Potato Salad with Peas

...and the previously touted tartar sauce. After a fairly cool and rainy July (I swear I wasn't complaining about it! At least, if I was, I wasn't serious.) August has delivered some seriously sweaty days lately. Cue a diet of sandwiches, ice cream and, you guessed it, cold salads.

At this point, new potatoes have been around for almost two months. I'm not really a new potato person (when my mother gets back to a computer after the weekend, she's going to disown me) but I think they work very well here, and not just because the cooking time is short. Along with some parboiled mangetouts/snowpeas, about half a cup of chopped pickled cucumber, and the rest of the tartar sauce, this turned into a super-fast supper. Almost superb, even.



Potato Salad with Peas
serves 3

1 pickled cucumber, chopped
150 g snowpeas
12 baby new potatoes
100-150 ml tartar sauce

Boil potatoes in salted water until almost tender. Drain and let cool. Boil the snowpeas until almost tender, drain and run under a cold tap (or put in an ice bath) to stop the cooking process.

Once the potatoes have cooled, halve or quarter them and toss with the chopped cucumber, snowpeas and tartar sauce.

Recipe after the jump!

Noodle Salad with Spicy Peanut Dressing

Do you remember the first time you had peanut butter? Peanut butter wasn't much of a thing in Finland when I was growing up (understatement), so I do. I was a slow convert to the peanut butter straight up, not mixed with anything school (and I still don't get the PBJ sandwich, but then I don't want jelly anywhere near my sandwiches anyway), but used in spicy sauces (and peanut butter cookies, but that's a bit different) it has a more instant appeal, adding this smooth and creamy depth to, er, whatever you're mixing it with.

A noodle salad with carrots, bell pepper and scallions, in this case. The sauce is really the star of this thing, fabulously spicy and satisfying, so obviously you could, and should, play around with the amount and type of vegetables. (I did make it again later on with chicken, and that was lovely too, and for a more nutritionally balanced vegetarian option, mung sprouts would be lovely.) I chose to mix in just half of the dressing before serving, so everyone could add more to their plates according to taste.

Noodle Salad with Spicy Peanut Dressing
adapted from Bon Appétit, Oct 2004, serves 3

75 ml (1/3 cup) peanut butter
4 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp rice vinegar
1 fresh red chili pepper, deseeded and finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp soft brown sugar
1½ tbsp ginger, minced
about 50 ml vegetable (or chicken) stock, or enough to make the above a fairly runny sauce

150 g rice noodles
3 medium carrots, julienned
1 red bell pepper, julienned
1 bunch scallions, julienned

(I find julienning things therapeutic. If you don't, this dish is going to be a lot less fun to prepare.)

Combine the ingredients for the sauce in a food processor and blend until smooth. (I find that you need to chop the chili really finely for this to work at all, but your mileage may vary.)

Bring a pot of water to the boil and throw in the carrots and bell pepper. Add the rice noodles, take off the heat and let stand for however long it says on the package. (3 minutes in this case, which was just perfect for the veggies.) Drain and run under cold water, then drain well again. Mix in the scallions and enough sauce to make it nice and slick. Serve as is or cold, with more sauce on the side.

Recipe after the jump!

Beet, Blue Cheese & Walnut Salad

Season's first beets are here! I find beets somewhat challenging to prepare, since roasting (and maybe grilling) is the only way to do it right, and it does take an age. (Actually it's not so much the time as the fact that you never know how long it'll take.) Once you're done, you sort of want there to be more to it than a bunch of, well, edible root veg.

Not to knock the old beets-with-butter side dish, which is after all a classic for a reason (it's not just the butter, either), but this time I wanted to go for another classic combo: beets, walnuts and blue cheese. The last time I went for this pairing, it was in somewhat unorthodox empanadas, but that's just too fussy for a weeknight in summer, so I turned to the trusty Epicurious for some salad hints. The dressing is, erm, less-than-beautiful (this is what comes of reading a recipe, thinking "yeah, I'll remember what to do" and then... not remembering what to do), but very tasty!

