Salads and Pasta and People Doing the Right Thing

Today's blog is simply a link.  https://lou-farrell.squarespace.com/new-u-wellness-fair/

Last week, I worked the NEW U Wellness Fair at Ursinus College in Collegeville, PA.  The Wellness Committee is clearly doing something right.  Everyone I met had a good handle on healthy eating choices.  Certainly their work is paying off.  Folks are eating better and moving more, which has the added benefit of keeping health care costs down.

Their Wellness Committee invited me to do a couple of food demos focusing on healthy foods.  The salads part was easy.  Fill up on healthy, interesting vegetable preparations and you will be too full to eat a veal chop wrapped in bacon.  The more difficult presentation, cooking whole wheat pasta was a challenge.  Whole wheat penne is not as firm as that made with semolina or durum wheat.  In order to make it firm and able to be sauced without turning to mush, it is a good idea to saute it in very hot olive oil.  Oh, and to keep it healthy, cut your portion.  On one needs to eat as many noodles as they serve you in most red gravy restaurants.  Recipes for all the stuff I cooked at the Wellness Fair are available at the above link.

Patience (Cucumber Salad)

Last Friday morning I did the shopping for our camping trip in the Catskills.  Since we would be buying up most of our food at the Kingston Farmer’s Market, there was a short list.  I got in and out, but as I was driving home, I realized that I had forgotten to pick up some extra batteries for the lantern.  After a quick u-turn, I was back at the Giant, searching for the battery display.  Since everything has a charger these days, batteries are no longer stocked with the impulse items at checkout.  I had to ask two stockers before I found what I needed and hurried to pay. 

It seems that there are never enough checkers at Giant.  They run everything off of metrics or matrices, nothing gets done without a stat to support the decision, however they can never seem to get the right number of folks to the registers to take care of the people who want to get going.  The self checkout lines were jammed and only three registers were open at a time when double that would have been about right.

I thought I had lucked out.  There was one register with a single person in line.  Too bad, because the woman in front of me had a cart filled to the brim up top and fully stocked on the bottom with cases of water and mixers.  I knew that this would take some time.

The clerk eyed up the situation and asked the woman with the $300 order whether she would let me slip by to pay for my single pack of batteries.  The woman rolled her eyes, groaned, then plainly stated, “Then I would have to wait!”  She wasn’t gonna budge, in spite of the clerk’s reasonable suggestion and the absolute stone cold fact that I would have been gone and out of her life in under a minute.  So I waited and tried to pull something zen out of waiting for her to go through her accordion file of coupons and try two credit cards before the good one worked.

I did get something out of this experience, a bit of calm, a meditative moment and a recipe for those who don’t like to wait.

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Cucumber Salad

1 large cucumber, peeled and thinly sliced 

           (preferably bought from Migliorelli’s at the Kingston Farmer’s Market)

1/4 red onion, thinly sliced 

           (once again, preferably bought from Migliorelli’s at the Kingston Farmer’s Market)

1 tbs. fresh mint 

           (the best is out of Cathy Farrell’s garden)

2 tbs. olive oil

the juice of 1/2 lemon

salt and fresh black pepper

Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl. 

Stir. 

Serve, eat.

‘nuf said.

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Some shots from the Kingston Farmer's Market.  Give me a call, we'll meet in front of the stand where the guy sells blue potato chips, buy the place out, then go down to Fleisher's for Denver steaks to grill.

A Salad Manifesto (creamy dressing, mayonnaise)

One thing, besides the numerous food safety issues that I see when going to a buffet, supper or just to someone’s house for dinner is that when the salad is served, out come bottle after bottle of salad dressing to pour over the greens.  The host probably took some time purchasing salad that is fresh.  You can, there’s good stuff out there now.  In our local grocery, without looking too hard, I found escarole, Belgian endive, radicchio, frisèe and a real nice head of red leaf lettuce.  The downfall of the salad then is usually not the lettuces, but the dressing.  Hosts will offer a variety of dressings, hoping to please everyone at the table.  What you get is quarter bottles of commercial dressings, most well past their pull date, with the dregs caked to the neck of a bottle that seems purposely shaped to prevent you from getting the last bit out.

Take this test.  
 

1.     Open the door of your fridge.

2.     Count the number of commercial dressings festering in the door.

3.     If you have more than two, give yourself a dope slap.  

It is doubtful that you’ll have fewer than three bottles of commercial dressings in your fridge.  If any of them are made by Ken’s, hang your head in shame.  I can’t believe that they sell that stuff to real, paying customers.  Ken’s was always the cheapie brand that you would see on the salad bar in an unnamed seafood house in Wilkes Barre, PA.  It was the kind of place where they did the classy presentation thing.  They would take the time to cut the labels off the spiced apple ring #10 cans before burying them in the ice.  The staff also couldn’t grasp the obvious fact that sea legs were not lump crab.  Dude!

I can’t really cop an attitude here.  My Mom usually would stock at least ten dressings of varying vintages, along with about six mustards, all inedible.  They were in layers on the door.  You needed von Schliemann’s archaeological skills to make a salad.  http://schliemann-museum.de/hsm/werk.html

 

A continuing theme over here at Fresh Fun Foods is that it doesn’t have to be that way.  As kitchen preparations go, salad dressings ain’t that difficult.  In a similar way to mother sauces, White becomes Mornay etc., a base dressing can be made and then different variations make different dressings for different uses.  It takes a lot to plan a meal.  If you are going to work hard on the apps, the main course and the dessert, why play dressing roulette with the salad course.  

The following is a base recipe for a creamy salad dressing.  You’ll have to make some mayonnaise, but it is worth the trouble.  Don’t worry about using raw egg yolks, the vinegar will push the pH way down, killing off all the pathogenic bugs.  The dairy, acids and herbs can be varied.  You’ll be able to make dozens of dressings for any kind of salad you would like to make.  Play, have fun with your food.

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Creamy Dressing

1 cup mayonnaise (yeah, make your own)

1 cup heavy cream

3 tbs. red wine vinegar

2 tbs. chopped parsley

salt and white pepper

Mix all the ingredients together.  Refrigerate for at least an hour before serving. 

Consider the following variations.  Pick a dairy, an acid or a herb to change in the original recipe.  You can also add two tablespoons of grated parmesan or locatelli cheese.  A teaspoon of chopped garlic or onion would also work.  Lots of fresh black pepper might pick it up.

Dairy	Acid	Herbs
crème fraiche	champagne vinegar	thyme
buttermilk	white wine vinegar	tarragon
sour cream	cider vinegar	mint
yogurt	orange juice	oregano
	lemon juice	sorrel
		rosemary
		sage

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Mayonnaise

2 cups salad oil

2 egg yolks

1 tsp. Dijon mustard

1 tsp. red wine vinegar

salt and pepper

Put the egg yolks, mustard, vinegar, salt and pepper in a large mixing bowl.  Mix to combine.  Let rest for ten minutes.

With a whisk or electric mixer, beat the yolks for approximately five minutes.  First, it will froth and appear to form small bubbles.  As you mix, it will thicken and begin to look like plastic. 

Continue to beat the eggs.  Slowly, at the beginning drop by drop, add the oil.  After ½ of the oil has been added, begin to whisk slowly.  If the mayonnaise looks oily, add a drop or two of cold water to thin it out.  the finished mayonnaise should be quite thick, like sour cream.