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Monday, June 14, 2010

101 salads for summer


Last summer Mark Bittman published 101 salad recipes in his column in the New York Times. He says that the majority of them take less than 20 mins to prepare.

I need to do something to offset my fascination with baking all the recipes in a bread cookbooks! The Mellow Bakers are baking their way through the 84 recipes in Jeffrey Hamelman's book, Bread. The Modern Bakers are baking their way through Nick Malgieri's The Modern Bakers.

Bittman's recipes are indeed minimalist. A list of ingredients, no measurements. They plant the idea for a delicious salad. I've made quite a few of them, but this summer I am going to focus on seeing how many I can try.

Tonight's salad. Chickpeas, shredded carrots, celery and coconut with a dressing of lemon, olive oil, cilantro and curry powder.

I really enjoy cilantro, however I can remember the first time I tried it. We were out on a fancy date night. With two boys, fifteen months apart, we didn't do that much. We had been transferred to Tucson, AZ. Our first experience with Southwestern cuisine. Tom ordered some soup and had me taste it. We were both pretty certain that the chef had dumped soap in to the soup. Cilantro aldehydes are similar to aldehydes found in soaps and lotions. Some people can't stand the flavor. The New York Times has an interesting article on why people don't like it.

Our tastes have matured, we really enjoy cilantro. We try to grow it in the backyard, before the heat gets to it.

4 comments:

  1. Interesting article. It's nice to know that I'm amongst the likes of Julia Child when it comes to my hatred of cilantro....and that it's not my fault!..LOL

    I always just sub in parsley whenever I see a recipe with cilantro and it usually does the trick.

    I like this salad recipe. I'm fairly new to chick peas and since I know that they're good for me I'm always looking for recipes that incorporate them.

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  2. Thanks for the link to the 101 salads article! I bookmarked it, as we're always looking for new and creative ways to get in those veggies (especially to off-set all of the bread!). My two kiddos are 15 months apart, too . . . we're still in the don't-get-out-much phase. =)

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  3. Mags, I really like it now. Funny how your taste changes. We are always looking for new salad recipes.

    Abby, Mine are 22 and 21, and I have a 16 year old. We are free to go out whenever, but I miss the little guys.

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  4. Fantastic! Thanks for sharing the link too. I'm always looking for ways to jazz up salads!

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