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Tag: Salad

21
Jul
2017

Cattle Country Salad for Cowboy Day

categories: 1970's food, Cook A Long, Cowboy Day, Meat, Salad, Salads For All Season

Go west they said. I took their advice and not only went west but a whole heap north as well to end up in the UK for this year’s Cowboy Day. I will be spending the actual day in the most haunted town in Britain! Maybe a ghost cowboy just like this one will appear on the day….

Spooky huh?

Something that is not at all spooky is the Cattle Country Beef Salad Salad l made to celebrate Cowboy day. But first, this is the first time I am writing, editing, and posting entirely via phone so let’s put any weirdness in this post, beyond the regular weirdness down to that and I will re-edit, format as required once I get home!

We don’t have cowboys in Australia. We have cattlemen. Who live in cattle country which is where this salad comes from. Actually, it comes from Rosemary Mayne-Wilson’s Salads for All Seasons but you know what I mean.

So what all goes into a Cattle Country Beef Salad?

Beef of course. I suspect originally this would have been leftovers from the Sunday roast but I just bought from slices of roast beef from the supermarket.
Then there’s apples. Because we all know one a day keeps the doctor away and you don’t want to get sick while you’re out riding the range.
There’s celery because…I dunno. What use is celery? I like the taste of it but….oh that’s right. Celery keeps the cattlemen skinny. Because no one likes a tubby cowboy. Specially the horses they ride around on all day.
Spring onions. To put a spring in their step.

That was about it for the original ingredients. I also added some mixed leaves because I had to use them before I left for the UK the following morning. I also added some chunks of a lovely vintage cheddar. Which also had to be used but cheese also makes anything taste better and this was no exception.

RMW suggests using a French dressing for this. Make it really punchy by being HEAVY on the mustard. The flavours in here are strong enough to deal with it.

This was yummy!!!! Quick simple delicious. That’s an all round winner for me!

Here’s the original recipe:

Okay, I’m trying to keep this short and sweet because posting off the phone is doing my head in.

Many thanks to Greg from Recipes for Rebels for inviting me to participate in the cookalong again this year. It is always a so much fun to be a part of something like this. Plus, he”s one of the most awesome people on the internet so should just be thanked in general

I dont have my regular sign off this week but just look what can happen when bloggers get together. For an explanation of why Battenberg Belle, Jenny Hammerton and I are wearing cowboy hats and clutching a meat cleaver, a melon baller and a hammer respectively, you’ll need to head over to Silver Screen Suppers but in the meantime, have a great Cowboy Day everyone!

15
Jul
2016

Cowboys, Caviar, Casseroles and Cocktails

categories: Cheese, Chilli, Chocolate, Cocktail, Corn, Eggs, Kahlua, Salad, Vodka

Dear readers

I had such high hopes for this post. Then they were totally dashed by a twist of fate that…well…I guess if I’d seen it coming it wouldn’t be a twist would it? But I’m jumping ahead of myself. First, I was totally delighted when Greg from Recipes4Rebels asked if I would join in a cookalong for Cowboy Day! This event occurs on the fourth Saturday of July each year and is celebrated all over the world!

Obviously, this is not the fourth Saturday in July, however, as I will be sunning myself on the beach at Sanur in Bali that day, with Greg’s blessing I am posting my ventures into Cowboy Cookin’ early! And it’s a three course meal y’all. (Because 1 that’s how cowboy’s talk and 2 cocktails are a course aren’t they? This one is almost a meal! But again, getting ahead of myself!)

So now onto my foiled grand plans. My idea was that I would find a cocktail called a Bali Cowboy – possibly a more tropical version of this cowboy cocktail and I would make it for my post and then, on the day itself, I would tweet another picture of me in Bali with with my Bali Cowboy and it would in a glass as big as my head and it would be blue and loaded with umbrellas and pineapple wedges and all the other tropical cocktail paraphenalia.

