San Francisco Salad

With temperatures in the 100’s nothing beats a salad for dinner. This is another easy to prepare recipe and the outcome is well worth the half hour it takes to put it together! And here is a preview of this yummy salad:

San Francisco Salad preview!

Ingredients
Baby salad greens
2 Roma tomatoes, cut up into chunks
2 green onions, sliced
2 stalks of celery, sliced
1/2 of a cucumber – or use the whole thing if you feel like it!, cut into slices and then quarter
1 small jar of marinated mushrooms
1 small jar of marinated artichoke hearts
6 pepperocini’s, cut into fourths
1 Un Mundo Cacciatore (Hunter’s Style) salami, cut into strips
1 1/2 cups of grated mozzarella
Your favorite Italian salad dressing

How do you put this together? Here you go:

Start with mixed baby greens

Add tomatoes and green onions

Add celery, cucumber and marinated mushrooms

Add marinated artichoke hearts and pepperocini’s

Top with a really good salami

Then an excellent mozzarella

Then toss your salad, add the salad dressing and toss again, then serve!

What do you prepare for dinner on a hot day?

Read Full Post »

Hail Caesar!

It was July 4th 1924. The restaurant, located in the little town of Tijuana in Baja California, had been quite for most of the day. A sudden rush into the restaurant had the kitchen staff scrambling as they were running short of their most used items. Thinking quickly, Caesar Cardini grabbed items from the kitchen, and went out to the table of a customer who ordered a salad. He tossed together the ingredients for the dressing, added the romaine lettuce and croutons, and served it up to his customers who were thoroughly delighted with his creation. This was the birth of the Caesar Salad! It does need to be noted that there are others who claim to have created this salad as well. One being Caesar’s brother Alex, and another Giacomo Junia. Personally, I am just happy that this salad dressing was invented!

There are many variations of this salad dressing, and I wanted to share with you the one that I make. The original salad was made with raw egg which was mixed with olive oil to make a mayonnaise. Instead of doing this, I just use mayonnaise. So let’s head on into the kitchen and whip this salad dressing up!

Ingredients
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 1/2 TBS Dijon mustard
1 1/2 tsp vinegar
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 Anchovy filets mashed up into a paste
Juice from one lemon
2 TBS mayonnaise
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper

Dressing ingredients

Combine the first 6 ingredients in a bowl and mix thoroughly. Add the mayonnaise and whisk this together until you have a thick mixture. Add the olive oil a little bit at a time until you have used it all up. Taste the dressing and add the salt and pepper to taste. Simple? You bet!

I used my dressing on my salad. I used romaine lettuce, and some chopped up radish from my garden. I topped this with leftovers from the rosemary lemon chicken. Then I topped this with shredded Parmesan.

Salad is ready for the dressing

Then I drizzle on the dressing a bit at a time to ensure that I do not saturate the salad with dressing.

Serve it up!

Don’t forget the croutons! I did, but this still tasted great!

Read Full Post »

Barb’s Pasta Salad

As we move into the warmer weather, salads become part of our diet.  There is nothing like a cold salad with something hot off the barbecue!  Today we will be putting up a fencing around the vegetable garden to keep Fox Face from getting in to the berries, and then I will be taking the cover off the barbecue to cook up some Louisiana Hot Links and to go with it, I made a pasta salad!

Ingredients
2 cups pasta
2 stalks of celery
2 spring onion
5 radishes
3 oz. can of black olives sliced
5 radishes
3 clusters of broccoli
1 cup Parmesan cheese
Newman’s family style Italian salad dressing
Mayonnaise
Salt and pepper to taste

One of the secrets to a good pasta salad, or a potato salad is to make it the night before.

To make the perfect pasta: Add water to a pot and a couple of dashes of salt and set to boil. When the water boils, add the pasta and stir this for 3 minutes. After three minutes, turn off the heat, cover the pot and let it sit for 10 minutes. When the timer goes off, check your pasta. It should be perfectly done! Drain and rinse with cold water.

Vegetables for salad

While the pasta is sitting, start to chop up the vegetables. Add them to a mixing bowl. For the broccoli, cut this up into small pieces leaving some of the flowerets intact. Mix this together. Then add the pasta and combine. Next add the cheese and salad dressing.

Pasta mixed with vegetables and parma

I add just enough salad dressing to coat the mixture. Anything more will and you will end up with a soupy mess. At this point, cover the salad and let this sit overnight in the refrigerator.

The following morning add the mayonnaise. I put in a spoonful at a time. This ensures an even coverage of the mayonnaise to the ingredients. Then taste the salad before adding salt and pepper, and add a bit at a time, tasting as you go so that you do not over salt or pepper the salad.

Pasta salad is ready!

Easy and very yummy!

Read Full Post »