Category: Salad

I think of briny, salty feta as a gateway cheese. In my farm days, Cheddar slices with the occasional Swiss or Muenster were the norm, but then feta hit my tongue, and wham! Suddenly cheeses with names like Manchego, Sartori and Pecorino took up residence in my fridge’s cheese drawer. I’m not sure where I met feta, or when I experienced my first Greek salad. It was probably on my senior class trip, for which my rebellious graduating class insisted on planning a trip to Atlanta, rather than settling for the principal’s annual canned trip to New York City. There we were, several girlfriends and I, in an Underground Atlanta Greek restaurant. Given our small town upbringing, both the menu and the belly dancing were pretty much Greek to us! I have to admit to being a foodie even at the ripe old age of 18 though, for the lasting impression I carried from that experience was the lusciousness of the cheesy pastitsio I ordered for dinner.  

Cheese is evidently somewhat addicting. Casein, the dairy protein in cheese, is broken down by the body into casomorphins, which bind to the dopamine receptors in the brain. Pleasurable sensations result, causing one to want more and more cheese. While I have little difficulty passing by on the meat, cheese is a different matter entirely. However, soft cheeses like feta are high in lactose, the milk sugar that I struggle to digest. Cheese is also high in saturated fat… Soooo, I find myself attempting to minimize it a bit. I am trying to include cheese in my cooking as I do meat-using just a little to flavor and enhance the plant-based foods that are becoming the mainstays of our meals. 

Greek salad is a delicious, cooling and substantial summer salad, starring olives, pepperoncini, tomatoes and cucumbers, but usually heavy on the feta.  My Greek salad is a reinvention, adding marinated lentils for healthy protein and sautéed lemon for acidity, while reducing the amount of feta. I also nixed the cucumber, another ingredient that challenges the digestion.  Admittedly no self-respecting Greek would allow such an omission, but fortunately I’m not Greek.  You can keep it in the salad if you must. Hang onto the tomatoes, pepperoncini and red onion, and add a few croutons or toasted walnuts for crunch. Greek style vinaigrette, seasoned with thyme and oregano binds all the ingredients together.   While I prefer to bake the feta until golden and soft, we avoid turning on the oven at dinnertime because it’s already hot as hell in the kitchen here in the desert summer.  It’s microwaved in short bursts, just ‘til warm and softened. 

The finished salad is balanced, satisfying and beautiful on the plate. The components can all be made ahead and combined when ready to serve. My Greek-ish salad joins our collection of hot weather dinner salads that whet the appetite on hot days.  Sizzling weather is no longer confined to the desert southwest, you know; it’s pretty much everywhere. Next time it’s too hot to cook, put this salad on the menu. The belly dancing, however, is optional…

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My Big Greek-ish Salad

Cool crisp Greek style salad with sauteed lemon, marinated lentils and warm feta.

Prep Time45 minutes mins

Total Time45 minutes mins

Course: Entree, Entree Salad

Cuisine: Greek

Keyword: feta, salad

Servings: 4 people

Ingredients

Salad

• 1 lemon, sliced paper thin
• Olive oil
• 1 cup cooked lentils 1/2 cup dry, or from a can
• 8 cups salad greens I use a mix of arugula and spring mix
• 1/2 cup Kalamata olives, sliced
• 1/2 cup sliced jarred pepperoncini
• 1 cup halved grape tomatoes
• 4 thin slices red onion, separated into rings
• 1/4 cup toasted walnut pieces can substitute crisp croutons
• 6 ounces feta cheese

Dressing

• 1/3 cup quality extra virgin olive oil
• 2 1/2 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp freshly ground pepper
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper

Instructions

• Heat a non-stick skillet over medium high heat. Brush the lemon slices with olive oil, then brown lightly on each side. Remove and set aside. Cool, then cut slices into quarters. 
• Whisk the dressing ingredients together and add 1 tablespoon of the dressing to the prepared lentils.  Stir through and set aside to marinate. 
• When ready to serve, toss the lettuces, olives, pepperoncini, tomatoes, red onion, walnuts and reserved lemon slices together. Place the feta squares onto a plate and microwave for 10-second bursts until warmed. Drizzle 1 teaspoon of dressing over the feta, then toss the remaining with the salad. Portion salad evenly onto four plates. Arrange the lentils over the salad, and top each with a square of feta. 

