Easy Summer Salad - Peaches, Almonds and Brown Rice

Inspired by the recent Mark Bittman article 101 Simple Salads for the Season, today I invented a summer salad of my own. While I can't remember every combination in Bittman's long list, I'm pretty sure that this combination is original.

Like most experimental successes, this one sprang from a combination of desperation and what meager ingredients I had in the fridge.

Desperation: What to give a two year old for lunch? I know it is a healthy meal, but as a responsible parent, I don't think I should give my son whole wheat penne mixed with chopped tomato and drizzled with olive oil for the 100th time in a row. I'll do rice instead. Now I just need to add something fresh.

What's in the fridge? Peaches from the farmer's market. Hmmm, peaches and rice sound a little weird, but here we go!

By the way, this salad is so easy to make, that I'd recommend waiting to prep the fruit and vegetables until after the rice has cooked. From that point, it should take about 10 minutes.

Peach, Almond and Brown Basmati Rice Salad

• 1 c. brown basmati rice
• 2 c. + 2 Tbs. water
• handful beet greens or other dark greens, washed and thinly sliced
  
• 2 spring onions or scallions, washed and thinly sliced
  
• handful almonds, toasted in a pan on low heat for a few minutes, then coarsely chopped
  
• 2 peaches, diced
  
• salt, pepper, white wine vinegar and olive oil, to taste
  

Bring water to a boil in a small saucepan, add the rice, then cover and reduce the heat to low. Cook for 45 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the rice stand, covered, while you prepare the fruit and vegetables.

Put the sliced greens and onions into the rice pan and re-cover for a few minutes so they wilt.

Add the peaches and almonds to the rice. Drizzle with vinegar and olive oil to taste, then check for salt and pepper.

Vegan Spring Veggie Potstickers

This month's Daring Cooks' challenge was from Jen of use real butter to make Chinese Dumplings from scratch.

I won't go into the ins and outs of how to make the dough, as there is a great blog post here, and it was pretty straightforward. Just mix flour and water, rest, knead, press into balls, and then roll into thin circles. Fill, press edges together, fry in a pan to make potstickers or boil in water. That's it! And it all worked seamlessly. Actually, quite an easy recipe.

So where was the challenge? Well, the recipe allowed you to get quite creative with the filling. The two provided filling recipes were for pork and shrimp filling. Given that I have recently been trying out not eating meat (I haven't had meat in over a month now), I realized that I needed to get a little creative with the filling.

Jen suggested that a good vegetarian filling would be easy to make but gave no recipe, just saying that the veggies would need to be of uniform shape and stick together.

So... I modified the pork recipe by trying to roughly substitute the same amount of stir-fryable vegetables.

Hang on - last minute edit... I got spanked for not giving a shout out to the peeps that consulted, tasted, rolled filled, and ate - Ciaran the Rhymenocerous and Jen the Hiphopopotamus.

Vegan Spring Veggie Potsticker Filling

• 3 carrots, grated
• 3 medium turnips, grated
• 1/4 c. ginger, minced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 2 spring onions, minced
• 6 leaves mustard greens, other strong green, or cabbage, minced
• large handful cilantro, minced
• 3 Tbs. soy sauce
• 2 Tbs. sesame oil
• 1 Tbs. wine rice vinegar
• 2 Tbs. all-purpose flour
  

Create dumpling dough according to the following recipe, let rest. Create the filling by mixing together all ingredients listed above. When making the dumplings, use a spoon to scoop filling, pressing filling against side of bowl to drain excess liquid. After filling all the dumplings, you'll have a lot of extra liquid. Use this to create a dipping sauce by adding a few drops of mustard and a little chili paste or cayenne pepper.

How Many Cookbooks is Too Many?

I believe there comes a time in life when every adult begins to question how much stuff is really necessary for leading a happy life. Obviously you need basic food and shelter, and I'm fortunate enough to have that. I remember a time when that was all I thought I needed. Then you graduate college, get a job, start getting paychecks, and start buying stuff. Car, nicer clothes, house, Kichen Aide mixer (ahhh!). And that's great. But then you hit a point in your life when you start to think about the bigger picture (college education for your son, retirement, paying off your house, traveling, starting your fantasy bakery/vegetarian catering business), and all of the material things seem, well, immaterial. And that's where my family is.

Which is great. Life seems simpler. We're saving money, thinking about the future. And I don't miss the things that used to seem so essential.

Except for one thing - cookbooks. I did pretty well for a while. I think I went almost a year without buying a new one. But recently I'm having a bit of a relapse. For Mother's Day, my husband bought me one I'd been resisting for months (Alice Water's Chez Panisse Vegetables). I figured I probably deserved a little Mother's Day present to myself, so I also bought Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian the same day (awesome). I thought that had done it.

