding recipe for strawberry and poppy seed salad, which I decided to adapt as a vehicle for mushrooms.

It was very easy. Quite anti-climactic after all that wittering really, but its taste was wonderfully complex. It was basically sliced strawberries and flaked almonds on a bed of leaves, with a sweet poppy seed dressing drizzled over the top. I used Hampshire watercress (of which more soon, I hope) which I'd picked up at the central Oxford farmer's market last week when my work coincided with its day for the first time ever. I left out the almonds on my portion, but grilled some sliced mushrooms in the George Foreman (just for ease, since we were already cooking other things on the stove-top) and scattered them over the watercress with the sliced strawberries. And I made the dressing as written below.


It looked great - all that lovely green watercress, bright pink strawberries and poppy-seed dotted dressing. It tasted great - crisp, slightly bitter cress, cold moist strawberries, ever-delightful mushroom, and both crunch and sweetness from the dressing. AND, it was a doddle to make. The dressing was really quite sweet - you could easily cut back on the sugar quite a bit, but it really made the salad. Poppy seeds really seem to pack a punch of flavour. I've only ever really had them on bread or in hamentaschen, but I've used them in a pear and seed cake this week as well, and the flavour came through much more than I'd expected from the quantity in that, too.

Next time, history AND food in one event. I may need to lie down for a while before I write that one.

Strawberry Salad with Poppy Seed Dressing (Cooking Light)

Ingredients

3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons light mayonnaise
2 tablespoons fat-free milk
1 tablespoon poppy seeds
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 (10-ounce) bag romaine lettuce
1 cup sliced strawberries
2 tablespoons slivered almonds, toasted

Preparation

Combine first 5 ingredients in a small bowl, stirring with a whisk.

Place lettuce in a large bowl; add strawberries and almonds, tossing to combine. Divide salad evenly among 6 plates. Drizzle 1 tablespoon dressing over each serving.

Yield

6 servings (serving size: 1 1/2 cups)

Nutritional Information

CALORIES 78(35% from fat); FAT 3.3g (sat 0.4g,mono 1g,poly 1.6g); PROTEIN 1.8g; CHOLESTEROL 2mg; CALCIUM 53mg; SODIUM 45mg; FIBER 1.8g; IRON 0.8mg; CARBOHYDRATE 11.5g