A quick google soon showed me that there is such a thing as a Bali Cowboy. It is NOT a cocktail. Turns out that a Bali Cowboy is a male prostitute who hangs around Kuta Beach willing to sell his services to any rich (ie all) Western women who care to pay for them. So, whilst I’m not 100% ruling out a photo of me with a Bali Cowboy on Cowboy Day, the likelihood of it happening has dropped significantly!

So, new ideas had to be found. Starting with some caviar. Because we’re classy cowboys! It’s Cowboy Caviar of courseWhere has this salad / dip been all my life? If this is what cowboys eat, then I want to be a cowboy. It’s all kinds of beans and corn and tomatoes and avocado . Truly delicious! I loved this!

So, for the second course, I went straight to the top. And by that I mean Mr John Wayne himself.

Turns out The Duke and I share a love of eggs, cheese and chillies. Now, just one thing about the John Wayne casserole…. To my mind, when you combine egg yolks to beaten egg whites with other stuff, in this instance cheese and chilli and you them put that in an oven and cook until it’s all puffed up and golden, that’s not so much a casserole as a soufflé.

You be the judge:

I’ll sit quietly over here and let my case speak for itself.

By the way, cooking this for an hour would be way too much. You are seeing about 35 minutes and I think it was over. I would cook this…half an hour max. Also, the tomato didn’t do much. I would actually leave it out and cook this for 20 minutes total.

The ~~soufflé~~ casserole was good but I think I was so blown away by the Cowboy Caviar that it kind of paled by comparison. I will definitely make it again though!

And now for my grand Cowboy finale, I am turning to to person who started all of this, yep, Greg. This cocktail /dessert is A-MAZING! So, so good. Cowboys and cowgirls, can I present, the Giant Martini!

There is no other word for this but absolutely divine! The giant in the Giant Martini doesn’t refer t to it’s size (but you could scale it up very easily) but to the fact that it was created on the set of Giant by Liz Taylor and Rock Hudson.

Git along little doggie, this cocktail is all mine!

And you too!

Ah yes, Greg’s site on the PC, a cocktail in front of me and The A-Z of Cooking behind it. Just a regular day round these parts!

Many, many thanks to Greg, this was so much fun! Thank you so much for including me! I always say this but you hear so much about the internet being a a horrible vicious place, I am always delighted and totally honoured to make new friends, like Greg, on here.

Ok, I’ve gotta go, 5:30am start tomorrow! But I’m loving and leaving you with some some super rhinestone cowboy singing!

Find out all about the Cowboy Day Cook A Long here. Hopefully my attempts will inspire you to bigger and better things on the day!

The recipe for Cowboy Caviar I used came from Cookie and Kate.

The Giant Martini recipe is here.

Kiss me and smile for me, I’ll be back here in a couple of weeks but if you can’t smile without me, I’ll be tweeting and instagramming from Bali throughout.

Loving you, leaving you, now!

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06
Sep
2015

Oeufs A La Cantalienne & Greens with Horseradish Dressing

categories: Eggs, France, Salad, Salad Dressing

What do you do when, you are about 30 seconds away from your front door and realise that you have left two essential ingredients for your planned dinner in the fridge at work?

First, swear.

A lot.

Then drum up an emergency supper of Oeufs a La Cantilienne and serve that with a Salad of Bitter Greens with Horseradish Dressing!

Happy days!

How eight hours can change you. I started the day off being super organised! For dinner, I had planned to celebrate Meatless Monday by making the cauliflower and chickpea “meat” balls from the Meatball book which is our latest selection from the Tasty Reads book club. I’d read the recipe that morning and realised I was short a few ingredients – namely basil and parsley for the green sauce which was going to accompany the meatballs.

I had tasted this green sauce on a visit to the Meatball and Wine Bar and it is SENSATIONAL. As far as I was concerned, no green sauce, no non-meatballs. You can kind of see the sauce in this picture. The man in the street looks pretty taken by them too!

But I digress. We’ll get to the meatball book in due course. Today is all about the eggs. And the cheese and the horseradish dressing.

Anyway, back to my super-organised morning, I was early that day so I stopped in at the supermarket beside the station and bought my herbs. And stored them in the work fridge for the day.

Where they stayed.

