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!

Another weekend, another barbecue. This time some friends from Ben’s first study group came over for burgers in the late afternoon. Sick of cooking potatoes, I made the pasta salad that I first fell in love with at my bridal shower last summer. Ben’s mom’s best friend (and our good friend too!) Lydia makes this supremely simple and delicious pasta salad; we were all begging for instructions after we tried it. Ben called and got the directions on Saturday, and it’s as easy as can be:

Lydia’s Pasta Salad
While your pasta water is boiling, cut up ripe tomatoes and put them in a big bowl with olive oil and salt. (I used cherry and grape tomatoes, about two pints, quartered (they MUST be cut up), with maybe a quarter cup (plus a little) of oil and a bunch of salt.) Let the tomatoes start releasing their juice.
Cut up about a pound of firm mozzarella (though I want to give fresh another shot, I think the flavor would be better even if it did melt all over the place) into small bites and put it in with the tomatoes. [SEE EDIT, below.]

Cook a pound of pasta (Lydia uses penne), drain it, and toss it in with the tomatoes and cheese while it’s still hot.
Add torn up basil and lots of salt and pepper. Keep tasting it; it’s a bit hard to season this enough but you also don’t want to go overboard.

Obviously with a salad this simple, your ingredients need to be top-notch. I used grape/cherry tomatoes because I’ve had better luck finding tasty and sweet ones in the off season. And the cheese I used was so-so. But it’s still really easy and really popular. We went through about 5/6 of this huge bowl!

EDITED 5/21

Per Mom’s question in the comments, I made this again for a dinner party Friday night and used little bocconcini (small balls of fresh mozzarella), cut into quarters. The salad was WAY better–definitely use fresh mozzarella. I cut it small so that if it did melt when I added the pasta I wouldn’t have any enormous blobs of cheese, but it stayed fairly intact. We ate leftovers in the car on the way to Boston on Saturday; this is great picnic food!

I still had half of a ham steak in the freezer, so I pan-fried it for dinner one night last week, and served it with roasted new potatoes and homemade apple sauce. If you’ve never made applesauce, please please give it a try next time you want some: it is SO EASY, especially if you have an immersion blender, that once you’ve tried it you will never crack a jar of Mott’s again. My mom would be the best person to give a serious recipe/instructions for people who want to actually can sauce, but I just make a cheater’s version when I want a little bit to go with pork chops, etc.

Peel and core a few apples–flavorful, not-too-tart ones like Fuji are best, and it’s nice to mix a few types together. For two of us, I used three apples, two Fuji and one Gala, and ended up with a nice bowl of leftovers. Cut up the apples and throw them in a small saucepan with a bit of water–maybe an inch? Bring the water to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cover; cook the apples until they are quite soft.

Then pull out your immersion blender and puree the apples. Taste and see if they need sugar–if you’re using Gala, Fuji, etc, you probably won’t. Add cinnamon to taste.

That’s it! Easy easy easy; the hardest part is peeling the apples. (Cooking the apples with their peels/cores and running the result through a foodmill is the traditional way, and it makes more flavorful sauce. But for a quick weeknight side dish, this way is simpler. Especially since I don’t have a foodmill.)

The next day I ate the leftover applesauce with Nancy’s yogurt, made right in my hometown and only recently available on the East Coast. I wish I had a digital copy of the photos of me on my first birthday, being fed yogurt and applesauce by my aunt Suzanne. My mom says I used to put away the same size bowl of it that my dad did!
Healthy and delicious: