The Dinner Winner

Meatless food for all!

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1 Dinner

The Salad Dressing

The Salad Dressing

This dressing is a vinaigrette. It is garlicky, salty, and goes amazingly well on all sorts of things. Use it on savory salads, on top of roasted potatoes, to dip carrot sticks in, on top of grilled protein, or as a marinade. Once you get the hang of making this recipe, you’ll be able to easily make it with no recipe at all. This is Silvia’s favorite salad dressing by far. Believe it or not, she will whip this up in the morning to put over a salad for her school lunch.

To make the dressing, you should ideally have a mortar and pestle. We use this set, made by Le Cruset, but anything should work.

The Salad Dressing

Ingredients

1 clove garlic
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp capers
2 tsp dijon mustard
1 tablespoon plus 1 tsp white wine vinegar
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Method

  1. Place the garlic clove and salt in the mortar and pestle. Mash to a paste. Add the capers and mash to a paste.
  2. Add the dijon mustard and white wine vinegar. Mix until totally combined.
  3. While mixing continuously, stream in the olive oil. Keep mixing vigorously until the dressing forms an emulsion and everything is well mixed.
  4. Taste the dressing and adjust the seasoning to your liking.
  5. Pour over your favorite salad, roasted potatoes, grilled chicken or tofu, or anything else you can think of.

Notes

This is a very simple recipe, but incredibly delicious. The capers replace anchovies in the original, and I think they do a great job of adding a nice briny saltiness to the dressing while keeping everything vegetarian. Silvia likes to keep the caper bits somewhat chunky, I like them more mashed up. There is no wrong answer. The dijon mustard serves as an emulsifier; it makes it easier for all of the ingredients to stay combined. Even with the mustard, this will separate after it sits for a while. No worried, just mix it up some more and it will come back together. If you don’t have a mortar and pestle, just push the garlic through a garlic press and mince the capers as fine as possible. Just make the recipe in a small bowl and it will be great.

This dressing is adapted from David Tanis’ French Potato and Green Bean Salad.

4 Dinner

Cucumber Soup with Avocado and Mint

Cucumber SoupToday was one of those miserable late summer days that was so absurdly hot and humid, there was no way I could possibly turn on the stove. I spent my morning working outside, dripping sweat, contemplating what cool refreshing dinner I would make. After much deliberation, I settled on this cucumber soup with yogurt, avocado, and herbs. It required no cooking whatsoever, and I had everything I needed to make it at home.

The biggest problem was that I was totally making the recipe up as I go along. I’ve been reading Samin Nosrat’s excellent cookbook, “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” which lays out some pretty clear and rock solid principles for winging it in the kitchen. Since it was a million degrees outside, I decided to forget about the heat part, but made sure there was enough salt, fat, and acid in the cucumber soup.

I also wanted this to be a meal for my family, so a bowl of watery cucumber soup wasn’t going to fit the bill; the soup needed some body. I wanted to make this redolent of tzatziki sauce without being a dip you eat with a spoon, not that there’s anything wrong with that. I decided to throw in an avocado to make the soup a bit more rich and velvety. Add some mint, dill, and lemon to make the flavors bright, and some feta cheese and olive oil to deepen the flavor a bit. I added a shallot because I was out of garlic (shame!), but it came out great, so I’ll stick to that in the recipe.

On blenders

The best part of this whole recipe is that you all you need to make it is a decent blender. Until about a year ago, I had an old hand me down blender that I thought worked just fine. When it died, I replaced it with a Blendtec and couldn’t be happier. I regularly make huge vats of smoothie to feed an entire family and the thing has proven to be bombproof. I think the motor is 3 horsepower, which seems to be plenty for anything I’ve ever needed to blend.

Make it a meal

If you want to make another dish to make this a meal, why not try pasta with dandelion greens, or a grilled pizza?

