an open cupboard

Using the edible roses I bought at Berkeley Bowl, I made a sweet topping/compote that complements vanilla ice cream or yogurt. I’ve always been intrigued by the slightly floral taste of litchi, which is accentuated here by the rose petals and rounded out by the anise flavor of fennel. These were all combined in a base of light honey syrup. You can play around with the texture by adding less water for a heavier syrup. A and I ate this atop vanilla goat’s milk ice cream. Yum.

fennel, litchi, and rose petal topping

1 TBS honey
3 TBS water (plus 1 TBS if necessary)
1/4 small fennel, cored and diced
3 litchi nuts, peeled, stone removed, and diced
4 small edible roses, petals only
~1 tsp fine lemon zest

• In a small pot, bring the water and honey to the boil. Let the water evaporate somewhat so that you have a light syrup, and turn down the flame to medium.
• Add the fennel and simmer until the fennel softens. If the syrup doesn’t cover the fennel, add an additional tablespoon of water. Simmer uncovered to let some of the water evaporate if the syrup looks too watery.
• Add the diced litchi and stir. Turn off the heat.
• Toss in the rose petals and grate in the lemon zest.
• Toss, place in a cool, non-heat condusive container, and chill in the refrigerator.

Serves 2 over ice cream or yogurt.

This week I did my grocery shopping at Berkeley Bowl, a local supermarket specializing in high quality, local foods and produce. Parking at Berkeley Bowl is akin to scoring tickets to the Stones and travelling back in time to watch them perform before Mick Jagger had grandkids and Keith Richards started falling out of palm trees. OK, so I’m exaggerating a little, but you do need a lot of patience as Berkeley Bowl is a very popular place to shop.

Despite the maddening crowds, I like going to Berkeley Bowl every so often to peruse their enormous produce section. They tend to carry a variety of fruit and veg that you’d often find only at ethnic markets, such as Armenian cucumbers and a pretty good variety of Chinese greens. Whenever I go, I try to buy at least one vegetable or fruit that I’ve never tried before, even if I have no idea what it is or how to prepare it. Sometimes a fellow shopper or an employee will offer advice as to traditional methods of preparation.

The photo at the top of this post illustrates most of the unusual vegetables I bought this week. They include, from left to right:

• Tindora cucumbers—These are related to the ordinary cucumber, with a sort of cucumber-zucchini flavor. You’re supposed to cook them before eating. Their flesh looks like that of a tiny cucumber, sort of opaque white. If they’re red on the inside, they’re overripe and should be discarded. Tindora cucumbers are native to Indian cuisine, and are often cooked in curries.
• Edible roses—These miniature roses were just too cute not to buy. You can use them in salads, or as a garnish. I turned them into dessert. Stay tuned for the recipe later this week.
• Sea beans/sea pickle—These are thin, green plants that look like tiny cacti and taste like the sea. Good for salads.
• Yin choy—Chinese spinach. I was won over by the lovely purple-green hue of this vegetable. I’m always curious about the myriad Chinese greens I find at Berkeley Bowl and Chinese markets, but I don’t often know what to do with them. Bok choy, tatsoi, and choy sum are fairly well known items on Chinese restaurant menus, but all those other greens are rather mysterious to those who are otherwise uninitiated in the endless splendor of traditional Chinese cuisines. I often try to buy a bunch of unknown greens and figure out what to do with them later. They look so pretty and succulent on the shelf, there’s no way I couldn’t buy some.
• Nagaimo—Japanese mountain yam. A Berkeley Bowl employee told me this vegetable is eaten raw in Mexico, sliced and seasoned with a little salt and fresh lemon juice. “Like jicama,” he said. This is a peculiar looking vegetable, sort of radish-like but with rough little brown “hairs” on its skin.
• Breadfruit—In the photo below, you’ll see the breadfruit I found at the exotic fruit section. I had no idea how to choose one, so I picked one up and smelled the stem. It smelled faintly of bananas. Cutting it open at home, I realized it was underripe. A Google search informed me that this is the fruit’s ideal state. In Africa, breadfruit is roasted whole in a fire and eaten with butter and salt, like potatoes. It might also be simmered in coconut milk by itself or with pieces of smoked pork.