More and final musings on “Why Cook?”

I have been a lifelong cook, primarily because I enjoy it. I enjoy being creative with flavors; when I am playing with my food, one never knows-could be tremendous, could be horrendous…I am thankful that I can cook, though, because over the years I have had to accommodate diet for varying medical conditions.

My mother prepared at least two variations on the meal each evening. One was for my father, who had ulcers along with then unknown IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) and reflux disease. Since next to nothing was actually known about these digestive issues, his diet was bland; picture a hospital tray prepared with a bit of my mother’s finesse. For the rest of us, the meal was usually a bit more inspired, and certainly better seasoned. Today, many people need food prepared for specific dietary concerns, more than ever before.

I have learned the hard way, several times over. When my beautiful daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at the grand old age of eleven, the whole family was thrown into a tizzy. During her week in the hospital, all we managed to learn was how to give practice shots to oranges. (And not very well, at that.) Our first post-diagnosis grocery trip took hours, as my husband and I studied nutrition labels in horror. What in heaven’s name had we been eating up to then? I was so grateful at that point that I not only knew how to cook, my bachelor’s degree had included concentrated study in the science of food and nutrition. Because now, each and every gram of carbohydrate had to be accounted for to figure the exact dose of insulin, and there were limits to the grams of carb that could be eaten at each meal. Let’s see, there’s 13 grams of carb in a cup of milk, 24 grams in ¼ cup of flour… Uh, yeah. We stockpiled cookbooks and magazines in which the carb counts were already included. If you made changes to the recipe, the carbs had to be re-calculated…

Fast forward to now. While conditions like IBS and reflux disease supposedly don’t have a basis in genetics, I have followed in the old man’s footsteps with both, and my unfortunate adult son is well on the way to following mine. I have spent years trying to decipher what might explain my digestive issues and what I should and should not be eating. Be careful for what you ask! My new gastroenterologist pointed me in the direction of the FODMAP elimination diet, which made more than clear that several classes of carbs were culprits. So I am back to cooking for specific dietary needs, now for myself.

Enter this salad. A recipe for kidney bean and rice salad has long been a favorite of my husband. But beans? Hard to digest. And garlic as the major seasoning? Can’t digest that either. Yes, you heard that right. I can use garlic infused oil, but no cloves of garlic. Compensating for the loss of that strong a flavor basically meant starting over. Time to play with the food…     A Mexican flavor profile has the potency to substitute for the garlic heavy French one. Sprouting powerfully improves both the digestibility and available nutrition of beans, and I receive easy-to-sprout fresh black beans in my CSA box.* Black beans and corn in tandem are delicious. Add in some roasted poblanos, diced serranos, and avocado. Dinner is done and everyone can eat it. And thankfully, there are no hospital trays in sight!

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Mexican Rice and Black Bean Salad

Prep Time30 minutes mins

Cook Time45 minutes mins

Total Time1 hour hr 15 minutes mins

Course: Entree Salad

Servings: 4 -6 servings

Ingredients

• 1-½ cups cooked brown rice
• 2 cups cooked black beans from dry beans or canned
• 2 ears of corn stripped from the cob (can use canned or frozen)
• 1 roasted poblano pepper chopped
• ¼ cup diced red bell pepper
• 1 tablespoon diced Serrano pepper
• ¼ cup sliced celery
• 1 scallion thinly sliced
• Dressing
• 2 tablespoons garlic infused oil can substitute fresh diced garlic clove and olive oil
• 1- tablespoon lime juice
• 2 teaspoons orange juice
• pinch each of salt pepper, cumin and oregano
• Avocado and tomato for serving

Instructions

• Combine all ingredients through scallions in a large mixing bowl. Whisk together the dressing ingredients, toss with the salad and chill. Serve on plates with sliced tomato and avocado.

*I start with the freshest dry beans I can find. The beans I get in my CSA box are always fresh and sprout easily. I also have had good performance from Rancho Gordo beans, available online at  https://www.ranchogordo.com/ 

Using a quart jar with a sprouting jar strainer lid, soak the beans for 8 hours, then strain the water. Rinse and strain the beans 3-4 times a day until small white plant sprouts appear. Cook as usual.

