Hmm. Before leaving for the weekend trip, each couple claimed a few meals to take care of while we were there. I did a snack and dinner on Friday after we arrived, and tried to think of things that wouldn’t require a ton of prep work while we were busy opening up the camp (actually a really nice cabin) for the summer. I took sausages and asparagus to grill, and the makings of fancy s’mores for dessert, and made a rice salad at home to take as a side.

Now. My mom has been making this salad my whole life, and it’s always really good. I was afraid I’d run out of time friday morning, though, so I made it most of the way on Thursday, then dressed it on friday, crammed it into a tupperware, and took it to the lake. Something went awry somewhere between dressing it and eating it, though. I don’t know if it was just too smushed into the tupperware, or if I should have left the dressing off completely? The rice, which was perfect the night before when I put it into the fridge (already cold) was a mushy mess, and quite unappetizing. Plus the cucumbers had gone soft, so there was no longer a nice crunchy texture mixed in. The worst part? I’d cooked 2 cups of rice, so I still have enough to feed an army!

In theory this is a great picnic food, though. It doesn’t have anything that goes bad at room temp, it’s tangy and interesting… I should try again, but it involves lots of steps and chopping so I’m not sure I’ll get around to it.

The recipe is based on a verdure, a vegetable topping that can be used on bruschetta or mixed into pasta or rice for a salad. For the Verdure:

Peel, seed and chop four roma tomatoes:

(If you don’t know, peeling tomatoes is super-easy if you put them in boiling water for a couple seconds, then plunge into cold water. The skin comes right off.)

Peel, seed and chop 1/2 cucumber (I used almost a whole one):

Chop a small red onion:

Salt (1 1/4 teaspoon) and let it sit for two hours, so all the juices pull out of the vegetables:

Drain well and combine with 1/4 each chopped flat leaf parsley and basil, 1/8 t dried oregano, scant 1/8 t red pepper flakes:

To use as a bruschetta topping, add 1 1/2 T olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. To use as a salad:

Cook rice or pasta and drain/dry well. (This was where I ran into trouble.) Cut up a handful each of cornichons (tiny pickles, yum) and capers:

Smash a handful of black olives to loosen from pits, then chop (this failed completely for me because I was using green olives, which will not release from their pits!).

Combine:

Make a dressing–1/2 cup olive oil, 3 tablespoons lemon juice–and combine with salad.

Here’s my salad post-dressing on friday morning (much different colors in sun instead of lights!); you can see it getting sticky:

Upon arrival at the camp…GAH, I MADE A (non-)JELLO MOLD!

Help! I pulled that monstrosity apart with a fork, but the damage was done and the texture was shot:

Luckily the rest of the meal was pretty tasty… The asparagus was an annoying combo of very thick and very thin, but tasted good:

If you haven’t tried that, do: toss the asparagus with olive oil, salt and pepper, and grill until tender. Takes about 10 minutes but keep a close eye on it!

We’re counting down now–the last week of classes is almost over; graduation is in less than three weeks, and we will be moving in about a month. We’re trying to squeeze in some last dinners with all the people we’ve meant to invite over all year, and last Thursday we had Louisa (from Scotland) and Alex (from NZ) and Matt (who we have over all the time!) over. Matt’s a vegetarian (that trouble-maker) but flexible about things like chicken stock, so I always end up making him risotto.

To start I adapted a salad I’d seen in a magazine this month (not sure which one), with apples, pancetta and almonds. The dressing wasn’t great–much sweeter than my usual dressing, and with the apples and almonds I didn’t think it had enough bite. I love pancetta or bacon in salads, though, and it was fun to figure out how to cut matchsticks of apple:

I sliced off a bit of a side, then cut slices down to the core and cut the slices into matchsticks. Easy as pie and they look great. Here’s the finished salad:

Last week the first local asparagus arrived at the Coop; a perfect risotto ingredient and fun spring event. The bunch had some very thin stalks as well as lots of fatter ones (which I prefer), so I had to add it in at three different points. My mom taught me to add the tips towards the end since they cook faster. I added the fat stalk pieces, then the big ends in with the skinny stalk pieces, then the little tips as garnish at the end.

By the way, does anyone else sort of hate the tips of asparagus? I love love love the stalks but have never liked the tips nearly as much.

Hmm, could have been a little brothier and creamier.

For dessert I used another magazine recipe, this one from Bon Appetit. Strawberries are looking gorgeous right now, so I made chocolate strawberry shortcakes, with a chocolate biscuit instead of plain. Easy recipe, though I wasn’t blown away—I prefer regular shortcakes or angel food cake.

The dough was made with whipped cream:

It’s basically sand when you dump it out to knead, and it did pull together, though it took longer than I think it was supposed to. (Sadly I forgot to take a photo of the dough.)

You can see the ones that were made from the second or third time pushing the dough together—they split open.

Pretty, pretty berries (they ended up macerating with powdered sugar and orange juice; I didn’t add grand marnier, per the recipe, because I didn’t have any.):

And a mediocre pic of the finished dessert (need. better. lighting.):

The part of this recipe that I will definitely recreate is the cream. It was half a cup of whipping cream with half a cup of sour cream and a bit of powdered sugar. The sour cream added body and tang and made it much more interesting than straight whipped cream. Yum!