The salad is good, but there must be good tuna. If you have really good Spanish or Italian tuna in olive oil, this would be
Category: Salads
Salad recipes
Real Babaganaush
Has to be with tahini, not mayonnaise, not yogurt.
Ingredients:
- Baked or grilled eggplant
- Tahini
- Olive oil
- Garlic
- Lemon juice
- Cilantro
Directions:
- Grill or bake eggplant till fully cooked and soft
- Let it cool completely, peel the skin and drain extra liquid
- Put on the board, chop finely, put in the bowl
- Add tahini paste, olive oil, lemon juice, smashed garlic
- Add salt, pepper and finely chopped cilantro (optional)
- Mix well, taste
Octopus Salad
Super simple, with 2 of my favorite Spanish products – octopus and paprika. They are great together! Ingredients: Directions:
Spring Salad
Made of rainbow carrots shaved with vegetable peeler. Dressing – tahini, olive oil, lemon juice. Whisk well! Garnish – feta cheese, roasted sliced almonds. All
Very green salad
Trying to live from the land: have lots of cucumbers and herbs in my garden and made this super green , healthy and delicious salad. In just 2 minutes. There are no proportions and not exact ingredients, just try to use up as much greens as possible. Avocado and feta cheese are store bought.
Ingredients:
- cucumber
- cilantro
- parsley
- chives
- green onion
- feta cheese
- lime juice to dress
Directions:
- Slice cucumber, I kept the skin because it’s sweet and crunchy
- Chop your herbs really finely
- Chop avocado
- Crumble feta cheese
- Add salt and pepper
- Sprinkle with lime juice
Creamy mushrooms
Ingredients:
- Works best with shiitake, you can combine it some other mushrooms – oysters, baby bella, but shiitake is a must.
- Small shallot or 1 leak
- Heavy cream – 1/2 cup
- White wine 1/4 cup
- Salt, pepper, nutmeg
- 2 tbsp of light olive oil + 2 tbsp butter
Directions
- Heat your pan with 2 tbsp of light olive oil. Start with frying some mild onions (shallot or leaks) till golden brown
- Add your dry clean mushrooms to the pan and let them get golden brown, only after they get that nice crust keep stirring them till they are almost fully cooked.
- Add butter, stir and fry mushrooms for another minute
- Season with salt and pepper
- Deglaze the pan with white wine, reduce the heat and cook for about 5-7 minutes
- Add the cream, bring to a boil, cook for about 2 minutes
- Check for seasoning, add some nutmeg
- Serve hot or warm
Sauerkraut Russian style
It is one of Russian specialties, a unique combination of tasty and healthy food, loaded with vitamins C and K, iron and fiber and contains probiotics. It is called sour cabbage, and with all due respect to all things German is much better than pale mushy sausage condiment. It makes a great side for anything – chicken, fish, steak or ribs. It can even be a salad of its own, or mixed with some sliced shallots and topped with olive oil. One of my favorite meals when I was a child was mashed potatoes mixed with sour cabbage.
The cabbage should be fermented in its own juice, therefore it has to be green cabbage usually harvested late in fall. Another traditional ingredient is carrots, it contributes more to the color, not so much to flavor. The only important proportion to remember – 30 grams of salt per kilogram of cabbage. The rest is optional
Ingredients:
- Cabbage 1 kg (2 lbs)
- 2 medium carrots
- Kosher salt 30 gr
- 2 garlic gloves (optional)
- Caraway seeds 1 tsp (optional)
Directions:
- Cut the cabbage into 4 big parts, remove the core
- Make sure you weight what will be chopped, the ratio of cabbage to salt is important
- Shred the carrots
- Chop the cabbage into thin strings, the way you do for the coleslaw
- Add salt, caraway seeds, thinly sliced garlic and several red pepper flakes
- Place everything into a big bowl
- Mix everything with your clean hands, don’t squeeze, just mix to evenly distribute salt, carrots and spices. It is actually tasty right away, somewhat like oversalted coleslaw
- You will see that the cabbage starts extracting the juice when salt touches it.
