...to say the 'I'

So, this blog is turning out to be a mish-mash of basically anything I like, which is ok with me for now. Maybe some day I'll fine-tune the theme a little, but for now I just want to try everything.

That being said, here's what I had for lunch today: White bean and red onion salad with lemon-dijon vinaigrette.

Ta-da! And it was yummy, too.

Tonight's dinner:

Spending time in France taught me that eggs and salad are really, really good together: omelets or scrambled, fillings or none (naturel), next to a good side salad dressed with a simple vinaigrette--mm mm good. Even better, though, is the poached egg over salad, an arrangement that allows the soft yolk to run down over the salad ingredients for a delicious taste sensation. I just bought asparagus yesterday, and I wanted to use this summer delight as well, so I decided to put the two together in a salad.

I was trying to come up with a suitable dressing when I thought about a sauce often used to dress asparagus alone or poached eggs in the popular brunch dish Eggs Benedict: Hollandaise. A good hollandaise is the kind of thing chefs learn in culinary school, not a simple trick that can be tossed off by mere mortals. I made one once before, and it was good, but it was enough work to convince me not to do it again except for a very special occasion. But, I decided to look it up on my favorite foodie website, Epicurious to see if I could incorporate any of the ingredients into a vinaigrette...when I found this mock hollandaise. I made it, altering the proportions a bit to make it lighter (more lemon juice, less mayo, and lemon zest because I didn't have oranges). It turned out a lot runnier and sharper than a normal hollandaise, but still reminiscent of the flavor.

I also made a very simple lemon-garlic dressing (olive oil, lemon juice, pressed garlic, and pepper) so that I wouldn't have to dress the entire salad with the the heavy sauce. I tossed the greens with a light coating of the vinaigrette, composed the rest of the ingredients on top, and drizzled the hollandaise over --and that's what you see above!

Click below for more photos of the process.

I'm not a vegetarian, but I have been eating less and less meat and poultry, mostly because I'm following Dr. Fuhrman's "Eat to Live" plan. Also, I'm really enjoying the lack of extra preparation that meat requires. I'll probably make more complex meals when Alex gets back, but cooking for one just isn't that much fun.

I did a search on Epicurious for "vegetarian," and it came up with this recipe. I've never really prepared or eaten tofu except incidentally, but I love lime and southwestern flavors, so I thought I'd try this.

This is the sandwich as it looked today when I made it for lunch, with leftovers from last night. Obviously, this is a whole-wheat pita, not a tortilla, but toasted up it was plenty yummy. A few other changes I made: I didn't have fresh cilantro (which would have been delish), so I used dried; I added a good pinch of cayenne pepper and extra lime; today I added chopped tomatoes to the mix, plus half a shallot. There are many potential variations on this easy, light dish, many of which are suggested in the reviews on the website. This will definitely become a standard for me, because it's so easy to throw together, and has got everything you could want: lots of flavor, protein, veggies, whole grains, and portability. I love eating food that tastes good and yet is so, virtuously healthy.

A tofu tip for the wary: draining well and crumbling up the tofu (which, I've discovered, I even like cold and plain) is vital. It doesn't make it feel like meat, but it takes away any trace of slick sliminess that tofu might otherwise have.

I'm finally getting to the food blogging I mentioned on Friday. I went to have dinner with a friend in Philly, and we each made a recipe that we had enjoyed in the past. She made these absolutely delicious lime cilantro sweet potatoes (sweet potatoes aren't in season and are hard to find, so she used yams instead). I made this coconut chicken recipe; we realized when we were serving ourselves that having rice and sweet potatoes side by side is a little heavy on the carb-loading, but we're both pretty anti-Atkins, and we had a simple mixed green salad on the side.

Here is the chicken and rice as I plated it from the leftovers the next day:

There's not much contrast among the main ingredients of the recipe, so I garnished with fresh cilantro, heavily toasted (ok, burned) coconut, and a dusting of cayenne (beware, cayenne is the spicy kind!). This recipe is from Real Simple magazine's article on making food for potlucks, so I halved the original eight-serving recipe. I really like this recipe as is; the only change I made this time was to subsitute chicken tenders for the chicken breasts in an attempt to shorten cooking time, but even so the pan had to go back into the oven (minus the chicken) to finish cooking the rice.

One of the most successful dinner party meals I ever made included this chicken. The menu was:

Appetizer: Jalapeno pickled shrimp
Main course: Coconut chicken and rice and mango tomato salad
Dessert: Double chocolate torte with orange glaze and tropical fruit salad with lime syrup

The recipe for the coconut chicken follows.

I've been meaning to blog this recipe for a long time. I made it a few weeks ago when I was visiting my family.

The recipe can be found here, at Epicurious, of course. Note that they call it a "tostada" salad, but I omitted that descriptor as well as that ingredient. This dish was absolutely delicious. Because there are a variety of picky eaters in my family, I left out the cilantro and cumin in the vinaigrette, and added a minced garlic clove to make up for it. But I didn't really need to, because the jalapeño lent so much flavor (and without any heat). I lined the parts of the dish up, buffet-style, so everyone could personalize their mixture: shrimp, black bean-tomato-corn mixture, red onion-green onion mixture, lettuce, dressing, and chopped cilantro for those of us who do like it. I also cooked the shrimp on a grill pan rather than on a real grill, though I'll bet that would make it even more scrumptious. I really can't imagine other changes that could make this any better. A perfect summer supper.

After a year of slavering after my sister's access to FreshDirect, I discovered that Acme Markets, in the Pennsylvania/New Jersey areas, offers online grocery ordering and delivery. I think the $9.95 delivery charge is worth it for me not to have to drag myself to the store. I'll report soon on how it works out.