Category: Vegetables + Salads

This is another salad I make when there are avocados for sale in my neighborhood supermarket. To make sure I buy ripe avocados, I look at the nubbin where the stem came from. If the avocado is ripe, the nubbin pushes right out with my thumb. The best way is to buy the avocados when they’re still a bit green and firm and ripen them at home for about a week.

Ingredients:
1 bunch of spinach, washed thoroughly
2 ripe avocados, meat scooped out and sliced into small chunks
lemon juice
salt, pepper, olive oil

1. To make the dressing, whisk some olive oil in a salad bowl with lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper.
2. Add spinach to the dressing and toss with avocado chunks.

This is one of my favorite dishes from Joe’s Shanghai in New York City. The string beans always look wilted but they’re still crunchy when you bite into them. I’ve done this dish at home so many times that I think I know the secret to it.

Ingredients:
half a pound of sweet string beans
a large knob of ground pork
5 garlic cloves, minced
1 medium red onion, finely chopped
salt, pepper

1. Boil some water in a sauce pot. Add the string beans and cook for no more than 5 minutes. Drain and shock in an ice bath. Drain again and set aside.
2. In a large skillet with hot oil, sauté garlic and onions until soft. Add ground pork and cook until light brown.
3. Add string beans and toss in the hot oil. Season with salt and pepper.

For a short time in the fall, squash runners show up in Chinatown. The Filipino way would be to boil them until tender. Then we dip them in white vinegar mixed with bagoong, or shrimp paste, using our hands and eat them with white rice. Squash runners are nutrituously bitter so the sour and salty dip is a good match. I wanted to try something different without using any dip so that I can serve the vegetables to non-Filipinos, so I used some Italian prosciutto as a salty alternative. I served them with sweet pickle juice on the side.

Ingredients:
1 bunch of squash runners, also called squash vines, the thicker part of the stalks removed, thoroughly washed and patted dry with a paper towel
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 small red onion, roughly chopped
prosciutto, thinly-sliced

1. In a skillet with hot oil, sauté garlic until golden brown. Add red onions until transparent. Toss in squash runner and cook until tender and wilted.
2. Remove squash runners to a plate lined with paper towel.
3. Using a separate plate, prepare each slice of prosciutto, fill in with a cooked squash runner and roll to wrap.

Related post/s:
Where to buy squash runners
Where to buy good prosciutto

I splurged and bought a nice bottle of truffled wine vinegar while I was in Montreal. You can still make this salad with red wine vinegar and you can also substitute the arugula with spinach.

Ingredients:
1 bunch of red beets, rinsed well
1 bunch of arugula, thoroughly washed and torn in small pieces
goat cheese, crumbled
truffled wine vinegar
salt, pepper, olive oil

1. Wrap beets in aluminum foil and roast in oven for 1 1/2 hours at 400º. When beets are tender, remove from the oven and let cool. When cool enough to handle, peel and slice in thin circles. Put in a bowl with the greens.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk wine vinegar while slowly pouring olive oil to allow them to mix. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Pour over beets and greens and toss with goat cheese.

Related post/s:
Where to buy truffled wine vinegar