So many things to write about! I’ve been goofing off this week, partly to do actual work (can you imagine?) and partly out of incorrigible laziness, and so a lot of ideas for posts remain to be written.
Copyright © 2009 Funny about Money
First, this cool (literally) salad, a knock-off from an old Julia Child recipe:
Salade à la d’Argenson, à la Sonora
As the weather hotted up, I pulled out the last of the garden beets. There weren’t many, since a few had already gone to seed, turning their red tubers fibrous and woody. I wanted to use them in a particularly delicious salad from Julia Child. The basic recipe goes like this:
You need:
• 2 cups cooked rice
• 2 cups diced cooked or canned beets
• 4 Tbsp finely chopped green onion
• 3/4 cup vinaigrette (recipe below; you can use a good bottled vinegar & oil-style salad dressing)
• 1 1/2 or 2 cups mayonnaise (bottled or home-made; recipe below)
• fresh or dried herbs, such as tarragon, marjoram, basil, thyme, summer savory, etc.
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup of cooked vegetables, such as peas, green beans, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, asparagus; you also can add such things as diced raw apple, grated raw carrots, cut-up cooked beef, pork, poultry, or fish, canned tuna or salmon. I defrosted some mixed frozen veggies for my version.
• garnish such as olives, anchovies, sliced hard-boiled egs, watercress, or parsley
In a good-sized bowl, toss the cooked beets, onions, and rice together with the vinaigrette. Allow this combination to marinate for awhile in the refrigerator. Meanwhile, make mayonnaise and add a handful of chopped fresh herbs or a tablespoon or so of dried herbs. If you’re using bottle mayo, add the herbs to the mayo in the course of the next step.
Shortly before serving, add the rest of the ingredients to the beets and rice, and then fold in the mayonnaise. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Garnish as desired with one or more of the suggested condiments.
I didn’t have enough beets, and so I decided to add a can of cannellini beans to the rice-and-beet mixture. The result worked wonderfully: beans absorb vinaigrette with every bit as much enthusiasm as rice does.
Here’s how to make enough vinaigrette for this recipe:
You need:
• a measuring cup, at least 1 cup capacity
• 1/4 cup lemon juice or wine vinegar
• enough olive oil to fill the measuring cup to the 3/4 cup line
• a clove of garlic, minced
• salt and pepper to taste
• maybe a dash of dried herbs—fines herbes or herbes de Provence work nicely
Combine the ingredients and whip with a fork to mix thoroughly. Pour this over the warm rice and beet mixture and fold together well.
And here’s how to make mayo in a blender…lo! Mayonnaise that actually tastes like REAL MAYO!
You need:
• an egg
• 1 tsp Dijon-style mustard
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 Tbsp lemon juice or vinegar
• 1 cup olive oil, or 1/2 cup olive oil and 1/2 cup mild salad oil
If you’re using two kinds of oil, combine them in your measuring cup. Notice that real mayonnaise doesn’t contain sugar. I don’t think bottled mayo did, either, when I was a kid. I never could stand that sicky-sweet Miracle Whip gunk, but now even Best Foods (Hellman’s in the East) is full of sugar. I guess they must have been forced to add it to compete with Miracle Whip, what with America’s sweet tooth so carefully cultivated by the foodoid industry.
Break the whole egg into the blender jar. Add the salt and lemon juice. Cover the blender jar with thelid (!!) and puree the ingredients at full blast for about 30 seconds. The egg mixture should be thick and foamy. Now, with the blender buzzing away, uncover the jar (most lids have a capped opening that you can undo for this purpose) and dribble in the oil in a thin stream of droplets.
The mayo will get thicker and thicker. If it gets too thick to absorb all the oil, add a few drops of lemon juice or vinegar.
For this recipe, you want to add lots of green herbs to the mayo. I add them just before the sauce is finished, before it gets very thick, just to keep things relatively simple. For the salade, I used a handful or so of fresh garden herbs…out in the backyard, I found thyme, marjoram, basil, and tarragon.
Because so few beets were available, this week’s version was not as colorful as a real salade à la d’Argenson is supposed to be. If you follow Julia’s recipe, the result is a brilliant purple-red. I find it very appealing, and it is delicious. But you should be aware that some people either don’t care for beets or think the Day-Glo magenta comes from food coloring, and they won’t touch it. I’ve taken this salad to first to a church social and later to a potluck gathering of people whose tastes I thought would be more urbane, only to come home with a whole bowl of uneaten salad…so, don’t try to feed it to strangers! 😉
