Category: salad

Summer Salad With Vegan Cashew Dressing and Chipotle-spiced Potatoes

chipotle spiced roasted potatoes sit atop vegan cashew dressing on colorful salad greens with red and yellow peppers
Chipotle-spiced potatoes languishing on vegan cashew dressing and crispy salad greens.

It seems everybody and their fucking brother has a salad recipe for the summertime, but I’m just going to come out and say it: this one is better.

How’s that, you say? 

1. It’s accidentally vegan, and by “accidentally” I mean I don’t follow a vegan diet, but we should all eat less meat, because A) high-quality meat is getting more expensive, B) the only meat you should eat is high-quality meat, and C) eating plant-based meals a few times a week is really good for you.

Plus it’s cheaper to eat plant-based whole foods that aren’t processed. So there’s that.

2. The two highlights of this salad — the dressing and the potatoes — can be strewn about any number of variations in terms of greens and accoutrements. I give some suggestions in the Recipe Notes.

3. It’s a really good chance that you have everything you need to make this salad immediately. The only iffy thing is the cashews, but even the cashews can be picked up at a convenience store on the way home, as they don’t need to be fancy and raw (which means no soaking).

Everything else is pantry and fridge staples, and there’s no unusual ingredients. 

There’s also no yeast — a common vegan trick for a “cheesy” flavor — in this recipe. Many people, including this writer, have issues with yeast. Leaving it out is no big deal.

4. It’s just really, really fucking delicious.

Summer Salad With Vegan Cashew Dressing and Chipotle-spiced Potatoes

Ingredients

Vegan cashew salad dressing (makes about a cup)

½ cup roasted, salted cashews

¼ cup neutral oil (I used canola)

1 teaspoon maple syrup or honey (I used shagbark hickory syrup in late winter)

3 tablespoons lime juice (more to taste)

1 clove garlic (about 1 teaspoon chopped if you buy it in a little jar, which I do sometimes and LOVE, so zero shade)

1 teaspoon cumin

Hot water to thin (see Recipe Notes)

Chipotle-spiced Potatoes

Yellow potatoes, cut into ½”-1” cubes 

Chipotle chili powder (see Recipe Notes)

Olive oil

Salt and black pepper

Salad Stuff — go crazy here

Romaine hearts, chopped

Red and yellow peppers

Carrots

Red cabbage

Chopped snap peas

Avocado

Cherry tomatoes

Black beans, grilled chicken, leftover steak, or all in some combination

Pickled red onions (or raw in thin slivers)

Shredded sharp cheddar if you want the dairy experience

Method

Salad dressing: Place all ingredients except water in a food processor or very capable blender, and blend until smooth and creamy. Add hot water to thin as needed, but be prepared to bump up the lime juice and other seasoning (cumin especially) if you add too much. Since I use this on hearty romaine salad greens, I certainly don’t mind a thicker dressing, but you choose your own adventure.

This can be stored in the fridge for three days. Note that it will thicken as it cools, so you may need to add a combo of lime/warm water to thin.

Potatoes: Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Chop up a mess of yellow potatoes, more than you think you need. More than you think you want. Seriously.  Chances are good when you are done eating your salad, you’re going to want to nosh on these with some ketchup. If you have leftovers, they are just fine on salad the next day, or you can use them in a frittata. SO GOOD. Plus, if you’re going to turn your oven on in the summer, you might as well make it count.

Add potatoes to a bowl and splash with a generous glug of olive oil, chipotle chili powder, salt and black pepper. How much?

Frustratingly for you, maybe, it’s hard to say. People’s spice preference is different. The chipotle chili should be visible on the potatoes, and you want them fairly slippery with oil. Use more salt than you think you need, and keep it handy.

Place in the oven and roast for 20 minutes. Give them a stir, taste for salt and add if needed,  turn off the oven, and let them sit in the oven for another ten minutes while you put your salad together.

Assembly: I chop, wash, and spin dry three romaine hearts every week in the summer so there’s no excuse not to eat veggies, and it’s easy all the time (I’ll grate tons of carrot in there, too). You can use any type of hearty salad green, but for the love of all things holy, avoid iceberg lettuce in most applications, including this one.

Add whatever salad-y things you like. I would avoid cucumbers unless they are the English kind that have less water, but I might also avoid those. They just don’t seem delicious here, but if that’s your jam, have at it.

