cilantro – in thriver words

From Good to Great

Make your salads go from good to great by adding fresh herbs. Spring has sprung, but it feels like winter. I’d rather eat a hot bowl of soup than a salad right now, but it’s time to prepare for lighter fare. As soon as it’s warm, I’ll be ready for salads sitting in melon or pineapple halves, cold soup, and crisp wedge salads covered with bleu cheese resting on icy plates.

A fun presentation makes salads more visually appealing. Small additions can take the taste from average to must come back for more! Herbs are often overlooked as an addition to salads. I love to add them.

Here are a few combinations I enjoy:

MINT

pairs perfectly with cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon, and berries
lightens up the earthiness of mushrooms
adds panache to a cucumber salad

BASIL

sits atop the obvious choice – a caprese salad
deepens the green in a green salad
enhances fruit salad of tomatoes, cherries, peaches, and plums

DILL

adds a twist to potato salad
brings the lemony, sweet bitterness to cucumber salads that complement salmon
brightens arugula, feta, and kalamata olive salad

PARSLEY

serves as a salad green
colors quinoa tabbouleh
rides alongside romaine or bitter greens

CHIVES

lend a mild onion tone to any green salad
sit well with beets, garlic, and cilantro
blend into dressing to top a salad

Don’t forget to add cilantro to taco salad or rosemary to chicken salad. It’s amazing how herbs freshen the feel of a salad.

A squeeze of lime can do the same thing. Lemon juice, mirin, balsamic reduction, maple syrup, and honey are all good salad toppers that don’t weigh the salad down like creamy dressings.

Shredded apple, thinly sliced pears, sprouts, jicama, and water chestnuts are also light additions.

So many salads repeat lettuce, carrots, tomato, and cheese. There’s nothing wrong with them. They’re good. But with some tiny additions, they can go from good to great!

Let’s eat great salads this spring!

The Best Food is Everywhere

Forget fancy bags, boxes, cans, and cartons, the best food is everywhere! I can take a quick walk through my neighborhood and see clover, dandelions, sunflowers, begonias, garlic, and marigolds. All are edible. Even the tiny blooms appearing on the arugula in my garden can add a unique zing to a fall salad.

Because I live in a small southern city, I don’t forage for food. Too many lawns are maintained with chemicals and I don’t want to inadvertently find out how many neighbors are armed. But I grew up in a different environment. We ate wild strawberries from the yard, honey from bees that lived under our front porch, poke that appeared by the fence, persimmons from a tree by the red barn, wild blackberries on the Whitaker Forty, and huckleberries from Gaither Mountain.

Every blueberry I eat reminds me that I prefer smaller, darker huckleberries. We picked buckets full and ate them by the handful or in cobbler, jelly, and jam. Okay, now I want a biscuit. Yet, I digress.

There are also gems on my back porch I can safely consume. After I harvest the last of the season’s basil for pesto, the flowers will make a great garnish for pasta! Mint flowers make will make the iced tea and mojitos I serve alongside feel festive.

Speaking of pesto, garlic stems can serve as the base for pesto or be sautéed in butter as a side dish that enhances everything on the plate. If you let your garlic fully flower, the flowers have a mild garlic flavor perfect for salads.

Rosemary flowers can be mixed right in to a dish along with rosemary leaves. They don’t have as much oil in them, so you’ll need a greater ratio to get the equivalent level of flavor.

I would probably use cilantro flowers. I can’t say for sure because I seem to kill the plants every year before they get to that point. Every. Single. Year. But if you are a more skilled cilantro cultivator, you don’t have to let the blossoms go to waste.

My back yard holds other culinary treasures. If you can beat the bees to it, there is clover with its mild licorice-flavored heads and edible tender greens. Some days there are day lilies with their bright melony petals. And, of course, there are dandelions.

As summer wanes, I’ll enhance the back yard options by planting a fall garden. Swiss chard, mâché, spinach, and sugar snap pea seeds have already arrived, but I still need to harvest some carrots and green beans before I’m ready to make the switch.