Every time I think I've got enough books, the worst happens, I go to someones house and just happen to see a great looking book lying around in their kitchen. This book is just a little different, has something I haven't quite seen before, and fills me with a yearning that I thought I was over.

How bad is the problem? I've got 39 cookbooks total.

• Purchased: 18. Ok, maybe 7 of these don't count. They are 7 of a 12 volume Woman's Day series published in 1966 (missing volumes 1, 6, 7, 10, and 11).
• Gifts: 15. My family is well aware of, and exploits, my addiction.
• Borrowed: 2
• Hand me Downs: 2
• No Idea: 1
• Loaned out: 1 (I never forget)

Which are my favorites? These are books that make me well up with emotion. If I could only take you by the shoulders, look you in the eye, and passionately tell you about the change in my life brought about by these books. Ahhh, but instead, a list will have to do, in chronological order of impact on my life (anyone seen High Fidelity? )

• The Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver
• Happy Days with the Naked Chef (my sister waited in line to get this signed by Jamie for me)
• The Joy of Cooking, Marion Rombauer Becker, Ethan Rombauer, Irma S. Rombauer
• The Omnivore's Dilemma (not a cookbook, but nonetheless a life changing book about food), Michael Pollan
• The Art of Simple Food, Alice Waters
• The Ballymaloe Cookery Course, Darina Allen
• How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, Mark Bittman

Am I done? I should be. But there are just a few more. I'm sure that once I get these six, I'll definitely, absolutely, certainly be done.

• Bread, Jeffrey Hamelman (Could it take my bread to the next level?)
• Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Julia Child, Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle (Classic, I'm reading My Life in France, so inspiring)
• The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook, Nancy Harmon Jenkins (the casually placed book that sucked me in today)
• The New Moosewood Cookbook, Mollie Katzen (the classic vegetarian cookbook)
• Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, Deborah Madison (strongly recommended from two respected sources!)
• The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, Judy Rodgers (I simply have to know what all the fuss is about)

Eating Well (and Vegetarian?) in India (Part II)

As promised in my last post, I'd like to do a roundup of my favorite dishes from my recent trip to Pune, in Maharashtra, India.

First and foremost, the sheer selection of vegetarian dishes was incredible. As I've said before, I've struggled with the question of whether to go veg for quite a while, and I pretty much don't eat meat in public anymore unless I know exactly how it was raised. But it is not very easy to eat well and avoid meat here. In recent years, I had thought that eating vegetarian had become easy, especially in Boulder, until I started actually trying to do it. Unless you have an infinite tolerance for cheese quesadillas and iceberg lettuce salads, there isn't much to offer in restaurants. And eating in my house isn't any better. I run out of ideas after about 2 meat free meals per week.

In Pune, it seemed to me that you could eat vegetarian every day for a year and try a different vegetable based dish every day. You definitely don't feel like you're missing out.

A few of my favorites (please forgive my lack of proper names) -

Dal - a soup of yellow lentils that seems to be eaten with most meals. It is significantly better than dal that you get in restaurants here. I am on record as hating lentil soup, and I really liked this.

Okra - a dish of sliced okra, rubbed in some spice and either sauteed or deep fried (I couldn't tell) was juicy, crispy, spicy, sweet and pungent all at once.

Paneer - I tried lots of different curries with paneer (a dry, pressed cottage cheese that has a similar texture to firm tofu). My absolute favorite was one made with coconut milk, spices and almonds. I've never had almonds in a curry before, and now I'm wondering why.

A few observations about grains... given my love of whole wheat bread, I was pleasantly surprised to find that whole wheat flat breads (called roti, I think) were served with all the meals I had. My hotel served breakfast of a flat whole wheat bread, almost like a thicker tortilla, stuffed with a filling which changed each day, from spinach to potato to cauliflower. Tasty, healthy and filling ... this is how I like to start my day.

Not so with the rice though. I didn't come across any brown rice, although white rice was served with every meal.

Finally, after my (attempt at humorous) rant last time about there being no desserts in India, I'll take that back and say that I did have some great desserts, although I was sorely missing a good flaky pastry.

Those doughy balls swimming in sugar syrup that you get in every Indian lunch buffet here? I definitely did not expect to ever like these. They actually have a name (Galub Jamun) and they are actually really, really good. Kind of like a denser, more fragrant version of tiramisu without the marscapone or alcohol.

And my favorite dessert was homemade - a cross between rice pudding, with some spices and grated carrot mixed in. It was delicate and refreshing.

I came away feeling inspired to stray from my typical European cooking style (Italian in summer, Irish in winter!) to experiment with more vegetable-centric cuisines. Any cookbook recommendations out there??