Moving to the desert southwest, we expected a few Saguaro, prickly pear, and Palo Verde trees. A few agave, teddy bear cacti-the typical palate of Sonoran flora and fauna. We did in fact have all those plants on our property. What we did not expect was a full grove of seven mature citrus trees. Other than watering and fertilizing, we somehow ignored the rapidly growing golden globes until last November. Then the harvest started, we were drowning in tangerines, and the old farm ethos kicked in…

Everything we grew on the farm was either eaten or preserved. While weeding, picking and preparing vegetables for the table was often my responsibility, the preserving of the harvest was a daily job throughout the summer for my mother and me. Most of the produce had to be cleaned, shucked, blanched and shocked before freezing in stackable boxes. Tomatoes and their juice had to be steam peeled, cooked and strained before pouring into freshly sterilized jars and going into the canner.

These steamy activities took place in a big old non-air conditioned kitchen, accompanied by average heat in the upper eighties with humidity to match. While others might attribute their lovely skin to avoiding the sun and not smoking, I know better. My skin has remained relatively smooth well into my…well, let’s call it “advanced middle age,” because I lived in a steam bath all summer for the first two decades of my life.

So now my husband is proudly carting basket upon basket of citrus fruit into our new kitchen, just as my dad did with vegetables years ago on the farm. I was dubious about the pride, for this fruit had basically grown itself, but the piles of citrus remained all the same. He was also expecting with great anticipation that I would know what to do with all of it. Uh, yeah. Our friends quickly realized that while an invitation to dinner at our house might mean a delicious meal, the exit ticket would be grabbing a bag of citrus fruit on their way out the door…

Eventually we had to face the preservation of all this fruit. We zested and juiced abundant amounts, which we froze for later use. I tested recipes and made jars of freezer citrus curd. The husband continues the quest for the perfect limoncello. And then there were the preserved lemons… The harvest ended around April, so now we are enjoying the fruits of our labor, so to speak.

Preserved lemons are a unique product, perhaps new to many Westerners. They are typically used in Middle Eastern dishes such as tagines. Classically combined in long braises with meat, chickpeas and olives, they lend a deep lemony umami that is both unfamiliar and delicious. Their production is basically a fermentation process using salt, lemons and seasonings. While I would not have made them myself had I not been wrestling with bushels of lemons, you are welcome to have at it should you be so inclined. (Let it be noted that I have purchased them in the past at Trader Joes…)

The process I used can be found at: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1016212-preserved-lemons

Now deep umami braises are just peachy in the desert in January. In July?At 108° F.? Not so much. Which is how a lunchtime salad was born this week. Whole grains, vegetables, and maximum flavor with none of the hot steaminess, thank the heavens above.

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Farro Salad with Moroccan Spices

Prep Time30 minutes mins

Cook Time30 minutes mins

Total Time1 hour hr

Course: Salad

Servings: 4 servings

Ingredients

• ¾ cup farro
• 2-¼ water or broth
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons diced preserved lemon peel
• 6 grape tomatoes
• ¼ cup chopped green olives
• ¼ cup sliced celery
• ½ cup sliced green onion
• ½ cup chopped parsley
• 2 cups cubed cooked chicken or drained chickpeas for a vegetarian version
• Dressing:
• 3 tablespoons olive oil I use garlic infused oil for one of the three
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• ¼ teaspoon each of:
• Cumin
• Coriander
• Cayenne
• Leaf thyme
• Grated lemon zest
• ½ teaspoon smoked paprika
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

• Rinse the farro grains, then add to the water or broth in a saucepan along with the salt. Bring to a boil, reduce to simmer and cook for approximately 30 minutes, or until tender but still chewy. Drain and turn into a large mixing bowl. Cool slightly. Add the remaining salad ingredients and combine gently.
• Whisk the dressing ingredients together and pour over the salad. Stir gently to coat with dressing. Cover and chill until ready to serve.

To make gluten-free: substitute brown or forbidden black rice for the farro.