Beet, Blue Cheese & Walnut Salad
adapted from The Figs Table by Todd English and Sally Sampson

5 medium-sized beets, with stems trimmed to an inch or so of the root, scrubbed clean
1 tbsp or so of olive oil
a handful of walnuts
a few tbsp fresh chopped herbs; I used mint and basil
salt & pepper to taste
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

½ tbsp olive oil
¼ cup chopped walnuts
½ small red onion, thinly sliced
80 g (about 3 oz) blue cheese (I used Roquefort)
a few tbsp light cream

Rub the beets with a bit of olive oil, wrap tightly in tin foil and roast at 200°C (400°F) for about 40-50 minutes, until tender. Let cool for a while, then rub the skin off and cut into strips/slices/whatever. Mix in walnuts and herbs and season with balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. (If your salad isn't all wilted and sad, toss some in, too - the original used arugula.)

Sautée the chopped walnuts in the olive oil and set aside. Whizz together cheese and cream in a food processor until smooth, add the cooled walnuts and the onion and run the blender for a while longer. Add more cream if it's too solid and more cheese if it's runny. Serve with the beets.

Recipe after the jump!

Simple Tomato Salad

So last Sunday was a bit of a letdown all around - the internet went boom, and getting up we realized we'd be spending a goodish part of the day at the vet, fixing the girlcat's infected foot. Luckily the lunch we had planned benefited from waiting a bit, and so we threw together a potato salad and this fresh tomato concoction before leaving. (The foot is fine now. The cat it's attached to hates me for the antibiotics though.)

The original recipe called for cilantro, which I'm not too fond of in its raw state, so I substituted parsley. Yes, traditional, curly parsley. It has a bad rep, and I just don't understand why. Is it the mouth-feel? You just need to chop it more finely than your average herb! Is it that it's just not as hip as its flatter cousin? I would be happy to use flat-leaf parsley in a load of things, but sadly the flat parsley you get in the shops here is disgustingly overgrown and coarse. Which makes me wonder how hard it is to grow? I have yet to kill my chili plants and I made a piece of ginger root shoot up an enormously tall, er, stalk, so clearly I now have the magic touch and could grow anything.*


Anyway, this salad is fast and easy and the season of non-disgusting tomatoes is just around the corner, so I think this'll be one of our summer go-tos in the future. Yum!

*never mind that the chili isn't actually blooming or anything. It's not dead! It's making loads of pretty leaves!

Simple Tomato Salad
adapted from Glorian ruoka & viini 4/2007, serves 2-4

500 g (1 lb) ripe plum tomatoes
1 mild red chili
2 cloves garlic
1 bunch scallions
100 ml (scant ½ cup) chopped fresh parsley (or cilantro)

dressing:
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsp olive oil

De-seed and chop the tomatoes and chili. Mince the garlic and slice the scallions finely. Mix together the ingredients for the dressing and combine with the chopped vegetables in a bowl. Sprinkle in the chopped herb of your choice and let stand in the fridge for a few hours before eating.

Recipe after the jump!

Pasta Salad with Zucchini, Red Onion & Sun-Dried Tomato

[Because I'm nothing if not bad with timing, we had this salad last week. After the first heat wave. Before the current heat wave. (Which, luckily, isn't as bad as the first one, if only because it's not as oppressive.) I wrote this after I'd made it and then had internet troubles and forgot to come back and actually post it when they were resolved.]

Of course, by the time I get around to cooking sweltering heat-appropriate dishes, the weather's gone back to +17°. (Note: THIS IS NOT A COMPLAINT. I like seventeen-degree weather. It'll pretty much have to be minus seventeen* for me to start bitching about the cold.) I just wish I'd had this salad ready earlier this week when the thought of keeping the stove on long enough to cook pasta was enough to make me want to burst out crying. (I believe we've established that I'm a wuss when it comes to heat, yes?)