Add dressings and pile on the potatoes. I like to toss everything together in a slightly larger bowl so the dressing touches every corner of the salad and potatoes. 

Eat. Repeat. Salad for days.

Recipe notes

  • If you use too much hot water to thin your cashew dressing, it could also dilute the flavor. I like to alternate between water and additional lime juice. If you only have one lime, you could also add unseasoned rice vinegar instead. Acid is a good friend here — it keeps things light even though this is a filling salad.

If you don’t stan chipotle chili powder, substitute the same amount of smoked paprika. It changes the flavor profile a bit, but the smoke is what you’re after. If you hate both of those options, season the potatoes with a fancy smoked salt and live your best life.

Ambrosia Salad For These Times

Ambrosia salad what you need. Trust me. I’m a professional.

When I lived in the south I had a friend who was a little bit crazy. Actually, really, very crazy. But she was my friend and she was fun until she wasn’t, and she hated ambrosia salad.

Growing up sugar-free, I never knew there was such a thing as ambrosia salad until I got much older, and then the combination of canned fruit and whipped topping was not really something that appealed to me sober, so I never really investigated it. I liked the idea of a salad that was ambrosial, though, and I never quite forgot about it.

But then I met Nancy (name changed to protect her, and me, for she really is crazy), and she challenged me to make an ambrosia salad she liked for a potluck she was having. I did, and it was truly ambrosial. None of this canned, tin-tasting fruit and plastic whipped cream. The secret was fresh ingredients, toasted coconut, and toasted pecans, plus a little pinch of salt at the end.

Could we all use some sweetness and light right now? Yes, I believe we could. Here it is.

Ingredients

1/4 cup unsweetened coconut, toasted

½ cup chopped pecans, toasted

2 oranges, suprémed and cut into ½” pieces

1 large grapefruit, suprémed and cut into ½” pieces

1/2 fresh pineapple, peeled, cored, and cut into ½” pieces

1 cup mini marshmallows

1 cup of heavy whipping cream

3 T confectioner’s sugar

1 tsp vanilla

½ tsp salt

Method

Preheat oven to 350⁰. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and place pecans and coconut on the baking sheet. Toast until both begin to brown or darken in color, shaking to prevent burning. This happens fast, so watch closely.

Remove from oven and allow to cool completely.

Place fruit in a large bowl with mini marshmallows.

In a medium bowl, beat whipping cream to soft peaks. Add vanilla and sugar and continue beating until the cream just stands up when the beaters are removed (not too stiff).

Fold whipping cream into fruit. Chill completely.

Before serving, add toasted coconut, toasted pecans, and salt and stir to combine.

Recipe notes

  • Maraschino cherries often make an appearance here, but I cannot stomach all of that artificial color. If you must add cherries, add ½ cup of fresh Bing cherries or go completely over the top and add the same amount of Luxardo cherries. Truly heavenly.

Sunny Days = Delicious Lunch

So much deliciousness in one place.

So it’s about 70 degrees outside as I type this from my aerie facing 35th Street in the Hampden neighborhood of Baltimore.

Just now, I can hear a firetruck and, over that, my neighbor Clarence’s loud voice, booming from his front door as he drinks from a plastic cup that has invariably been filled with something of a high proof since the clock struck 12. He greets everyone, makes small talk, just to be outside in the neighborhood.

It’s a thing, that, the conviviality of a person you don’t know, hailing you from the street as you walk past. He gets louder as the day wears on, and what is now a bit muddy to hear will ring clear as day by the time the sun sets over the yardarm. He is as constant as the sun, out in all weather, and generally one of the things that make daily life in this era feel “normal.”

My day has been filled with an early hike through Druid Hill Park, COVID baking, and this delicious lunch – Warm Lentil and Potato Salad.

The recipe is not mine, but it needs sharing. I made a few changes – you should, too, based on whatever is in your pantry.

To wit:

  • Subbed red onion for shallot
  • Used French lentils (but I think caviar lentils would be incredible here)
  • Subbed kosher dill chips for capers AND gherkins (it’s what I had – spicy pickles would have been nice)
  • Used coarse ground mustard
  • Subbed chives for scallions
  • Used new potatoes that were getting long in the tooth

Fresh herbs may be challenging, but I used parsley, thyme, and chives from my back porch. I imagine you could use dried thyme if you needed to, but the fresh parsley was sort of key.

