Quinoa, Spinach and Garbanzo Bean Salad with Smoked Paprika Dressing

 

Summer is nearly here. It's just around the corner (or around the weekend...) and I can't wait to get the garden planted and fire up the grill for the first time. The baby vegetable plants and herbs are getting put in the ground today. Just a few months until we get jewel-bright tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers for salads and snacking. Until then, I decided to make this salad with baby heirloom tomatoes we found at a little grocery near us. It has a big produce section, a deli and tons of bulk foods.

FFWD: Quinoa, Fruit and Nut Salad

Would you believe me if I told you this was my very first attempt at making quinoa? I know! Where have I been the last, I don't know, five years? What's even worse is that I have had a box of quinoa in my cupboard for months. Maybe I was just waiting for the right recipe to come along before I jumped in. And was this ever a good recipe to start off with! I'm in love with quinoa and I regret having waited so long to try it.

Broccoli Crunch

 

This is something I've wanted to make for quite a while now. I'm a vegetable lover, really, even though you wouldn't know it from this blog. So I wanted to take the time to give some love to the vegetables. It's their turn. Starting with broccoli, which, when cooked properly, is delicious. This ensemble has everything I want in a salad: texture, flavor, and color. Ever had a creamy, too-sweet broccoli salad at a pot-luck and wished you hadn't bothered? Well, this is a distant, more sophisticated, healthier relation.  Grab a fork and dig in.

Summer Pea and Roasted Red Pepper Pasta Salad

 

Not your average pasta salad. That was what I was craving when I found this on Smitten Kitchen's site. The dressing is made from roasted red peppers. It's full of flavor; it's light, not heavy and it's not bottled Italian dressing. One could, I suppose, use jarred peppers. They're good. I use them for lots of dishes. But for this, I wanted soft, meltingly tender, sweet and charred peppers. Roasting them in the oven is actually less involved than charring them over a gas flame (I've done that too. It takes a long time.).          

 

  

I might try grilling them, the next time I make this, to get an even smokier flavor from them. But they get so soft in the oven after roasting, it really is a perfect application for peppers. The skins fall right of the flesh, you can save the juices to put in the processor when you're ready to blend, and then wrap the skin and seeds and core in the foil and toss it. No fuss, no mess. That's my kind of cooking. I don't mind involved recipes, if I have the time, but I love a short cut as much as the next girl. (Said the girl who just roasted her own peppers.)

  

The other reason I wanted to make this salad were the colors. We love peas in this house and I will try any recipe that includes them. I would have loved to use fresh peas, but I never see them in the grocery store. So frozen it is, and fresh snow peas, which we also love. They are so crisp and sweet and add a freshness to anything you put them in. The different contrast of soft peas, chewy pasta and crisp snow peas is a genius combination, especially with the sweetness of the pepper vinaigrette. It's colorful, healthy, light and delicious. It's exactly what I want to eat in the summertime.

  

  

Summer Pea and Roasted Red Pepper Pasta Salad 

as written by Deb, of Smitten Kitchen

This salad would also be fantastic finished with some slivered herbs, like basil, bits of soft goat cheese or crumbled feta or grated Parmesan, but really, it doesn’t need any of that to taste great. Promise.

1 pound of small pasta (I used shells because I imagined the peas would nest in there and gah, such cuteness)

1/4 pound snow pea pods, ends trimmed

1/2 pound fresh summer peas, which yielded about 1 cup once shelled

3/4 to 1 cup Roasted Red Pepper Vinaigrette (recipe below)

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and prepare a small ice water bath. Boil the snow pea pods for about two minutes, or until just barely cooked but still crisp. Scoop them out with a large slotted spoon and drop them in the ice water bath. Cook the peas for about 10 minutes (once again, this will be al dente, you can cook them longer if you prefer them softer), scoop them out with a large slotted spoon and plunge them into the ice water bath as well. Drain both peas. Cut the snow peas into thin slivers.

Add the pasta into the boiling water and cook it according to package instructions. Drain and let cool, then toss in a large bowl with peas and Roasted Red Pepper Vinaigrette, seasoning to taste.