Here’s how I prepared the breadfruit:

I roasted the breadfruit halves in the oven at 375° F until they were lightly golden. I then separated the flesh from the skin, which I chopped into large, bite-sized pieces. The breadfruit chunks went into a small pot, were covered with coconut milk (about 3/4 of a can), and simmered until the coconut milk boiled.

Seasoned with salt and pepper, breadfruit in coconut milk is a satisfying, rich side dish. The breadfruit is starchy, like potatoes, but with a firmer flesh. Its flavor is mild and slightly sweet, and which the coconut milk complements nicely.

It’s too damn hot! The weather around here has been ridiculously hot and humid, although I hear it’s been about 110° F in some parts of the south and east bay.
When it’s hot, many cultures tend to consume hot foods, which are somehow cooling to the body. But who wants to stand over a hot stove when you’ve got two fans running and no A/C? Just the thought of it makes me sweat. So when I bought my groceries for the week, I tried to find ingredients I could combine to make cool dinners requiring little or no cooking. Melons are good, as is just about any seasonal vegetable. Yogurt and cheese round out the meal. Barbecuing aside, heavy proteins such as chicken, beef, and pork are out (although a beef carpaccio can be refreshing).

A cool melon soup is an obvious choice. The cucumber tempers the sweetness of the melon, to which a bit of salty cheese is a fine counterpoint. Yogurt or kefir adds body and depth, while almonds add crunchy texture. Freshly ground pepper and basil olive oil provide spicy, grassy, anisey notes that pull it all together. Serve the soup with some bread and cheese, and perhaps a garden salad. Just be sure to buy green-fleshed melon so that your dinner doesn’t end up resembling primordial soup.

Seriously, it tastes better than it looks!

melon cucumber soup with yogurt and basil olive oil

1 medium melon, halved and seeded (I used cantalope, but honeydew is fine too)
1 small cucumber or about a 6 inch chunk of English hothouse cucumber
1 handful basil leaves
olive oil
kefir or yogurt
aged myzithra cheese or ricotta salata
salt and pepper to taste
raw or toasted almonds

• Scoop out the melon flesh, cut the cucumber into large chunks and place in a blender.
• Pulverize the melon and cucumber until liquid. Pour into bowls.
• Using a blender, food processor, or stick blender, pulverize the basil with the olive oil.
• Pour some kefir into each bowl of soup, about a quarter cup, or more if you like. If using yogurt, whip the yogurt until smooth and then add it to the soup.
• Crumble some myzithra cheese into each bowl, and season with freshly ground pepper. Drizzle the basil oil on top.
• Taste and correct seasoning. You probably won’t need much salt since the myzithra cheese is plenty salty. Garnish with raw or toasted almonds.

Serves 3

Clotilde recently prepared a risotto style pasta dish, meaning pasta that is cooked dry with a little oil, and then simmered in hot broth or water like risotto. The sauce is cooked along with the pasta, including vegetables, meats, and so on.

According to Clotilde’s research, the absorption method is actually the traditional Italian way of preparing pasta, as opposed to the modern boiling method. This makes a lot of sense, actually, considering that the first pastas were probably small, more like couscous than spaghetti. Smaller pasta is easier to cook in a small amount of water, and it’s certainly more economical (and ecological).

Clotilde’s pasta dish sounded so good, I thought I’d make one of my own. My first attempt included little broccoli florets and parmesan with small, oblong, shell pasta. It was nice, but the pasta took much longer to cook than I had anticipated, due to its dense shape. As a result, the broccoli was slightly overcooked, which is no fun at all.