This is perhaps not the fastest hearty salad you'll ever make - unless you take to a mandolin or similar, the chopping will take a while, and it is really so much better when you really get the zucchini into fine slices, at least to my mind - but when you have it, should you follow the amounts given below, you'll have a huge salad, enough to feed six people at least, and it will stay fine in the fridge for several days. I've usually left the pine nuts to be sprinkled on each serving, so I'm not sure if they'll go soggy in the fridge, and sometimes I've perked it up with more fresh basil and some arugula, or even cherry tomatoes.


I wish I could give credit to someone for the recipe (the balsamic white vinegar is a stroke of genius, for one thing), but it's a copy-pasted document on my computer from a time way before knowing the source of something because I'd be presenting it to the public became an issue.

*all degrees in Celsius. Obviously.

Pasta Salad with Zucchini, Red Onion & Sun-Dried Tomato

½ l (2 cups) fairly sturdy pasta
3 baby zucchini, about 200g each
3 medium red onions
100 g (or so, translates to roughly half a cup chopped) sun-dried tomatoes in oil
200 ml cream (I used light cooking cream)
2-3 tbsp balsamic white vinegar
salt & pepper
a lot of fresh basil
toasted pine nuts

Cook the pasta in plenty of salted water. When it's al dente, drain and run under cold tap water to stop the cooking. Set aside.

Chop the sun-dried tomatoes finely. Reserve some of the oil.

Slice the zucchini and onion finely; cut the zucchini rounds into strips.

In a very large saucepan, heat about a tablespoon of the oil from the tomatoes and soften the onions in it. Add the zucchini and stir to blend, then add the cream and let come to the boil (if you prefer your zucchini pieces a bit thicker than mine, wait a bit before adding the cream to cook them properly) and take off the heat. Stir in the tomatoes and pasta, season with salt, pepper and balsamic vinegar.

Let cool to room temperature, then stir in a big bunch of chopped basil. Let stand in the fridge for a few hours and check to see if it needs more seasoning before serving. Sprinkle on the toasted pine nuts.

Recipe after the jump!

Hay, Hay, It's Caesar Salad Day!

I've been meaning to make salad-filled rolls for a while now, because I like baking but have a hard time incorporating the bread into actual meals - I wind up eating sandwiches way more than what's good for me, and not even interesting sandwiches - cheese and cucumber is about as good as it gets. (You really don't want to know about the quality of the cheese I use for this, either.)


Of course, carved-out roll innards are just begging to be made into croutons, and when Katie of Other People's Food chose Caesar Salad as the theme for this month's HHDD, my choice was made for me. Now, I've made Caesar salad the original way, with raw egg and without anchovies, and quite frankly I don't see what the fuss is about. (Read: I probably just bungled something, but that was vile.) So I was quite happy to find a version using mayo instead.


Normally I'd fill the bread bowls with something a bit more substantial and creamy than this, maybe a mushroom or chicken salad (in which case, make/buy your buns in a bigger size...) which is why, upon consideration, I decided to toss in some crispy bacon with the romaine and croutons. OK, really it was because I wanted to fry the croutons in bacon fat, but once I had acquire said fat, what was I supposed to do, throw away the lovely by-product? I don't think so. I liked the dressing a lot and made a double batch of it to have some leftovers for the weekend. You'll have to go by feel as to amounts of lettuce and dressing anyway, depending on the size of the bread you're filling.



Caesar Salad-Filled Bread Rolls
Caesar dressing adapted from Bon Appétit, Feb 2002, serves 2

2 anchovy fillets
2 tbsp mayonnaise
2 tsp lemon juice
½ tsp Dijon mustard
a few drops Worcestershire sauce
1 clove garlic, finely minced
50 ml good olive oil
salt & pepper to taste
3 tbsp grated parmesan

2 breakfast rolls, about 120 g each (and a third one for extra croutons)
a few leaves romaine lettuce
3 rashers bacon
some shaved parmesan

In a blender, whizz together the first six ingredients until smooth. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil while keeping the motor running. Add salt, pepper and grated parmesan.