 

Cucumber Soup with Avocado and Mint
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INGREDIENTS

  • 2 English Cucumbers
  • 1 Avocado
  • Zest of 1 lemon
  • Juice of 1 lemon
  • 3/4 cup Greek yogurt
  • 1/4 cup fresh dill
  • 1/4 cup fresh mint
  • 1 1/2 cups water
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 small shallot
  • 3.5 oz feta cheese
  • salt and pepper to taste

METHOD

  1. Roughly chop the cucumbers and seed and peel the avocado. Separate the mint and dill leaves from the stems.
  2. Add all ingredients to the blender jar.
  3. Blend until smooth. If the soup looks too thick, add a but more water 1/4 cup at a time.
  4. Taste for salt and pepper and adjust the seasoning. Depending on how salty your feta cheese is, you may need no salt, or up to 1.5 teaspoons.
  5. Chill for at least three hours if you are the kind of person that plans ahead. If not, just eat it right away.
7.8.1.2
13

https://thedinnerwinner.com/cucumber-soup-with-avocado-and-mint/

Nutrition

Calories

1119 cal

Fat

93 g

Carbs

56 g

Protein

27 g

Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info

5 Dinner

Simple Kale Salad

Farmer's market kale

I have made a lot of kale salads over the years, and done quite a bit of searching around the interwebs to find new ways to make a simple kale salad. There are tons of great recipes out there, but most of them are extravagant, and not something that I’m going to throw together in 10 minutes while the pasta is boiling. So, here is a recipe for a simple kale salad that i make regularly. It is so easy, and so good, that my daughters regularly request it, and can nearly make it by themselves.

Simple Kale Salad

Backstory

A couple of years ago, we visited my in-laws for Christmas. They live in the mountains of northwest North Carolina, right in the corner where North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia all meet. So close in fact that you can walk to either state fairly easily. It is a beautiful, very rural place, and the mountains are surprisingly steep. These are not the rolling Catskills or the gentle Poconos. The valley where they live is dotted with small farms with a few head of cattle or some chickens, along with some vegetable gardens here and there as well. They are close to the headwaters of the New River, and the water literally flows right through their front yard. There are also Christmas tree farms everywhere. Ashe County, NC calls itself the Christmas tree capital of the world.

While in theory, it should be warmer in North Carolina than in New Jersey, this is almost never the case at their house since the elevation is about 3,000’ or so. They get significant snows just like we do in the northeast without the benefit of armies of road crews clearing the stuff around the clock. This particular Christmas was another story. It was in the mid 60s for most of the time we were there. In fact, it was so warm that my father in law rarely fired up the great wood cook-stove in the kitchen that keeps the house so warm and cozy. It was also warm enough that the kale in their magnificent garden was still growing, even at the end of December. Seemingly every day, my mother in law would take my daughter Silvia out to the garden to gather a massive bowl of Kale to turn into this or that, and maybe pull a few last carrots, or whatever else still was left in the garden.

Garlic

One of the dishes my mother in law made was a simple kale salad with this beautiful, organic, just harvested, baby kale. I don’t know what it is about greens that have just been plucked from the ground, but they tase so amazing, like they are somehow quivering with life. It really was a magnificent salad. Silvia nearly polished off an entire batch of the stuff herself one night, placing the blame for nobody getting enough salad on me for supposedly eating it all, then running out for the evening to go see a movie with my father in law. Little did everyone suspect that my four year old daughter was the culprit!

The best simple kale salad

This simple kale salad has become a year round staple in our house. Both of my daughters request it, help make it, and devour it almost weekly. So much so, that you seriously have to make sure they don’t eat it all before you get to it. The dressing is simple, light, and vibrant, and you can use it on other salads too. Just maybe don’t massage your romaine lettuce. If you want to have your kids cook this with you, have them help separate the leaves from the stems, and also help massage the kale with the dressing. I love it when my girls really get their hands into the food we are making. This salad won’s make too much of a mess when they dive in with two hands.