So I tried again, this time with a thinner, less dense pasta—a little twist shape called trofie—which cooked faster. I threw in fennel matchsticks towards the end of cooking, resulting in crunchy vegetables and slightly chewy pasta with the delicate creaminess of risotto. My pastasotto melds chickpeas, fennel, lemon, and laguiole cheese in a light summer dish.

risotto style pasta with chickpeas, fennel, and lemon

1-2 TBS butter or olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
250 gr (8.8 oz) small, thin pasta (I used Rustichella’s trofie, tiny little pasta twists)
4-5 crumbled dried mint leaves, stems removed
hot water
3/4 454 gr (15 oz) can chickpeas (invest in a good organic brand, or pre-soak and cook your own)
3/4 large fennel, cored and sliced into matchsticks
zest and juice of a small lemon
olive oil
minced fennel fronds
crumbly cheese (I used Laguiole)
salt and pepper to taste

• Melt the butter or pour the olive oil in an enameled cast-iron pot or saute pan on medium heat.
• Add the garlic and cook until transluscent.
• Add the pasta and stir to coat with fat. Crumble in the mint leaves and stir.
• Pour in hot water to cover the pasta, and cover the pot.
• Let simmer while you prepare the remaining ingredients.
• Check the pasta periodically for doneness, and add more hot water if it’s still underdone and looks like it might stick.
• When the pasta is still a little chewy, add the chickpeas and stir. Cover and simmer a minute or two.
• Toss in the fennel matchsticks and stir. Season with lemon zest and lemon juice, taste as you season to make sure you don’t put in too much lemon juice.
• Turn off the flame and toss in the minced fennel fronds.
• Crumble in small bits of cheese. I used laguiole, but grated parmesan would work, and I suspect feta might as well.
• Taste and correct seasoning, drizzle with olive oil.

Serves 3

Shavuot is Judaism’s gift to dairy farmers everywhere. During Shavuot, or the Festival of Weeks, traditional holiday meals feature cheese-filled blintzes, creamy casseroles, and the ubiquitous, beloved cheesecake. The origins of this dairy-centered feasting are a little obscure. Shavuot marks the day on which the Jewish nation was given the Torah (Old Testament), according to tradition. One version of the story says that the Jews ate only dairy because they didn’t yet know how to keep kosher.

Another version compares the Jewish Torah to the sweetness of milk and honey. Shavuot also coincides with the grain harvest in Israel, and a time when the ancient Israelites would bring offerings of the seven species—wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates—to the temple in Jerusalem.

Like most Jewish holidays, Shavuot is a holiday with deep culinary roots. Jews the world over have evolved varied regional Shavuot menus over centuries. The holiday menu of American Jews tends to be something of a mishmash—French style quiche, Italian style lasagna, New York cheesecake (which in itself is probably a derivative of Italian ricotta pie with a Philly cream cheese twist). I drew on the tradition of borrowed foods for my own Shavuot dinner:

Salad with raspberry vinaigrette
Swiss chard and beet green lasagna
Beet, rhubarb, and goat cheese quiche
Ricotta cheesecake with strawberry-balsamic black pepper sauce

The cheesecake was a fun little dessert, though not as dense, creamy, or calorific as the usual New York style. Its charm lies in its simplicity–a lot of ricotta cheese with a little sugar, flour, and eggs. It’s light and mildly sweet, and the freshness of the ricotta really makes the dish. The strawberry sauce is a good complement, a little freshly ground black pepper adds a pleasantly spicey edge to the berry sweetness.

My favorite savory dish was the beet, rhubarb, and goat cheese quiche—an unusual, but very tasty combination. Rather than use the traditional sugar-rhubarb-strawberry trio, I thought I’d combine red beets with rhubarb, onions, and goat cheese. The tartness of the rhubarb brings out the sweetness of the beets, which are grounded by carmelized onions, that in turn, play off the earthy beets. The soft goat cheese adds a little extra tang. The whole thing is baked in a shortcrust with a savory custard to hold it together. I only used one stalk of rhubarb, but it might be interesting to experiment with more.