What to do? I wasn’t going back to get them. So, another dinner needed to be pulled out of the ingredients I had in the fridge and the pantry.

Now I ‘m going to let you in on a secret. I actually had the ingredients for a very posh and trés français version of the Oeufs a La Cantalienne. Because I plan my food within an inch of my life it was on my menu plan for later in the week. But you could also make a perfectly delicious version of this from ingredients you are likely to have in your fridge. It’s a great emergency meal!

So what are Oeufs a La Cantalienne? It’s a French Baked Cheesy Eggs. The version I was going to make had duck eggs, comté cheese and créme fraiche. But it would be equally delish with normal eggs, cheddar or swiss (gruyere) cheese and cream or sour cream. Of course the flavour will be slightly different with each variation but hey, it will all be good!!!

What’s more, these will be on the table in about 20 minutes. Just enough time for you to pour yourself a glass of vino and make your Bitter Greens Salad with Horseradish Dressing.

And you know. Eggs, cheese and cream. That’s never going to be bad. About 12 minutes in the oven is about perfect. I got a bit distracted by ~~a reality cooking show on the telly~~ something really important and end up cooking mine for about a quarter of an hour but in another plus, this recipe is pretty forgiving!

The bitter green salad with horseradish salad is a perfect accompaniment to this. I used rocket (arugula), kale, spinach and radicchio in mine but whatever greens you have in your fridge will be fine. This is not a meal to be too precious about!

The horseradish dressing is….OMG…just make it. Make it now!!! So good. So, so good. I have made this salad, or versions of it about a million times since – with eggs, avocado, steamed beans and broccoli, grilled salmon…and everytime it has been amazing. It’s my new favourite thing.

And, in a reversal of the initial dilemma of leaving things at work, there was a morning when when I got to work and realised I had left the horseradish dressing for my salad in the fridge at home. Well, there was no eating the salad without the dressing, I kept it in the fridge, bought my lunch and brought the dressing in the next day! That’s how good this dressing is. If it wasn’t totally unseemly, I would be licking it off the spoon. (I totally did that when no one was looking).

Oh, and when I finally made the non-meatballs? Total let down. The green sauce was pretty good but the balls were like the worst falafel I’ve ever eaten.

I should have just made more eggs!

Oeufs A La Cantalienne And Bitter Greens With Horseradish Dressing

Print Recipe

A great emergency supper. The Oeufs A La Cantalienne can be made as fancy or as simple as you like and the salad has quickly become a firm favourite!

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

For the Oeufs A La Cantalienne

2 duck eggs //eggs
30g Comté cheese//sharp cheddar//gruyere
1 tbsp crème fraiche //sour cream //cream
pinch of nutmeg (optional)
For the Bitter Greens Salad
2 tbsp mixed toasted seeds – I used pepitas, sunflower seeds and flax seeds
2 cups bitter greens – I used rocket (arugula), kale, spinach and radicchio
1/2 red onion thinly sliced

For the Dressing

3 tbsp creme fraiche
2 tbsp fresh grated horseradish or 1 tbsp prepared horseradish
1 tbsp champagne or white wine vinegar

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

For the Ouefs A La Cantalienne

Preheat oven to 220°C.
Grate the cheese and scatter half over the base of a buttered individual baking dish.
Separate the eggs, keeping yolks intact.
Whisk whites to soft peaks. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.
Fold in the remaining cheese.
Pour mixture into the baking dishes and make an indentation in the middle of mixture.
Place an egg yolk in each indentation.
Add a 1/2 tbsp of crème fraiche by the side of each yolk.
Bake for 10 minutes or until golden and set.

For the Salad

Toss the greens and onion together.
Whisk the crème fraiche, horseradish and vinegar together until smooth.
Just before serving, toss through the greens and onion.
Top with the toasted seeds.

Notes

The dressing will make much more than you need for one salad. You’ll want to use the extra on everything you eat over the next week!
If you are making this for more than 2 people you can cook it in one large baking dish, you might just have to adjust the cooking time to be a bit longer.

