Sometimes, you just gotta have something light, quick and easy. But you don’t have to sacrifice flavor or health to do it. Crab cake with ancho pepper jelly; salad with romaine lettuce, red bell peppers and ham plus garden cherry tomatoes, topped with honey mustard dressing.
Actually, the title should be “Salad with Crab Cake” since the majority of the plate is raw veggies. It took hardly any time to assemble. Probably the most time was spent halving the cherry tomatoes.
The ancho-pepper jelly was something new. I like the spicy bite plus the sweetness of the jelly combining with the savoriness of the crab cake. I bet it would go great with pork…
Aloha, Nate
Thai food offers an alluring balance of sweet, sour, salty, and spicy. You’ve got sweet sugar, sour lime juice, salty fish sauce, and spicy chillies all melded together in a tantalizing and mouth-watering concoction. It’s hard to resist.
Annie took a top sirloin steak, seasoned it lightly with s&p then broiled for 4 mins per side. After resting, she sliced it up and marinated the beef in fish sauce, lime juice, brown sugar, shallots, chili flakes, and chopped Thai bird chiles.
The salad greens included romaine lettuce, napa cabbage, carrots, green onions, mint, Thai basil, and cilantro. She laid out the veggies, pile on the beef, and then poured the remaining dressing over everything.
This was awesome!
Aloha, Nate
I’m one of those people that doesn’t like to have leftover stuff sitting and getting old in the fridge and freezer. So every so often I go in there, look at what’s available, and try to figure out how to make a dish with what I’ve got. I call this type of cooking “Musgovian” for “must-go”.
Here’s a Musgovian salad consisting of rotisserie chicken, romaine lettuce, napa cabbage, celery, green onions, cilantro, blanched beans, steamed corn, tomatoes and avocado. Dressing was made with lime juice, honey, garlic, olive oil, s&p.
I think it leans Mexican, but whatever it was, it was good!
Aloha, Nate
Annie made this great chopped salad based on the “Chopped Mexican Salad with Roasted Peppers, Corn, Tomatoes & Avocado” recipe from Fine Cooking Magazine July 2006, p 57.
First, she roasted some seeded red bell peppers and corn in the oven with olive oil until the peppers were soft, then diced the peppers. She also diced up some tomatoes and avocado. She blanched some broccoli and chopped that up as well (the original recipe calls for diced jicama). All the ingredients were mixed together along with a drained can of black beans and garnished with chopped cilantro.
The dressing was a honey-lime-cumin vinaigrette which included garlic, lime juice, orange juice, shallots, honey, toasted ground cumin, olive oil and fresh ground black pepper. This is a great salad which has a lot of flavor and texture.
Aloha, Nate