I love making salads – they’re so easy! Salads don’t have to be dull. Put in the right ingredients, and they’ll zing with flavor.
Today’s salad started with a big handful of Olivia’s new 50/50 blend – it’s half baby spinach and half spring greens – best of both worlds!
Add: red bell pepper, cherry tomatoes, avocado, thinly sliced red onion. Top with a big dollop of white bean spread. Now usually I make white bean spread with canned white beans, olive oil, garlic from a jar, and S&P. But, I made the spread over the weekend using a Stir recipe, which included white beans (1/4 lb), olive oil (1/4 cup), S&P. The kicker was 1) the cheesecloth sachet with which the white beans were cooked (from dried) – it included carrot, celery, a smashed garlic clove, peppercorns, red pepper flakes, and coriander – and 2) the truffle oil (about 1 tsp) that was stirred in the end. The truffle oil made it truly divine.
So delicious, I don’t even need a dressing. Each of these ingredients is so tasty on its own, I just savor them naked, no masking the flavors.
All this talk about salad, and I haven’t even mentioned the most exciting part of my lunch – the bread! I stopped by The Biscuit on the way home from lunch and picked up a multigrain loaf.
I discovered this bread a couple weeks ago when I had it on sandwich at Equal Exchange (which sells The Biscuit’s packaged sando’s a few miles away in Boston). This bread – oh my carb-loving comrades, my grain gurus – it is so hearty and good! Mmm, I see flax seeds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, all wrapped up in a whole grain flour which I would guess is wheat.
Now, while I am making this salad, I am also thinking ahead to tomorrow – class all day, no chance to go home – so I’m making this same salad into a sandwich. The only difference is a regular tomato instead of the cherries.
Spread one slice of bread with the white bean. Arrange peppers and avocado on top – be pretty about it if you want.
Add the red pepper and onions. Handful of lettuce – whatever falls out is going into my salad.
Yes, that was bread under the lettuce.
Don’t forget the sliced tomato…. Flip one side to the other, and you’re done!
Two for the price of one, lunch is ready for tomorrow.
Along the while, I was caramelizing onions for a quiche I want to make. Caramelizing onions – not my forte. But I know it can be done, because I’ve done it successfully before. Started with about a Tbs of olive oil. Added thickly chopped onions (you don’t want them so thin they burn), and put the heat on very low. Give them a little stir, and then resist the temptation to stir except about every 5 minutes. The heat should be so low that the onions don’t burn or brown.
After about 20 minutes, the rich yellow is really starting to come out.
Doh! This is what you don’t want to happen – brownage. No matter, they’ll still get close to goal and will certainly be tasty.
Final result was not what I was going for, but will still work in my quiche… more on that later, stay tuned.