Nutrition

Serving Size: 2

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01
May
2015

Rocking The Casbah

categories: Artichokes, Chickpeas, Cookbook Guru, Eggs, Morocco, Olives, Pastry, Potato, Salad, Tuna

The selection for March and April over at The Cookbook Guru was The Food Of Morocco by Paula Wolfert which really fits in with my explorations into Middle Eastern Food via Persiana and MENA.

First, the book is ENORMOUS!!!! If you dropped this on your foot, you would be in serious danger of breaking a toe. Or two. It was really quite difficult to choose the recipes to try, there were so many and so many that sounded delicious.

Second, it is beautiful – not just the recipes, the photography, the writing, everything about it is lovely. I would love to have this in my own collection as it is so well curated and contains so much of interest but sadly, it is quite expensive so, at the moment is just on the wishlist!

I have been sick for nearly a week now so I have left my run here a little late. Thankfully the anti-biotics have started to kick in and hopefully I can get this post out whilst it is still April somewhere in the world.

I have made four things from this book and whilst I would have loved to have a post for each, for the sake of brevity, I’m putting them all together so I can get something out before Christmas!!! I have also not included any recipes as that would have taken even more time but, if you like the look of anything let me know and I can send ’em through!

THE FOOD OF MOROCCO // BRIK WITH TUNA, CAPERS AND EGGS

I was not familiar with the brik, (pronounced breek) which is a Moroccan snack consisting of a very thin pastry called warqa wrapped around various fillings, one of which is this delicious but to me, uncommon, combination of tuna and egg.

Not surprisingly there was no warqa pastry at the local supermarket and because I was running so late on this, I could not shop for it so I used the much more readily available filo pastry for my briks. You can apparently also use spring roll wrappers, or if really brave, make your own warqa pastry.

So first up you saute up some onions, then add your tuna, capers, parsley and some parmesan cheese. And yup, this mix just on it’s own tastes AMAZING. I’m surprised there was any left to make the briks. Personally, I blame the hosts of reality tv cooking shows for constantly telling people to taste their food during cooking!

Then you make place the tuna mix on the pastry but make a little hole to hold the eggs. I don’t think it matters if it spills over a little like mine did.

Then you quickly seal this up and drop it into some hot oil to fry up – the idea being you want your pastry crispy and your egg still a little bit runny.

So, did I cook the perfect runny egg brik?

Sadly, no. My egg was cooked through. 🙁

This was not all bad though, it certainly made it easier to take the remainder for lunch the next day. And OMG, so tasty. I’ll definitely be trying this again and trying to nail that runny egg.

THE FOOD OF MOROCCO //POTATO TAGINE WITH OLIVES AND HARISSA

This tasted as good as it looks. And one for my vegan friends!!! The colours are so beautiful and the flavours blend together beautifully!

THE FOOD OF MOROCCO // THE BIRD THAT FLEW AWAY

This a lovely chickpea dish with a delightful name. Paula Wolfert explains that is it a “plat de pauvre” (a dish for the poor) that is made when you can’t afford to buy a chicken. It’s so good I think I would eat it regardless of whether I had a chicken or not!

THE FOOD OF MOROCCO INSPIRED // ARTICHOKE SALAD WITH ORANGE, LEAFY GREENS AND DATES.

A Spanish restaurant I am very fond of does a salad with oranges, artichokes and dates which is To. Die. For. In order to recreate it’s flavour, I used Paula Wolfert’s Orange, Leafy Green and Date Salad and added artichokes and some lemon and olive oil in the dressing. I think it worked really well and I loved the hint of orange flower water. It was not exactly my restaurant salad but it was pretty close. And look at how pretty it is!

Artichoke, Orange, Leafy Green and Date Salad

This was an amazing book and I am so glad that The Cookbook Guru drew it to my attention. The next few months we will be cooking from a book by a true legend of Australian Cooking, Margaret Fulton. I can’t wait. And I promise to be a bit more timely!

Have a great week!