Here’s my shavuot dish for 2006 (Jewish year 5766). It’s fashionably late.

Beet rhubarb tart with goat cheese

1 shortcrust, pre-baked in a 10 inch quiche pan (Clotilde’s recipe, by way of Pascale)
3 medium onions, very thinly sliced and slowly carmelized in butter
2 bunches (about 8) small, fresh red beets, steamed, peeled, and roughly diced
1 stalk rhubarb, roughly diced and sauteed until a little liquid is released but rhubarb is still crunchy
2 eggs
1/2 c creme fraiche
salt and pepper to taste
soft goat cheese

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
• Distribute the cooled onions on the crust. Top with cooled beets.
• Arrange the cooled rhubarb evenly among the beets.
• Beat together the eggs and creme fraiche and season to taste with salt and pepper.
• Pour the egg mixture over the vegetables.
• Rip small pieces of the goat cheese and distribute evenly.
• Bake for 30 minutes, or until quiche sets.

Serves 8

Thanks to Clotilde for the quiche methodology.

I once read an article about a butcher who was famous for his burgers. His trick was to include minced berries in the ground meat. He used the fruit to enhance flavor and keep the meat moist, but it turns out that cherries provide a health benefit as well. Probably because of their high antioxidant levels, cherries slow spoilage in meat and also help prevent carcinogens from forming when cooking the burgers on high heat. Naturally, I had an “aha!” moment when I brought home cherries and ground meat from the farmer’s market this week.

You don’t really taste the cherries in the burgers, but the meat is noticeably moist and ever so slighly tart (in a good way). The burgers are nice on their own, or on a pain de mie bun with a little mustard. They would go well with sliced red onions, or pickled red onions and a bit of Romaine lettuce. It might be fun to experiment with different types of berries, such as blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, even strawberries (I wonder how much berry you can use in the burgers without affecting flavor and texture?). Here’s a burger that needs no ketchup.

Cherry Burgers

10 cherries, pitted
4 cloves garlic
1 lb lean ground meat
2-4 TBS melted butter
a couple pinches of baharat spice mix
salt and pepper to taste

• Process the cherries and garlic in a food processor, or chop finely with a knife. You want the cherries and garlic to be finely minced, but not dripping with juice.
• In a large bowl, combine the meat, cherry garlic mixture, spices, and melted butter.
• Place a large cast-iron pan over medium-high heat and place some butter in the pan.
• Make a bite sized burger and cook it in the pan. Taste the burger and correct seasoning accordingly.
• Shape the meat into burgers and fry them in the pan.
• Flip when browned, then lower flame to medium. Cook to desired level of doneness.

Serves 2-3

Local links:

• Pain de mie burger buns from Acme
• Meat from Prather Ranch
• Cherries and garlic from a number of growers at the farmer’s market

Shakshuka is one of my favorite middle eastern breakfast foods. It’s a simple dish, usually made with garlic, peppers, tomatoes, and eggs. Garlic and chili peppers are sauted in olive oil, along with bell peppers and lots of fresh tomatoes, forming a chunky vegetable stew. The eggs–nestled into little indentations–are poached in the stew itself. The dish is typically eaten with a thick slice of cheap, fresh crusty white bread, perfect for mopping up the tomatoey juices. Shakshuka and bread make a great breakfast, but if you’re still hungry, add a small Arab style salad–cucumbers, tomatoes, and parsley micro-chopped and dressed with s&p, half a lemon, and good olive oil.

Shakshuka Nopalitos is a Mexican twist on a middle eastern favorite, using chopped nopales or nopalitos, cleaned chopped cactus leaves that taste of green pepper and lime. “Mexican-Israeli?” you may ask, eyebrow raised. Shakshuka Nopalitos is a bit of a leap, but it’s a far cry from the chipotle sun-dried tomato hummous you find at highfalutin’ supermarkets. (If there is a hummous god, then verily, chipotle sun-dried tomato hummous must be an abomination unto Him).