Simple Kale Salad

On kale…

You can use any kind of kale you like, but I prefer it with lacinato kale. The texture fits the preparation very well. Baby kale works nicely as well, and you don’t have to massage it much. If you use curly kale, make sure you really mush it well, and it doesn’t hurt to let it stand for ten minutes before you serve it. Also, make sure you zest the lemon before you juice it, unless you enjoy being annoyed, then definitely juice it first. If you want to pair this simple kale salad with something, how about a grilled pizza? And, a pro tip for any greens, if you find your greens have a lot of grit or dirt on them, separate the leaves and fill your sink with water to wash them. Swish all the greens around with your hands and let the dirt settle to the bottom of the sink before you take the greens out.

kale being washed in the sink

Fill the sink with water at least 4″ deep to wash dirty greens

 

Simple Kale Salad
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INGREDIENTS

  • 1 bunch lacinato kale, (also known as dino kale)
  • 1 small clove garlic
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • zest of half a lemon
  • Juice of one lemon. If it’s a huge lemon, use half of it for the juice
  • 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  • 1/3 cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese
  • Pepper to taste

METHOD

  1. Using your hands, separate the kale leaves from the ribs. You can usually just rip it all off in one quick motion. Roughly chop the kale into 1 inch wide strips and wash and dry the kale. Put the kale in a large serving bowl.
  2. Finely mince the garlic, and dump on top of the kale along with the salt, lemon zest, lemon juice, and olive oil.
  3. Using your clean hands, squeeze and mix the kale for a minute or two. The leaves will become more tender, and the volume will seem to reduce. There might be some extra liquid in the bottom of the bowl. Don’t worry about it.
  4. Add the Pecorino Romano and the pepper, usually about 1/2 tsp. Mix well again and serve.
7.8.1.2
11

https://thedinnerwinner.com/simple-kale-salad/

Nutrition

Calories

565 cal

Fat

54 g

Carbs

6 g

Protein

18 g

Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info

 

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0 Dinner

Spring Snap Peas with Pecorino

Snap Peas with Pecorino, Lemon, and Black Pepper

It’s been a pretty wet spring here in New Jersey. I think we have had somewhere north of 1000” inches of rain and it’s supposed to rain again tomorrow. All of this makes for an incredibly green landscape, teeming with fresh newness. It also makes for a lawn you need to mow every other day. This dish of snap peas with pecorino evokes all of that newness in a simple uncooked plate that will take you ten minutes to throw together. It plays on the traditional Italian flavors of fava beans and pecorino cheese, but saves you the 90 minutes of peeling fresh fava beans by hand to get enough for two people to eat.

Growing up, we always had this ceramic jar of grated Locatelli Romano cheese in our fridge. It was almost impossible to get the stuff in Richmond, VA in the 80s, so my dad would buy huge blocks of it when he would be in New Jersey visiting family, or even in Washington, DC for a work trip. Later, he would order it online six pounds at a time. I imagine that would last him over a year. Because of all of this Locatelli Romano we had lying around, the flavor of the stuff is really imprinted on me. I have since discovered that there is a whole world of great sheep’s milk cheese out there. (Pecorino is the name given to all Italian cheeses made from sheep’s milk).

Pair this dish with couscous with grilled asparagus and herbs, or a grilled pizza for a fantastic warm weather meal.

Split Snow Pea

Spring Snap Peas with Pecorino
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INGREDIENTS

  • 1 lb snap peas
  • Zest of ½ a lemon
  • Juice of ½ lemon
  • 2 tbsp good extra virgin olive oil (don’t skimp here)
  • 1 oz or so pecorino romano cheese
  • Flaky salt to taste
  • Very coarsely ground black pepper to taste

METHOD

  1. Cut the snap peas lengthwise into two or three pieces each. If you find any tough ones, either toss them, or set them aside for a recipe that calls for cooking the peas. Once everything is cut, put the snap peas into a medium bowl.
  2. Add the lemon zest and juice, and olive oil. Toss the snap peas with your fingers to coat everything nicely. Transfer the peas to a serving bowl. Sprinkle with salt to taste and add pepper to taste. (A side note: I wanted the pepper extra coarse for this, so my 6 year old Silvia had a blast helping me grind the pepper in a mortar and pestle). Shave pecorino on top of the dish. Use as much as you like, but don’t over do it. Pecorino is strong stuff, and can overpower the peas if you go nuts with it. That’s it!

Notes

You could easily use this same method with java beans, or even fresh peas, though I would blanch those for about 30 seconds in boiling water, unless they are super fresh.

7.8.1.2
2

https://thedinnerwinner.com/spring-snap-peas-with-pecorino/

Nutrition

Calories

579 cal

Fat

37 g

Carbs

37 g

Protein

22 g

Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info