Cut off a "cap" from two of the breakfast rolls and carve out the innards from the bottom, leaving about 1 cm of the edges. Try to get the middle of the rolls out in as large chunks as possible so you can cut it into croutons, otherwise just slice off the crust of the third roll and cut it into scant-cm cubes. If you have time to leave the bread cubes to dry for a while, that's all the better.

Fry the bacon until crisp. Drain on paper towels but don't discard the fat from the pan - fry the bread cubes in it until they're nice and crisp.

Crumble the bacon in a bowl and toss with the shredded romaine. Blend in an appropriate amount of dressing, toss in the croutons and parmesan shavings, and divide into bread bowls. Top with the caps.

Recipe after the jump!

Eurovision Salad

At first, this was going to be just blue potatoes and yellow beets, but then I realized that serving a dish in the colors of the Ark*-nemesis (oh, how I crack myself up sometimes) tonight of all nights (Eurovision song contest!** In Helsinki!), never mind tomorrow (Hockey World Championship final! Although it looks like we're playing Canada and not Sweden) would not be politic, so I wound up adding hard-boiled eggs, red bell pepper and scallions, so you can make up the flag of whomever you wind up supporting.

Except Ireland. I knew I'd forgotten something! Well, you could add carrots.

I wish I'd taken a picture before mixing in the dressing - it was like an explosion of bright, happy colors, whereas afterwards... well, you can see. I've decided that the gooey look is a representation of the general musical quality of tonight's entries. (It's a good dressing though. Don't skip it.)


Happy watching, everyone! I know I'm going to be hiding behind a pillow from embarrassment at least 25% of the time (and howling with laughter for another quarter), but that's kind of the point, right?


*note to non-Europeans: this is a Eurovision reference.
**although actually, Ark is one of my favorite entries. Not the favorite though.

Blue Potato, Yellow Beet (& Normal-Colored Vegetable) Salad
3 medium Blue Kongo potatoes
2 medium yellow beets, roasted
small bunch of scallions
2 bell peppers, grilled, peeled, and cut into slices
2 tbsp capers, rinsed
3 eggs, hard-boiled
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
100 ml crème fraîche
100 ml mayonnaise
juice of half a lemon

Boil the potatoes in salted water until tender. Drain & cool. Cut potatoes and beets into chunks and chop the scallions.

Separate the egg yolks from the whites. Chop the whites and set aside. Mash the yolks with a fork, mix with the mustard, then blend with crème fraîche and mayo. Mix in the lemon juice and finally the capers.

Inm a big bowl, mix together potatoes, beets, peppers, scallions and egg whites. Fold in the dressing. The taste improves if you let it stand (in the fridge) for a few hours before serving.

Recipe after the jump!

Roasted Beet "Flowers" with Nettles and Mint Vinaigrette

Earlier this week I headed over to one of the larger grocery/deli places in town (Stockan Herkku, for those of you playing in Helsinki). With no planned meals in mind, I went a little overboard in the fresh produce aisle and came away with a motley assortment of interesting things: a nice-sized rosemary plant to plonk on the balcony once we're past the frost scares for good, blue kongo potatoes, cinnamon basil (proved to be Quite Nice on top of some salmon), and yellow and candy-striped beets. (What can I say? We all go a little crazy sometimes.)

In the checkout line, I noticed the customer before me buying some nettle bread. It was too late to go back for some without causing severe irritation in my fellow shoppers, but it did remind me that our stamp-sized garden, besides patches of wood anemones and a few straggling tulips, also has some nettles pushing up amidst all the moss. Now, the Swedish food blogs I follow have been fairly bursting with wild greens lately (for whatever reason, this doesn't seem to be a Thing for Finnish foodies), and while botany is not my thing, I do feel confident in my ability to not poison myself with nettles.