Serving sizes in the recipe are true. Makes four big dinner servings, especially with a dippy egg cracked on top (which I did not have – see aforementioned COVID baking). I warrant this will be good cold, too, but you could warm it up if you feel so inclined.

Sharp and salty, zingy from the vinegar, and creamy with the flesh of new potatoes, this lunch feels like a healthy hug. I highly recommend it.

What’s on your plate today?

 

Food For When You Feel Meh: Confetti Salad

Eating with a spoon is the best kind of eating. Fight me.

Well, here we are, July 1, time for me to begin to pull together the one blog a month I felt I could pull off.

Yes, this is past tense.

But I am not going to beat myself up about it. Because here I am, on the 1st, sitting in my studio, looking at a painting in progress and watching the neighborhood scary/tragic neighbor do slow and sweaty laps around the block on a loop. And writing this.

This July 1st, I find my two favorite people out of town, one for one week, the other for two, and I am feeling a mite blue about that. Mine is a generally solitary existence, but the people I like I really like and I want them around.

Mercury is again going retrograde as well, and there are two eclipses in the month of July. So according to astrology, my communication is going to suck, mood swings will abound, and I will doubt myself. In other words, it’s another day that ends in “y.”

On top of the stupid solar system and my MIA people, my plan to get rejected is going well. The goal is 100 rejections by the end of 2020, and although I started off slowly, things are picking up. I found a place that will reject my work within 24 hours, and The Sun has rejected my photography, poetry, and prose. The point of all of this rejection is to get serious about submission and creating new works, and to some extent, it is working. I have written a couple of new poems this past month and have been note-taking and researching other forms of poetry and doing generally writerly things.

But the rejection can be a little challenging. Not knock-me-back-on-my-ass challenging, just not completely pleasant. I have gotten some lovely form rejection letters (in the vein of, “This is no commentary on the quality of the writing” which may, upon reflection, be a falsehood and not very nice at all and actually a loud commentary on the quality of the writing).

I do have a poem being published in Plainsongs this month. The acceptance letter referred to it as “your fine poem.” My self-esteem will be dining on those three words for at least the rest of the summer.

So I am just feeling meh and low-grade shitty. As this is a blog, I put that forth as an entirely legitimate way to describe what I am feeling. I am saving the words for the poetry.

And I have been cooking, even though it’s sad little meals for one. Today I made mango sticky rice in the rice cooker and some granola with the last bits of Costco dried mango (it’s mango-riffic), the only fruit I could scrounge up in my pantry.

I made gluten-free chocolate frosted chocolate fudge chocolate Pop-tarts that I had to throw out because they were making me ill, they were so rich (I saved an unfrosted batch in the ‘fridge).

I made epic pizza crust and ate the shit outta that (pro-tip: don’t make the crust too thin and it’s MONEY).

Many other lesser lights have made it to the groaning board in the past 30 days, but here’s the thing: when I feel low-grade shitty, I only want to cook sweet things, or else I want to lounge around in my bed and eat chips and watch crappy Netflix (I call this “Netflix and chonk”).

When this gets old, I need some food for real. Easy food that can be made with whatever is in the ‘fridge that’s not cold cereal, chips, gluten-free chicken tenders, or an entire cake.

So I make confetti salad.

Easy: boil two cups of water/veggie stock and add one cup rinsed quinoa and half a diced onion. Cover and cook until fluffy.

Add to a large bowl: three shredded carrots, one diced bell pepper, handful of chopped cilantro, handful of dried fruit, handful of pumpkin seeds, handful of sunflower seeds, can of chickpeas (rinsed and rained), juice of one lemon, olive oil, and black pepper. Add cooked quinoa, stir, adjust seasoning (maybe more lemon juice or olive oil), and you’re done.

Infinite variations. Add sliced snap peas. Dried fruit can be raisins, cranberries, barberries, mango, cherries. Add a thinly sliced spicy pepper. Use parsley instead of cilantro. Mix up the seeds. Add fresh, halved cherry tomatoes. Add warm grilled chicken (otherwise it’s vegan).

I eat this warm, cold, and room temperature. Throw it over greens. Whatever. Perfect for when your people are gone and you have been barefisting hunks of cake in front of the ‘fridge since they left.

Happy summer.