Composed Salad of Roasted Broccoli, Romaine, Chickpeas, and Walnuts

A composed salad is like a mini, refined salad bar of your own. The refined part is evident in the obvious lack of a sneeze guard. The ingredients are prepped, possibly tossed with dressing, and arranged on a platter for each person to serve him/herself. You can choose how much of each item to include on your own plate, and arrange things as you choose. This particular composed salad was in the July issue of Living magazine. Reading the title alone made me sure this was a salad I wanted to eat, but then when I read the recipe, I found out there’s also a goat cheese puree and sherry vinaigrette that made it sound even better. The walnuts were supposed to have been candied with honey and some savory ingredients too, but I decided to omit the sweetness and keep them firmly in the savory category.

There are several little parts of preparation for this salad, but they’re all very simple and very worth doing. First, the broccoli was roasted with extra virgin olive oil and salt and pepper. Meanwhile, canned chickpeas were rinsed and drained and then added to a saucepan in which some chopped shallots had been sauteed. At the end of cooking the chickpeas, a teaspoon of sherry vinegar was added. Next, the goat cheese puree was made by pulsing fresh goat cheese, water, olive oil, and sherry vinegar in a food processor. Also, walnuts were roasted with garlic, lemon, olive oil, and salt and pepper. And last on the list was the vinaigrette made with dijon mustard, sherry vinegar, a tiny bit of honey, and olive oil. The only other item was the romaine which I chopped rather than leaving the leaves whole. I made the goat cheese puree, vinaigrette, and roasted walnuts in advance, so the actual dinner-time prep was very quick. The romaine and roasted broccoli were each, separately, tossed with some vinaigrette and placed on the platter. The warm chickpeas and roasted walnuts found places on the platter too. The goat cheese puree was spooned onto an open spot on the platter so items could be dipped through it, and extra puree was served in a small dish.

This salad had no chance of not being a winner. I was already a big fan of roasted broccoli, chickpeas, and goat cheese, and this brought them all together in a particularly enjoyable way. It’s a casual composition that can sit comfortably at room temperature. The leftovers made an excellent lunch as well, but be sure to pull them out of the refrigerator 20 minutes or so in advance so the vinaigrette can loosen up after being chilled. I’m already thinking about using the parts of this salad on their own. The goat cheese puree was a delicious dip with broccoli, and the lemony roasted walnuts with a hint of garlic flavor would make a great snack with cocktails.

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Gavurdagi Salatasi with Falafel

In the May issue of Saveur, Anya von Bremzen wrote about living and eating in Istanbul. The pastries, like baked rice pudding, looked wonderful, and the mezes including salt pickled vegetables and a baba-gannouj-like dip looked great too. The stuffed eggplant caught my eye, and then I noticed this tomato salad with herbs and pomegranate. I guessed that this would be brightly flavored and fresh and have a nice, tanginess. It was suggested as a garnish for falafel, and that sounded perfect. I don’t know terribly much about Turkish food, but I’ve been learning from Give Recipe and Turkish Food Passion. Every time I visit those sites, I see dishes I want to try.

This salad is a combination of several chopped, fresh tomatoes, a lot of flat-leaf parsley, mint, some onion, fresh thyme, paprika, lemon juice, scallions, banana peppers, a little garlic, and pomegranate molasses. It’s garnished with ground sumac. When I read that ingredient list, I imagined all those flavors mingled together and couldn’t wait to try it. I used a falafel recipe from Epicurious, but I’m not sure if proper Turkish falafel is prepared in a different way. At any rate, the salad and falafel made a very nice pair. I whipped up a tahini, yogurt, lemon sauce and served a mound of salad with falafel sitting on top and plopped a little sauce in the center.

Both the falafel and salad recipes make enough to serve six, so after having this for dinner, there was plenty remaining for a few lunches. To describe the salad, I keep coming back to the freshness of it. The herbs and lemon and scallions did that for it, and the pomegranate molasses, although subtle, added a nice tangy sweetness. The flavors were so right with the chickpeas, onion, cumin, and coriander in the falafel. This is a definite keeper, and some day when I’ve practiced more with Turkish cuisine, I hope to be able to prepare an entire feast.

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Tunisian Vegetable Stew

A few weeks ago, I mentioned using the Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home book for inspiration, and that was my resource for this meal. I was hoping to find an interesting way to use some cabbage and possibly some other vegetables I had on hand. When I arrived at the page for this Tunisian vegetable stew, I thought, ok, this sounds good and looks simple enough for a serviceable, weeknight meal. That proved to be true, but it was also really flavorful, vibrant, and satisfying. In fact, it was so good it really took me by surprise.

To start, onion is sautéed, thinly chopped cabbage is added with sliced green bell pepper, canned tomatoes join the mix along with chickpeas, then ground coriander, turmeric, cinnamon, and cayenne are added, and it’s covered and left to simmer for 10 minutes or so. I need to pause and ask if you’re aware of the health and wellness benefits of turmeric? Turmeric is known for its anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant properties among a host of other healthful qualities. I’m always happy to add some turmeric to a dish, and I tend to add a little more than is requested. So, the spices added great flavor and the mixture gave off a lovely aroma as it simmered. At the end of the simmering time, fresh lemon juice was added.

To serve, any grain would do, but I chose quinoa. The stew was ladled over a mound of fluffy quinoa and then topped with crumbled feta and some slivered almonds. Kurt and I were both expecting an eat your vegetables kind of meal, but we discovered it to be so much more. The diversity of textures, the bright lemon in combination with the spices, the fresh cabbage and bell pepper, the savory rounded flavor of chickpeas, the tanginess of the feta, and the crunchy almonds all made this a surprisingly delicious and enjoyable dinner. The Moosewood book continues to do well by me, and everything I’ve tried from it has or will become a repeated meal.

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