Then, of course, I was completely stumped as to what to do with all these vegetables, until an Internet Friend, who shall go nameless, told me: Wilted Nettle Salad With Roasted Beets And Mint Vinaigrette. You should all have Internet Friends as great as mine, yeah? That is just sheer genius, right there. Unfortunately, I totally wimped out with the nettles at the last minute and mixed them with some ricotta instead. (In retrospect, I think they were better this way.) The presentation is totally stolen from Alanna's beet carpaccio, which I must try out sometime.


Now if I could figure out what to do with the blue potatoes. I understand they taste like... potatoes, which is bound to be something of a let-down, so it has to be good. I haven't made the microwave potato chips yet...

Roasted Beet Flowers with Nettles and Mint Vinaigrette
serves 2

2 medium beets
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cups young nettle leaves
125 ml (or so) ricotta cheese
salt & pepper

vinaigrette:
1 bunch mint, finely chopped
2 tbsp cider vinegar
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp sugar
½ tsp fennel, ground
salt & pepper

The method for roasting the beets apes that of Alanna: wash the beets thoroughly, pat dry, then rub skins with some olive oil. Wrap tightly in foil and roast at 190°C (375°F) for about an hour. Let cool a bit, then rub between your hands to remove the skin. (It's pretty silly to keep the oven turned on for an hour for two beets, so I did a whole bunch at once. Look for more beety things later on in the week, I guess.) Slice thinly.

Wilt the nettles in a bit of simmering water, drain. Chop them finely and season with salt and pepper, then mix with the ricotta. (I should have squeezed the nettles to dry them out a bit more.)

Whisk together the ingredients for the vinaigrette. Arrange the beet slices prettily on plates, sprinkle with dressing (you'll probably have some over), and spoon the nettle mixture in the middle.

Recipe after the jump!

Asparagus, Bacon & Poached Egg Salad

This salad was part of our May Day brunch, which was luckily very small - this was the only dish to be prepared on the spot. As a light lunch, it works marvelously on its own (although I'd accompany it with either croutons or garlic-and-oil-rubbed toast) and you certainly don't want to be fussing about trying to prepare other things while frying the asparagus and poaching the eggs.

Maybe it's just that my poaching skills still leave something to be desired, though - it always feels like such a stressful procedure. In the end I wound up taking pictures before drizzling on the dressing, so if you could imagine this whole shebang with flecks of herb-oily goodness I would be most obliged.


Asparagus, Bacon & Poached Egg Salad

based on this recipe at Finfood, serves 4

500 g (1 lb) asparagus, trimmed
170 g (6 oz) bacon, cut into bite-size pieces
a few cups mixed greens
4 eggs
2 tbsp vinegar

dressing:
3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 tbsp white balsamic vinegar
1 tsp sugar
a big bunch of basil, finely chopped
a big bunch of thyme, finely chopped
salt & pepper

Start off by mixing the ingredients for the dressing or you'll be in trouble later on (not that I'd ever, etc).

Fry the bacon until crisp, drain on paper towels. Reserve some of the fat from the bacon and fry the asparagus in it until (barely) soft and slightly browned. Meanwhile, bring a pot of water to a simmer, and add the vinegar to it.

Mix together salad greens, bacon and asparagus, add most of the dressing and toss gently to coat. Divide onto plates.

Crack the eggs and pour into individual cups/glasses. Carefully slide the eggs into the water and let cook for about two minutes (the yolks will still be fairly runny), then remove eggs with a slotted spoon (making sure they're properly drained) and place on top of salads. Drizzle with the rest of the dressing.

Recipe after the jump!