Several years ago, I had a neighbor who taught at a neighborhood elementary school. He used to marvel that many of his students had never taken a walk through the woods or grown a plant. Many of them walked to school oblivious to the food growing all around them.

Of course, they aren’t the only ones. It’s easy to grab a bag of chips or cookies and forget there’s better food out there. In fact, the best food is everywhere!

Stretch Your Greenbacks with Forgotten Greens

https://www.ediblewildfood.com/

Spring is for Renewal – Even in the Kitchen!

Spring is for renewal – even in the kitchen! The winter season is hanging on here and there, but the spring growing season will soon arrive with wild contributions of poke salat, dandelion greens, and lamb’s quarters.
lettuce
Of course you’re not required to eat from your yard. Farmers markets, food co-ops and select grocery stores will fill vegetable bins with leaf lettuce, spinach, chard and kale. Fresh vegetables deserve a fresh presentation now and then and spring feels like the proper time for renewed inventiveness in the kitchen.

When I was growing up, I couldn’t wait to pick leaf lettuce from the garden my grandmother planted at our farm. It was so tender and flavorful, nothing like an iceberg lettuce wedge which I only really appreciate when drenched in bleu cheese dressing topped with bacon pieces. For years, it was the only lettuce I knew. (How lucky was I?)

The vegetables we grew were what we ate. My mom wasn’t going to drive into town to buy different vegetables from the store when we had perfectly good ones peeking through the dirt across the driveway. Of course, we didn’t want to eat the same thing every day, so necessity became the mother of invention. New combinations or cooking methods developed on the fly.

A few years ago when I first purchased a share in an organic farm, I noticed that a similar thing happened in my kitchen. Rather than plan meals and make a shopping list, I was suddenly planning dishes based on the surprise ingredients I received each Friday when I picked up my share from the farm. Not knowing in advance what I would get made the experience feel like a cooking adventure. It renewed my sense of creativity in the kitchen.

Now, when the weather warms, I can’t help but feel an excited anticipation for the arrival of fresh tender greens, small green onions, beets, peas, asparagus, and broccoli. I love the bright colors! I love the flavors! And I love having a chance to think of new combinations!

I was thinking about giving you some recipes next, but that might keep you from the fun of creating your own. I would never want to rob you of fun! Instead, here are the top 8 ingredients I like to have available to pair with fresh veggies:

Avocados
While they’re great for soooo many things, it’s not always practical to keep an avocado in the kitchen. I can’t tell you how many I’ve thrown away because I wasn’t paying enough attention to the changing level of ripeness.

Now I keep Wholly Guacamole avocado minis on hand. I can use them in anything requiring mashed avocado without worrying whether they’ve gone bad.

Goat Cheese
The light creaminess of goat cheese won’t overpower even delicate garden flavors.

Boiled Eggs
Keeping a few boiled eggs in the refrigerator comes in handy for salads and casseroles as well as pasta dishes.

Fresh Ginger
Grated fresh ginger is delicious with beets or green beans and can give salad dressing a kick.

Mint
Any fresh herb could make this list on a given day, but today I like mint. Tomorrow, who knows, I may like cilantro.

Mirin or Rice Vinegar
Mirin is a rice wine with a light sweet flavor. Both mirin and rice vinegar add light acidity to a dish or dressing.

Toasted Pumpkin Seeds
I buy hulled pumpkin seeds and toast them in the oven with a little olive oil spray and salt. They bring a satisfying crunch and earthy flavor to salads. They’re great by the handful too.

quinoa Quinoa
I like the texture of quinoa. It works great as a base for a Buddha bowl or a salad and it has a higher protein-to-carb ratio than rice.

With these ingredients, or your own favorites, you’ll be well equipped for a variety of spring culinary creations. Inspiration for combinations can come from anywhere — accidentally tasting two things together on your plate, a dish you’re served in a restaurant, something you remember from childhood, a recipe you want to vary, a cooking show, a painting — literally anything!