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Moroccan Stewed White Beans Recipe – Vegetarian

12
Feb
2015

Favourite Tomato Salad

categories: 1970's recipes, Blue Cheese, Salad, Salad Dressing, Sour Cream, Tomatoes

As we approach the day of ~~sickening oversentimentality~~ love, it seems fitting to devote a post to the love apple aka the tomato. And just to further add to my bah humbug disdain of the day, I thought I would share another one of my dating disasters from the good old days when I was single (and dinosaurs ruled the Earth). The first which I posted last Valentine’s day can be found here.

But first, tomatoes…..have to be one of my favorite foods. And as much as I love the fancy stuff – if you give me two slices of white bread, spread liberally with butter, some slices of tomato, preferably fresh from the garden some salt and pepper….right there you have a little bit of my idea of heaven.

And speaking of tomato heaven, this salad is one of the best things I have ever eaten. And it’s not just my favourite tomato salad, it is also a mash up of Rosemary Mayne Wilson’s Favourite Tomato Salad and her Superb Blue Cheese Dressing.

Just look at this and tell me it’s not one of the prettiest things you have ever seen? And just to gild that lily? The dressing contains a hefty dose of blue cheese. And a liberal splash of sherry for those of you who, much like myself, like to have a little bit o’ booze with….well pretty much anything.

So tasty and full of yummy deliciousness. But as we celebrate the love apple, let’s also take a step back into my dark, deep dating history for another disaster story.

So, a few years ago, I was dating a someone who…seemed pretty normal. Until.

STRIKE ONE

Best Tomato Salad2 — Favourite Tomato Salad2

We were due to meet my mum and her partner for dinner one night. And we had to park a little bit away from the restaurant. As we started walking through the car park, he went to spit on the ground.

Which, is pretty disgusting in, and of, itself. But then came

STRIKE TWO.

So. He goes to spit on the ground.

Only thing is…he misses.

Misses the ground that is How you ask? How can he miss the ground? Do you live in a land of anti-gravity?

No, He missed the ground because he spat all over his own shoe.

Feel free to insert massive eyeroll at will.

Bad enough, you’re going to spit on the ground. That’s uncouth. Do you need to add uncoordinated onto that as well?

So now we’re half way across the car park. He has a big gob of spit on his right shoe. Which needs to be gotten rid of pronto because we’re about to meet my parents.

And here comes

STRIKE THREE

He chose to get rid of that big gob of spit by lifting up his right leg and wiping it on the back of his jeans on his left leg.

Appalling, I know. But you haven’t even heard the worst.

Because even though I know that technically there’s no such thing as a

STRIKE FOUR

The worst thing?

Let’s just suppose I had accidentally spat on my own foot…it would never happen but you know…in the realms of absolute fantasy….

I would have hopped about shrieking like a banshee for….I don’t know, at least a good ten minutes…

“OMG, I’ve spat on my own shoe…what am I going to do? I need to get it off, how am I going to get it off…where’s the nearest shoe shop? I need to buy new shoes…” etc.

HE did not even break stride. It was like spit, shoe, wipe…all in one fluid motion. Which only meant one thing….

It wasn’t the first time he had done it.

He was a serial spitter and misser.

That relationship didn’t last the carpark….

This tomato salad should become an immediate part of your summer repertoire. It’s so damn good!!!

Happy Valentine’s Day!!!! Hope it’s fabulous whatever you do!

[yumprint-recipe id=’22’]

Tag: Salad

Oeufs A La Cantalienne And Bitter Greens With Horseradish Dressing

Ingredients

For the Oeufs A La Cantalienne

For the Dressing

Instructions

For the Ouefs A La Cantalienne

For the Salad

Notes

Nutrition

THE FOOD OF MOROCCO // BRIK WITH TUNA, CAPERS AND EGGS

THE FOOD OF MOROCCO //POTATO TAGINE WITH OLIVES AND HARISSA

THE FOOD OF MOROCCO // THE BIRD THAT FLEW AWAY

THE FOOD OF MOROCCO INSPIRED // ARTICHOKE SALAD WITH ORANGE, LEAFY GREENS AND DATES.

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STRIKE ONE

STRIKE TWO.

STRIKE THREE

STRIKE FOUR