For the record, though, tampering with the traditional classics of Israeli cuisine is risky. Israelis are very passionate about their multi-faceted cuisine. They love to argue about the authenticity of the regional dishes they love most, usually those their mothers or grandmothers prepared at home.

The “correct” preparation of shakshuka, for example, is a subject of much contention on Israeli food forums. Some add onions, while others are horrified by the very thought of an onion appearing in shakshuka. Some insist that peppers are the only vegetables used in the dish, while others add okra or zucchini.

Ironically, shakshuka isn’t Israeli at all, rather it is a North African dish that probably originated in Turkey and migrated to Israel along with the displaced Jews of those regions. Many versions abound, each one most likely evolved as a result of regional differences. The “correct” version that any given Israeli enjoyed at his grandmother’s table is probably a variation on the local version from grandma’s tiny Algerian village.

Is the shakshuka prepared by a weathered matriarch hailing from an obscure Algerian hamlet superior to that prepared by her compatriot from the equally obscure Morrocan boondocks? Which painting is better, an oil or a gouache? It’s an endless argument. As in many versions of traditional Israeli dishes, all and none are correct. And so, in the spirit of deconstruction, here is Shakshuka Nopalitos.

Shakshuka Nopalitos

nopales:
1/2 red onion, coarsely chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1/2 lb cleaned, chopped nopalitos

shakshuka:
1-2 TBS butter
1/2 red onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
6 small tomatillos, halved and chopped
2 fresh tomatoes, chopped
1 can whole peeled tomatoes, chopped, drained (or save the juice for another use)
salt and pepper to taste
hot paprika to taste
1-2 tsp fresh oregano, chopped
2-4 eggs, or 1-2 eggs per person

• Fill a small pot with water, add salt, and boil. When boiling, add the nopales, onion, and garlic.
• Simmer uncovered for about 10 minutes, then drain.
• Melt the butter in a large pan over a medium flame. Add the onion and garlic and saute.
• When the onion and garlic are transluscent, add the tomatillos and tomatoes. Stir and cook for a few minutes.
• Add the canned tomatoes without the juice. Stir and cook for a few minutes.
• Mix in the nopalitos and season to taste with salt, pepper, hot paprika, and fresh oregano.
• For each egg you want to cook, make an indentation in the vegetable mixture. Crack the eggs into their indentations and season each egg with a little salt and pepper.
• When the whites start to become opaque, cover the pan and cook until the eggs have just set.
• Serve with thick slices of simple, fresh bread and perhaps an Arab style salad on the side.

Serves 2-3

Thanks to Rancho Gordo for tips on cooking nopales. Rancho Gordo is a local grower of delicious heirloom bean varieties, and other goodies.

The sausages are from the Fatted Calf, a local artisanal charcuterie known for corrupting strict vegetarians (according to one of their formerly veg employees). The sweet, tangy goat cheese is from Yerba Santa dairy. The vegetables are from the farmer’s market and the lemon is from my backyard. Penance for a fallen foodblogger.

Spring vegetables with lemon herb sausages, polenta, and goat cheese

4 cups boiling water, in a small saucepan
1 cup polenta
salt to taste
butter

1-2 TBS butter
1/2 large red onion, chopped
1 stalk & bulb green garlic, chopped (chop the leafy ends and save for seasoning the dish at the end of cooking)
2 small zucchinis (I used Cocozelle), halved lengthwise and coarsely sliced
2 small squashy looking (I used scallopini), halved lengthwise and coarsely sliced
3 small carrots, peeled and sliced into coins
1/3 of a medium eggplant, coarsely chopped
5-6 sun-dried tomatoes in oil, sliced into matchsticks
4 cooked Fatted Calf lemon herb sausages (or similar, these sausages are pretty small, a little more than half a pound), chopped into bite size pieces
1/2 lemon
goat cheese

