kirkcudbright | salad days, salad nights

Tonight's dinner: bread salad. There are a kajillion recipes for this, so I'm just going to tell you what I did (which itself is a merger of a couple different recipes).

Bread Salad

Mince two shallots, and cook in a bit of olive oil.

Meanwhile, gather fresh herbs from the garden. In this case, rosemary, thyme, and cilantro, in roughly equal proportions. Rinse them, and chop until you're tired of chopping. This came to 3-4 tablespoons of mixed chopped herbs, which is actually quite a bit. Mix with 3 tablespoons cider vinegar and maybe a bit of salt and pepper, then whisk in 5 tablespoons of olive oil. Add the shallots when they're done.

Slice as thin as you can (or care to) half a yellow pepper, half a red pepper, and a tomato. Pit and roughly chop exactly 16 Gaeta olives (or Nicoise, if you can find them).

Shred half a loaf of "saloio loaf" (Italian bread) from last night's excellent dinner (about half a pound of bread) into chunks no larger than 1 inch (otherwise they won't absorb the dressing).

Toss everything together in a larger bowl than you plan to serve in. Toss it well, and toss it again every so often until you serve it.

While I'm in the imperative mode (and documenting what I did), serve it with sauteed tilapia topped with browned butter.

Tomorrow's meditation retreat will be followed by vegetarian pot-luck, for which I just made this:

Beets and Caramelized Onions with Feta

This closely follows a recipe on Epicurious, but I'm going to replay it here, as I actually did it.

Caramelized onions take a long time, so start with them. Chop 1 lb onions (2 medium onions). Most recipes for caramelized onions are very specific, e.g. halve the onion lengthwise and slice across the grain. But really, chop them as you will, not too big, not too small. Add ¼ teaspoon salt and maybe a little sugar, and cook them in 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium-high heat until they start to brown (about 5 minutes), then turn them down to medium-low and continue to cook for 30-40 minutes more, stirring every few minutes. The recipe I linked to says 18-20 minutes; don't believe that, unless you like merely cooked onions; real caramelization takes longer than that.

When the onions get close to done, whisk together in a large bowl: 2 tablespoons cider vinegar, 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard, ¼ teaspoon black pepper, and ½ teaspoon salt. Add 3 tablespoons olive oil, whisking until combined well. Don't skip the mustard, because that's an emulsifier (prevents the oil and vinegar from separating). Also, don't go wild with the salt, because the feta has a lot of salt.

Open 2 cans (15 oz each) of beets, or some similar amount of fresh-cooked beets. The recipe says to chunk them up (quarter if large, halve if small), but I usually get the sliced beets, and cut them into julienne strips.

Mix the beets, the onions, and the dressing. Add ½ cup crumbled feta cheese and ¼ cup toasted pine nuts, "stirring gently to combine". You can skip the pine nuts if you don't have the, but then you'll be sad, because pine nuts make everything better.