Roasted Red Pepper Vinaigrette

Please don’t limit your use of this to just pasta salad, though, I can say withabsolutely no bias that it is awesome in it, but that’s no reason not to toss this with white beans for a quick bean salad or what your choice mix of greens are.

I like to slow-roast bell peppers in the oven at 350 for one hour, giving them a quarter turn with tongs every fifteen minutes so they get evenly blistered — then letting them cool and peeling them. I know it’s faster to blacken them over a gas flame, but the pepper never gets as supple and sweet as I want it to, but hey, that’s just personal preference. You know, in case you wanted to know.

Makes about one cup of dressing

1 red bell pepper, roasted, skinned and seeded or the equivalent from a jar, drained

1/4 cup olive oil

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar (and up to 2 tablespoons more if you, like us, like that extra bite in your dressing)

1 tablespoon chopped shallot (about 1 small)

1/2 teaspoon salt

Several grinds of black pepper

Puree the red bell pepper in a food processor or blender as much as possible, then add the remaining ingredients and running the machine until the dressing is silky smooth. Adjust the vinegar level and seasonings to taste.

Chicken Paillard and Arugula Salad

  

This is possibly our favorite way to eat chicken. I saw Tyler Florence make this one day on Tyler's Ultimate and I had to create it myself. We fell in love. With the salad, I mean. I do love his food style, though. It's very bistro, in an accessible, and comforting way. If I had a restaurant, I would cook this kind of food. Let me draw your attention to the greens. This is the most perfect example of arugula I have ever seen.  That's arugula in that bowl, not baby spinach (although you could substitute one for the other, but try arugula first, it's an incredible flavor).

We were in Hudson the other day and I had to go to Heinen's market to browse the produce section. It makes me happy. I go there just to see the baby bok choy. If you live in or near Hudson, I'm very jealous of you. But anyway, I saw the arugula and knew I was going to make this salad with it. Its delicious and can be made on a weeknight. I know this because I made it Thursday night after I got home from work. 

 

The prep work for this dish is minimal. Just pound out the chicken breasts, blend up the dressing ingredients, set up a breading station and cut up the tomatoes (from your garden, if you're lucky) and little balls of mozzarella. That's it. I love the dressing for this salad. It's like a Caesar dressing, but lighter, somehow. It's very fresh and pops with lemon juice, but it has anchovy, which simply gives it some earthy depth. It makes the dressing interesting. Everyone likes their salad dressing to be interesting, don't they?

 

So now you are rewarded with a dinner you can be proud of. Just one little suggestion: you should really eat these together. If you are the kind of person who eats everything separately (like my dad), you should know that these two things on this plate were made to go together. Tender and peppery greens, juicy tomatoes, creamy mozzarella and a crunchy poultry crouton of goodness. It's about complementary components. It's about balance. It's about texture. It's about flavor. And I am all about this salad.

 

Chicken Paillard with Creamy Parmesan Salad

from Tyler's Ultimate

Serves 4

Chicken:

4 skinless boneless chicken breasts

1 c. flour

4 eggs, beaten with a splash of milk

2 c. panko

2 T. olive oil

Dressing:

2 anchovy fillets

2 egg yolks

2 cloves garlic, smashed

2 lemons, juiced

1/2 c. olive oil

1/4 c. grated Parmesan

Salad:

1 c. grape tomatoes, halved

1 bag baby arugula

1/2 lb. bocconcini, halved

shaved Parmesan

Lemon wedges

Pound chicken between sheets of plastic wrap until very thin. Place flour, eggs and panko in separate bowls and season with salt and pepper. Season chicken, dip in flour, eggs and panko. Lay on a baking sheet and chill 10 minutes. Fry chicken in oil 2-3 minutes per side. Drain and sprinkle with salt. For dressing: Place anchovies, yolks, garlic, lemon juice and some ( 1-2 teaspoons, I'm guessing) water in a blender and process 30 seconds,  until smooth. With blender running, add oil in a steady stream. Stir in cheese, season with salt and pepper to taste; set aside. Prepare salad: Mix ingredients together and place on top of chicken. Garnish with shaved cheese and lemon wedges.