- Into the pot of boiling water, stir the polenta until it begins to thicken. Add some butter (how much you add depends on personal taste and your willingness to eat vast quantities of delicious butterfat). Lower the flame to a low simmer and stir frequently as you work. The polenta should take about 30 minutes to cook.
- Heat a large cast iron pan or saute pan over a medium flame. Add butter when hot. When the butter has melted, add the onions.
- Saute the onions until almost transluscent, then add the garlic. Saute for a minute or two.
- Add the vegetables in stages, so as not to lower the temperature of the contents of the pan. I added the vegetables in three stages, waiting a minute or so between each addition.
- Saute vegetables and then allow to cook.
- You’re remembering to stir the polenta, right? And always in the same direction.
- When the vegetables are bright and almost cooked, add the sliced sun-dried tomatoes and stir.
- Add in the sausage pieces and stir.
- Season to taste with salt, pepper, and paprika. Here’s your chance to improvise with some herbes de provence, for example, which I didn’t have on hand. Squeeze the lemon half over the vegetables.
- Taste, correct seasoning, and turn off the flame.

Serve atop polenta and sprinkle with crumbled goat cheese.

Serves 2-3

I have sinned. Majorly. May is local food month, which I’ve been celebrating weekly at the San Francisco Ferry Building and Berkeley farmer’s markets. The growers have brought in some beautiful produce, such as sweet, juicy asparagus and German mountain spinach, which is local, despite its name. But this weekend, deterred by the rain, I went to Berkeley Bowl instead. I know, it was only a drizzle. But going to the farmer’s market at the end of May in northern California on a drizzly, gray day is just… wrong. Don’t you think? Berkeley Bowl’s a different sort of mecca, and they carry quite a bit of local foods, right? So off I went.

I returned with spring treasures: raspberries, blueberries, asparagus, even a couple of peaches and nectarines. I also bought fresh porcini mushroom stalks and fiddleheads. Having read about fiddleheads on Mighty Foods recently, I’ve been itching to find some and cook them up. I’ve read they taste somewhat asparagus-like, which is always a good thing. However, I had no idea they were harvested in New England. Oops. I proceeded to cook the fiddleheads with porcini stalks (possibly local), organic boneless skinless chicken thighs (Oregon), and Rustichella d’Abruzzo lemon fettuccine (Italy), thus far my favorite brand of overpriced definitely not locally produced pasta. I’ve been a bad, bad foodblogger.

But hey, if Pim can dis packaged organic food, I can cook a very un-local lunch during local food month. Well, just this once.

Guilty global fiddleheads with porcini stalks, chicken, and lemon fettuccine

1 pkg (250 gr.) lemon fettuccine from Italy, cooked, drained, and tossed with butter, with some cooking water reserved
butter
3 boneless, skinless chicken thighs from Oregon
1/4 a medium eggplant, chopped into 1 inch cubes
1/2 lb fiddleheads from New England, trimmed
several asparagus stalks, trimmed and chopped into longish 1.5 inch pieces
1/8 lb porcini stalks, halved lengthwise and sliced
3 small cloves purple garlic
a splash of Sherry from Spain
a grating of Laguiole cheese from France

- Heat enough butter (on medium heat) in a large enameled braising pan to cover the bottom of the pan. Season the chicken with salt and pepper on both sides.
- Brown the chicken well and place on a plate to drain. Cut the chicken into bite size pieces. Alternatively, you could do this the other way around. The chicken would probably brown faster.
- In the same pan, toss in the eggplant pieces and stir.
- When the eggplant is golden, add in the fiddleheads and asparagus. Cook for a minute and add in the porcini stalks and stir.
- Cook for a minute, then add in the chicken.
- Pour in a splash of Sherry and stir, carefully scraping up the browned bits. Cook until the chicken is cooked through and the fiddleheads and asparagus are bright green and still crunchy.
- Correct the seasoning and toss with pasta, adding a bit of cooking water to moisten.
- Grate cheese on top and serve.