This is the kind of post that makes my sister crazy! She would be much happier with an actual recipe. I want her to learn to play with flavors. Mostly, I want her to have the pleasure of discovering something new, delicious, and totally unexpected that she created. I want that experience for all of us! It feels so great on so many levels!
I feel so grateful that spring offers the bounty for such opportunities over and over and over again! It truly is a time of renewal.

https://www.eatwholly.com/products/chunky-avocado/wholly-chunky-avocado-minis/

Lighten Up A Barbecue With a Green Salad

snappy salad Today’s the perfect day to lighten up a barbecue with a green salad. For 78% of us, the 4th of July includes a barbecue. Along with the burgers, brats, hot dogs, chicken, and ribs you’re sure to find plenty of potato salad, baked beans, and corn-on-the-cob. What’s often missing from the table is something light and green. While salad may not be practical for some environments, it can work well at a back yard barbecue.

On a really hot day, cold crunchy greens aren’t just healthy, they’re refreshing. Keep the salad in the refrigerator until the burgers come off the grill, then bring it out so the chill will hold while it’s served. If the refrigerator isn’t convenient, have an ice chest dedicated to salad. Salad dressing can be stashed on ice along with the sodas or beer.

Sometimes I compose a salad in advance. Other times, I serve all the toppings separately and let the guests build their own. When I compose the salad myself, I use ingredients that don’t easily wilt so that I have a longer window to serve a perky salad outdoors.

Chopped Romaine makes a good base. Carrots, celery, onions, bell peppers, radishes, cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, radicchio, grape tomatoes, sugar snap peas, corn, black beans, pico de gallo, hard cheeses, boiled eggs and steamed asparagus all hold up well.

I like to top a salad with nuts, sunflower seeds or toasted pumpkin seeds, but I wait until serving time to add these ingredients so they don’t get soggy. Crisp bacon pieces are also a great topping added at the last minute.

arugula Strawberries, blueberries, or blackberries are delicious additions to a green salad, but I usually reserve those for indoor meals rather than a barbecue. The same with arugula, butter lettuce, and chard. It’s easier to control the quality of delicate ingredients at an indoor party.

MIxing fresh herbs in a salad can brighten and heighten the flavor of the greens. While herbs are delicate, cutting or chopping them into small pieces lessens the possibility of a wilted bite. I use parsley, basil, and mint most often, but dill, chives and cilantro are also great choices.

It always seems special to add a homemade dressing. All you need for a vinaigrette is oil, vinegar, and some herbs and spices, citrus, or other fruit for flavor. Sometimes a drizzle of honey adds the perfect touch of sweetness. I usually add a bit of water as well.

There are flavored vinegars and oils available for extra pizazz, but plain old apple cider vinegar and extra virgin olive oil work just fine. Balsamic vinegar pairs well with cherry or chocolate and provides a deeper more caramel note to your dressing. Mirin is light and can be used in place of other vinegars.

A creamy dressing can be made with yogurt, mayonnaise, sour cream or buttermilk. Many creamy dressings use a combination of some of these ingredients. Here’s a creamy dressing I’ve been enjoying atop my salad this week:

Green Goodness Dressing
4 – 6 Servings

1 tbsp Penzey’s Green Goddess Dressing Base
2 tbsp water
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/3 cup real mayonnaise
1/3 cup + 1 tbsp plain Greek yogurt
1 tsp honey
1/4 tsp basil paste
1/8 tsp salt or to taste

In small jar, combine dressing base with water. Allow to sit for 5 minutes. Add vinegar, mayonnaise, yogurt, honey, and basil paste. Sprinkle with salt. Put lid on jar and shake until well mixed. Refrigerate.

When it’s hot and muggy outside, I love a cold salad to lighten up a barbecue or any other meal for that matter. Just talking about it is making me want one so I’ll be off to the kitchen now to chop some greens!