White Bean & Pecan Salad

I usually see beans as belonging in stews and soups, mostly because I can't for the life of me cook them to perfection. Beans turn mushy, this is a fact of life, and mushiness in salads is generally frowned upon. Imagine my joy when I noticed, in a recent issue of Ruoka & viini, a recipe for a bean salad where you overcooked the beans on purpose. (This was part of a Georgian - the country, not the state - menu with several other dishes I've been meaning to try out - there's a cheese pie that sounds divine.)

Then, of course, I forgot about it for over a month until one day while grocery shopping I thought I remembered the details well enough to wing it. I didn't, as it happened, and wound up having to improvise a bit. It's not a very pretty dish - the pecans are ground together with spices and herbs, the browned onions are kind of the same color as the mushy beans - but there's a nice piquant edge to the thing, where the sharpness of the vinegar is cut by earthy, cinnamon-dominated spiciness.

White Bean & Pecan Salad
serves 4 as a light lunch/starter; adapted from Glorian ruoka & viini 2/2007

150 g dry white beans (cannellini or navy)
2 large onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp white wine vinegar
150 ml pecans, lightly toasted
a bunch of fresh basil
a bunch of fresh parsley
½ tsp each ground coriander and cinnamon
¼ tsp each ground cloves and nutmeg
1 tsp Maldon salt
(fresh greens)

(the original used walnuts instead of pecans and dill and cilantro instead of parsley, among other things)

Soak the beans in plenty of water overnight. Drain and cover with fresh water in a largeish pan. Cook for about an hour, until just slightly overcooked. Drain and set aside.

Fry the onions in the oil until nicely browned. Reduce the heat, add the minced garlic and stir until the garlic's cooked through. Add the beans and cook for a few minutes, stirring occasionally.

In a blender, grind the pecans, basil, parsley and spices. Mix with the vinegar, add salt and blend with the beans. Let stand at room temperature for about half an hour.

Toss with a few handfuls of greens just before serving.

Recipe after the jump!

Roasted Tomato, Chickpea & Red Onion Salad with Halloumi

Sometimes the title just says it all, you know? I feel like there's nothing I can do to sell this salad after giving you its (very prosaic) name. It should be enough! Well, maybe I'll just add that it's really no work at all - the onions and tomatoes are roasted in a mixture of balsamic vinegar and olive oil until the tomatoes start crinkling at the edges and the onion turns soft and sweet. After that it's just a question of tossing things together and frying the halloumi.

I have this sneaking suspicion that halloumi is a bit 2002 (for one thing, I can get it at my corner store* which is probably not a good sign), but quite frankly, I don't care. Fried halloumi is one of the best cheese-related experiences you can have, soft and oozy and salty and crisp and tangy. And I say this as someone who loves her cheese.



*even low-fat. Trust me when I say that low-fat halloumi is the devil.

Roasted Tomato, Chickpea and Red Onion Salad

serves 3-4, originally snagged from Hufvudstadsbladet last fall but tinkered with a bit

500 g (1 pound) cherry (or smallish plum) tomatoes
2 red onions, thinly sliced
1 can chickpeas
1½ tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
salt & pepper
fresh basil, oregano and tarragon or any combination thereof
200 g (7 oz, or whatever size it comes in, really) halloumi
salad greens

Halve the tomatoes and bake at 200°C (400°F) for about ten minutes. Season the onion with balsamic vinegar, a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, and sprinkle over the tomatoes. Bake for another 10-15 minutes, until the onion's softened and maybe taken on some color, and the tomatoes are starting to crinkle at the edges.

Mix the onions and tomatoes with the rinsed and drained chickpeas and coarsely chopped herbs. Taste off with more balsamic vinegar and/or salt & pepper.

Cut the halloumi in 5-mm slices and fry it on both sides in a dry pan until golden brown.

Serve on a bed of whatever green stuff you have around. Except not the romaine from my fridge, because that had gone all wilty. Boo.

Recipe after the jump!