Serves 2

Tasting notes: The fiddleheads were refreshingly crunchy, with a contrasting texture provided by the little curled fern leaves comprising the fiddle’s head. They did taste somewhat like asparagus, but less sweet than really fresh asparagus. The porcini stalks were pleasantly porcini-like, which is to say they weren’t quite as porcini as they should have been. Seeing as they were sold capless, I presume they didn’t represent the best of the hunt. It might be fun to try this recipe with fiddleheads you’ve just picked and porcinis that your trusty pet pig (don’t you have one?) has just unearthed. Which only goes to show that local food often does taste better.

The scourge of American society isn’t the chipping away of civil rights, the crumbling healthcare system, or the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor. These are all irksome issues to be sure. Clearly, the greatest menace to America is industrially manufactured mayonnaise. Am I exaggerating? Think of the last time you had potato salad at a barbecue. How long was that salad sitting in the hot sun? How much goopy white mayo was in it? Was it more mayonnaise than potato? Is it any wonder you narrowly escaped food poisoning? (Can I squeeze another rhetorical question into this paragraph?)

I’ve never understood the American insistence on using mayonnaise for everything from salads, to marinated chicken, to cakes (ugh!), to sandwiches of white bread inordinately layered with industrially manufactured baloney. Remember the deli scene from Annie Hall? There’s a reason Woody Allen winces in pain as Diane Keaton orders a pastrami on white bread with mayo. Cold cuts were meant to be eaten between two thick pieces of rustic bread, spread with a country style mustard that bites back.

The overuse of mayonnaise has morphed relatively pleasant, simple foods into bizarre mutations. Potato salad has become a smooth grey mass served by the lump with an ice cream scoop. Macaroni salad is a sea of mayo in which schools of drowning eblow pasta take their last dying breaths. Tuna salad is so overwhelmingly mayonnaised that it looks more like its mutant brother potato salad than the flesh of any fish that ever swam in the depths of the ocean. Why not dispense with the pretense and just call them all mayonnaise salad?

Folks, it’s time to stop the madness. There are more condiments in heaven and earth that are dreamt of in your philosophy. Take that refrigerated excuse for caulk and toss it in the recycling bin. Instead of mayo, why not dress tuna salad with natural yogurt, labaneh, or olive oil? For a sandwich spread, why not try chilled olive oil or butter? And if you really want to, you can make your own much better tasting homemade mayonnaise. As for potato salad, there’s more than one way to prepare this great American favorite.

Reverse Potato Beet Salad
(so called for its purple potatoes and white beets)

about 1.5 pounds purple potatoes, steamed, patted dry, and cut into large bite-size chunks
5-6 small (thumb-size) white beets–or 1-2 larger white beets–steamed, peeled, and cut into a small dice
1-2 TBS minced fresh parsley
1-2 TBS finely chopped green onion (green part only)
1-2 TBS thinly sliced fresh mint
1-2 TBS rinsed, chopped capers
salt and pepper to taste

For the lemon vinaigrette:
1 clove garlic, crushed
zest of half a lemon, minced
2 TBS freshly squeezed lemon juice (no pulp)
6 TBS extra virgin olive oil
salt & pepper to taste (easy on the salt as the capers are salty and you’ll be salting the salad when it’s assembled)

- In a medium bowl, mix together the potatoes, beets, and herbs.
- In a small bowl, combine the vinaigrette ingredients, except the salt and pepper. Use a stick blender to blend the vinaigrette.
- Taste the vinaigrette and season with salt and pepper to taste, bearing in mind that the capers add salt, and that you’ll be seasoning the salad after dressing it. The vinaigrette should be fairly lightly seasoned.
- Pour the vinaigrette over the vegetables and toss to coat. Add the capers and toss again.
- Season to taste with salt and pepper (I used coarse pink Hawaiin salt, which adds crunch and color).

Serves 3

You can buy locally grown purple potatoes in the San Francisco bay area from Zuckerman’s Farm.