Tricolore Salad with Eggplant, Peppers, Tomatoes, and Mozzarella

This is another delicious recipe from Plenty. It's a really great, light side dish. The mix of textures is really nice - the soft eggplant and mozzarella and the crispy peppers. It seems like a lot of capers, but they get mixed in and it's just right. The cilantro adds a nice, fresh flavor on top. Can't wait to eat the leftovers for lunch!

Ingredients:

4 small eggplants, sliced into 1/2" circles

olive oil

salt and pepper

1 yellow pepper, in about a 1/2" dice

15 grape tomatoes, quartered

1 tbsp red wine vinegar

3 1/2 tbsp capers, plus 1 tbsp of the brine

5oz fresh mozzarella

1 cup roughly chopped cilantro

Barley and Pomegranate Salad

This is another great recipe from Plenty. It's super light and flavorful and perfect after a weekend of eating too much. The pomegranate seeds add such a nice, sweet pop. Looking forward to eating leftovers for lunch this week.

Serves 4

Ingredients:

1 cup barley

6 stalks celery, leaves removed and saved, in a small dice

1/4 cup olive oil

3 tbsp white wine vinegar

2 small garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

2/3 tsp ground allspice

salt and pepper

3 tbsp chopped dill

3 tbsp chopped parsley

seeds from 2 large pomegranates

Pretty Salad

Want a really quick way to make a simple salad really fancy and beautiful? Top it with nasturtiums. They're perfectly edible and taste a little bit like watercress. This is some fresh lettuce from the garden and I tossed it with dressing then put some nasturtiums on top. Easy and so pretty and colorful. 

Pretty Summer Salad

This is so simple but so fresh and pretty. We had our first cherry tomatoes in the garden and some cucumbers and nasturtiums. You can eat nasturtiums and they add such a nice pop of color and fancy touch to a salad. I just sliced up cucumbers, topped them with sliced tomatoes, ripped up some nasturtium petals and sprinkled them around, sprinkled on salt, drizzled balsamic and olive oil, then topped with a whole nasturtium. Yum!

Chopped Salad

I love a good chopped salad. I spent last week eating pretty poorly, so I was craving a lot of good, raw veggies and this is the perfect way to get a ton of them at once. It's very easy. Just pick out your favorite veggies, chop the bigger ones into slices or chunks, add some nuts or dried fruit, add some lettuce, and pulse it in a food processor until it's finely chopped. Then add some dressing. That's it.

I used cucumbers, radishes, craisins, snap peas, grape tomatoes, cannelini beans, broccoli, shallots, cashews, and carrots (and lettuce). You can use whatever veggies you like, but I recommend a mix of textures and flavors. Carrots and snap peas add a good crunch, and usually I like putting in avocado because it kind of binds it all together but there were no ripe ones at the grocery.

Decadent Salad Topper

I wanted to make a special dinner for Jamie the other night and thought of this yummy puff pastry, brie-en-croute confection I'd made once in college. I tried it again - wow! I need to do this next time I have people over for dinner. Puff pastry makes everything better. This is so easy, and the warm melty cheese along with the flaky and buttery crust goes perfectly with the acidity of balsamic dressing. I made the salad look all fancy here, but you can put this on top of any green salad and it makes it special and fancy. 

Bibb Lettuce with Creamy Parmesan Dressing and Cheese Crisps

Another recipe from the wonderful "Stir" cookbook by Barbara Lynch. She said she'd so tired of Mesclun, and I kind of get it. The Bibb lettuce is so crispy and nice. The dressing is creamy and subtle and the cheese crisps are awesome.

Ingredients:
1 large egg yolk
1 tablespoon whole grain mustard
juice of 1/2 a lemon
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 cup grapeseed oil
3 1/2 cups finely grated Pecorino Romano (she says parm, but I used Pecorino)
Salt and pepper
1 1/2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 large head Bibb lettuce, washed, dried, and torn into pieces
1/2 cup almonds, finely chopped
Parsley and tarragon, finely chopped

Veggies Week 18 and Caprese Salad with Cucumbers

I forgot to take a picture of the whole garden, but that's what I pulled out! We have SO many tomatoes! Only the smaller ones are ripe so far, but there are green tomatoes all over. The little black cherries are absolutely amazing, and all the others are delish too. Tart and sweet and acidic...yum! We had to do a lot of work staking the cages and tying string around to make sure the tomatoes were supported. (Some of them were lilting or even falling over after all the rain last week - too heavy with all those tomatoes!)

We also had the most delicious salad, sort of like a caprese. Sliced tomatoes, really thinly sliced fresh cucumber, lots of chopped basil, thinly sliced mozzarella, salt, balsamic, and olive oil. It's so great! I'd never had cucumbers in that combination, but they add an extra freshness and crunch. We ate it two days in a row. I love summer!