- Transfer the mix into a glass jar pressing it tight with a spoon, potato masher or just your fist.
- Cover the lid
- Let it sit on the counter top for 3 days, check daily, open the lid and let some extra gas to evaporate, but still pressing it is submerged into the juice.
- It should be ready in 3-4 days, just taste it – it won’t taste like a coleslaw anymore. It will taste like sour cabbage.
- Needs to be refregarated once ready
Abundance of Cilantro!
It’s not just a way to preserve such fragrant and delicate herb but make a great condiment of your own.
Here is one idea – cilantro pesto:
Ingredients:
- Cilantro – about 1 cup (stems can be used too)
- Garlic – 3-4 cloves
- Red pepper flakes
- Lime juice 2-3 tbsp
- Olive oil – 3/4 of a cup
- Pistachios – 1/4 cup
- Salt -1/2 tsp
- Pepper – 1/4 tsp
- Optional – Manchego cheese
Directions:
- Put all the ingredients into the food processor and pulse till it becomes a paste.
- It can stay in the fridge for weeks, great with rice, pasta, fish, cracker or just slice of bread.
Blended Ratatoulle (икра)
Just cook your ratatouille the way you usually do (or as I suggest below) and after it’s cooked and chilled (at least a little) – put it all in a blender and puree. It creates a very delicious, creamy, and versatile vegetable dip, which you can spice to your liking and serve warm right away, room temperature or cold, and can be a sauce or a side for any fish, chicken or meat. I can eat it with a spoon, but if you put that spoon on a slice of good rye bread – it’s hard to stop.
- Start with roasting onions (and you don’t have to chop them too fine as it will all be blended) on medium high heat.
- When onions turn golden – add eggplant as they cook the longest
- Once eggplant gets some golden crust – add chopped zucchini
- When zucchini softens add garlic and chili pepper (optional)
- Add chopped tomatoes, you can also add tomato paste, herbs of your choice (thyme, oregano, parsley)
- Mix everything, check for seasoning, cover the lid, reduce the heat and let it cook for about 15 min till all the vegetables are fully cooked
- The vegetable size and proportions are very flexible, you can also saute every vegetable separately
- You can add salt and pepper to every vegetable as you add it or season the whole pot when all the ingredients are in
- Turn the heat off, let it cool (at least slightly), place in a blender or food processor and puree. Check the dip for seasoning and adjust if needed.
Vinegrette – Russian salad
Not to be confused with a dressing. Vineigrette is a name of Russian salad based on boiled or baked vegetables.
The ingredients are all simple and very available with the exception of Russian style sauerkraut (you find in any Russian store), but it can be replaced with the regular or totally skip, just put more pickles. The unique taste is again a combination of sweet (beets, potato, carrots, peas) and salty or marinated pickles. The proportions are super flexible too – put more beets if you like it sweeter, add pickles if you want more crunch and brine.
Can be served as a side dish, appetizer, packed for picnic or lunch. Kept in a fridge for 2-3 days and gets even better. And it’s good for you!
Ingredients:
- Boiled, better baked beets – 2-3 medium
- Boiled Yukon gold or red potatoes – 3 medium
- Boiled carrots – 3medium
- Shallot – 1 small
- Pickles – 3-4
- Sweet peas – 1 can or 1 cup of frozen blanched
- Sauerkraut (better be Russian) – 1 cup
Directions:
- Finely chop (to a pea size) potatoes, beets, carrots, pickles and shallot. The best beets are baked, all the juices remain inside and pealing is easy. Just wrap each one in a foil and put in your oven when you use it. You can keep them baked in a fridge for several days before you use them. Pea size chopping may sound intimidating, but it’s super easy, everything is cooked and soft.
- Blanch frozen sweet peas in a boiling water for about a minute so it keeps the bright color or add canned peas.
- Slightly chop sauerkraut (if you have it).
- Add salt and pepper, dress with olive oil.
Serve cold or room temperature.
