Vegetables + Salads – Page 6 – Writing With My Mouth Full

Smoked Fish Salad with Golden Beets, Fennel and Mache

A week after visiting San Francisco and sitting at the bar of Bar Jules in the Hayes Valley, I was inspired to recreate a salad I had ordered that used smoked fish. After making it, I looked through my photos from that trip and realized that I put two salads in one.

This is a great salad to prep for because you can roast a lot of beets and just use three for this salad that could serve two and use the rest of them for another dish. The smallest chunk of smoked fish you can get will most likely be still too much, so you can use the leftover somewhere else as well. And the fennel? Who doesn’t like the crunch and freshness of fennel in all their salads? Don’t feel like you have to use mâche–lamb’s tongue at some stores–either; arugula or spinach will do just fine.

At Bar Jules for Sunday brunch, I ordered two things: a salad of arugula with fennel, Mandarin oranges and faro, plus smoked trout with golden beets. Both dishes obviously made an impression so when buying the ingredients for my version, it had slipped my mind that they were two separate salads.

No matter though because it became one of the best salads I’ve churned out of my kitchen. Ever.

Ingredients:
3 golden beets, roasted, peeled, chopped
a small block of smoked white fish
1/4 bulb of fennel, thinly sliced
a handful of mâche greens, some separated by hand
olive oil
pepper
juice from a fresh lemon
fennel fronds

1. Wrap golden beets in aluminum foil and roast in the oven for 45 minutes or until tender. When cool enough to handle, peel with your hands. Chop into small wedges.
2. In the meantime, gently separate the smoked fish meat from its bones using your hands. Set aside the smaller pieces from the larger ones.
3. In a large salad bowl, toss beets, fennel, mâche plus the smaller pieces of fish with olive oil and pepper to combine.
3. Squeeze some lemon juice all over the salad. Divide salad onto serving plates and top each with the larger pieces of the leftover smoked fish and fennel fronds. Drizzle with more olive oil for extra sheen.

Tempura-battered Green Figs

I was surprised to find green figs at the fruit stand downtown where I work. Even Whole Foods only sold the black figs. What I like about green figs is that they’re less sweet than the black ones even though they look like they would be rindy and bitter. The ripes ones are actually pretty soft and they easily give when sliced in half.

You can use tempura batter here if you have access to an Asian grocery store, but the recipe that follows uses the flour you already have in the pantry. Any yogurt would do, too, but the plain Greek kind has that whipped texture that’s great for chopped fruits. I also find the Greek yogurt less tart and does not compete with the natural sweetness of the figs. My personal preference is the Total Classic kind from FAGE (pronounced “fa-yeh”).

Ingredients:
fresh green figs, washed, dried with paper towel
1 cup of flour
ice bath
one egg
oil
Greek yogurt

1. Make the tempura batter. Beat the egg in a bowl. Add ice water. Add flour in the bowl and mix lightly. Do not overmix.
2. Heat a deep skillet with some oil. Just right before frying, drench the figs with the tempura batter and gently add to the hot oil to fry. When batter is light brown, spoon battered figs out using a slotted spoon and remove to a wire mesh colander on a plate to let the excess oil drip. Do not use paper towels as to not make them soggy. Serve with Greek yogurt on the side.

Blistered Shishito Peppers

So far I can only buy shishito peppers from two places here in New York City during the late summer months: Sunrise Mart off St. Mark’s Place and the TriBeCa Greenmarket a couple of blocks from work on Wednesdays. I don’t ever get tired of eating or serving them. They’re so easy to prepare and, without fail, guests can’t get enough of them.

Word is that the Japanese cultivated them because they can’t take the heat from the more popular peppers. I first had a taste of blistered peppers in Cal Pep when we were in Barcelona. They use pimento peppers over there which has the same subtle sweetness; the shishito are skinny while the pimentos are greener and a little bit more plump.

When blistering either, make sure you watch out for the splattering hot oil. Remove them to a mesh colander on a plate after blistering–using paper towel to drain the oil will just make them soggy.

Ingredients:
oil
2 handfuls of shishito peppers, stems intact, washed and dried thoroughly with paper towel
sea salt

1. Heat a large skillet. Add some oil and let it warm up until almost smoking. Add the shishito peppers and begin tossing around by swiveling the pan.
2. When most of the peppers are blistered on all sides, use a slotted spoon and remove them to a wire mesh colander on a plate to let the excess oil drip and immediately sprinkle with salt. Serve.

Related post/s:
Where to eat in Barcelona, Spain

Baked Asparagus With Shiitake, Bacon and Couscous

I saw this original recipe in the New York Times last week. I was reading it and thinking, Oh, I have asparagus, and oh, I have shiitake–here’s dinner for tonight. But I didn’t have prosciutto. I did have some more Mangalitsa Pig bacon in the fridge, so I substituted a more expensive fat for an already expensive fat.

I was very pleased with this recipe. It didn’t require much prep and the cooking was basically hands-off. Double the couscous and you’ll have enough for lunch the next day.

Ingredients:
1 bundle asparagus, tougher ends trimmed, chopped in 1-inch pieces
a handful of dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked in water for 10 minutes, drained, then chopped
4 slices of bacon, chopped
1 cup of couscous
1 cup of chicken broth
oil, salt, pepper

1. Heat oven to 200º. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper twice as long as the sheet. Lay asparagus in a pile in center. Scatter mushrooms and prosciutto on top. Drizzle with some olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Toss vegetables to coat evenly.
2. Fold parchment to completely enclose vegetables, and fold top and sides shut. Transfer pan to oven and bake for one hour.
3. In the meantime, put a small pot over medium-high heat, and bring the broth to a boil. Stir in couscous and remove pot from heat. Let stand for 5 minutes and then fluff couscous with a fork.
4. To serve, divide couscous in serving bowls and top with a scoop or two of the baked asparagus with some mushrooms and bacon.

Golden Beets and Citrus Salad

After my bike ride with Jase and Kate around Central Park, they came over my apartment to eat brunch. I had roasted some beets the night before to prepare this salad because I wanted something very spring-like without having to do any cooking the next day. There were all kinds of citrus in the supermarket the night before, too, so I also bought a few of them to add. Feta cheese may sound weird here because goat cheese is the usual beet partner, but I think the saltiness of the feta worked well with the tanginess of the orange and the subtle bitterness of the grapefruit. I threw in some frisée to add a nice green touch to the yellows and oranges.

Ingredients:
6 large beets, washed and trimmed
juice from 1 orange
2 oranges, rind removed, sliced
1 grapefruit, rind removed, sliced
half a head of frisée, torn to smaller pieces
1/3 cup of crumbled feta cheese
1 small shallot, finely chopped
oil, salt, pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 400º. Wrap the beets in aluminum foil and place on a roasting pan and roast for about 1 hour or until tender. When cool, peel and cut them into chunks.
2. Make the dressing. In a small bowl, whisk the orange juice with the shallot. Marinate the shallot in the orange juice for 10 minutes, then whisk in the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Toss the beets in the dressing and let sit until ready to use.
3. On each of your salad plates, put a handful of frisée, and then top with a few slices of oranges and grapefruit. Remove the beets and the shallots from the marinate with a slotted spoon and divide among the plates. Drizzle with the beet dressing. Toss and sprinkle with feta.