The CuisiNerd

Photo: flickr/pointnshoot

Whipped up this easy and tasty caesar dressing the other day. It’s best if you let it sit and mellow for a day or two, but it’s perfectly good right away.

Whisk together:

• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1/2 cup yogurt
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 Tablespoon Nam Pla (thai fish sauce)
• 1/2 tablespoon garlic powder (or 1 clove crushed fresh garlic)

If you want a milder garlic taste, use roasted garlic instead.

Pour over coarsely chopped Romaine lettuce, add black pepper, parmesan cheese and croutons. Repeat as necessary.

This is one of my favorite Thai summer dishes. It’s refreshing, filling, and delicious.

Take thinly sliced strips of beef and marinate in sea salt and lime juice for about an hour. Saute until cooked medium (this won’t take more than a minute or two), and then marinate in the fridge in the following dressing until chilled

Equal parts (roughly 1 tablespoon per serving) of:

• Lime juice
• Palm Sugar (I shred mine from a cake with a cheese grater)
• Nam Pla (fish sauce)
• Soy Sauce

Shake well and add:

• crushed garlic (about 1 clove per 2 servings)
• a chopped green onion
• a few sprigs of mint, chopped
• a few sprigs of cilantro, chopped

Shake again and marinate the meat.

Serve (with dressing) over top of your favorite salad ingredients, with crumbled feta and drizzled with some sweet chili sauce.

It’s springtime, so it’s time for fingerling potatoes and green onions, both of which make for a tasty and healthy potato salad!

Boil up 2 lbs fingerling potatoes (cut into bite-sized chunks) for about 10 minutes, drain, and soak in cool water.

Chop up:

• 4 green onions
• 2 cloves garlic
• a few sprigs of fresh parsley

Add 1/3 cup cider or wine vinegar and 1/3 cup olive oil and toss with the chopped stuff. Salt and pepper to taste (this will take more salt than you think it will)

You can eat this immediately, or let it sit in the fridge for about a day to allow the flavors to blend nicely.

It’s after Easter, so the fridge is probably full of leftovers. For lunch today, I made myself a lovely salad of things that are mostly in season:

• Handful of spinach (fresh from the Farmers’ Market)
• 1 Easter egg, sliced
• 2 strawberries, sliced
• some boiled beets (left over from making pink Easter eggs, but you can use canned/pickled beets here)
• feta cheese crumbles
• chopped Canadian bacon (this would be a good use for leftover Easter Ham)

I also forgot to put in some green onions (also fresh from the Farmers’ Market) and some mushrooms.

For a dressing, I continued my quest to emulate the spinach salad dressing from Jack Stack BBQ in Kansas City. I got pretty close this time:

• 1 Tbsp white vinegar
• 2 Tbsp simple syrup
• pinch ground celery seed
• pinch of salt

Ranch dressing is one of those things that is easy to make, yet it’s something folks buy premade at the store. Here’s a quick recipe that uses no unpronounceable or questionable ingredients. It’s adapted from this recipe. Units listed are proportional parts.

• 1  ground dried thyme
• 2 onion powder
• 4 garlic powder
• 6 ground pepper
• 8 seasoned salt
• 8 dried parsley

For a single batch of dressing, 1 part = 1/8 teaspoon and yields 1 tablespoon of seasoning mix for 1 pint of dressing.

To make a large batch for use later, 1 part  = 1/8 cup (2 tablespoons) and makes 1.5 cups of mix, enough for 24 batches (1.5 gallons) of dressing.

To make the dressing, mix:

• 1 Tablespoon seasoning mix
• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 1 cup of
  • • Yogurt for thick dressing (you can also use varying amounts of yogurt and whey to adjust consistency)
    • buttermilk for thin dressing
    • sour cream for dip

You can also use this seasoning mixed with bread crumbs for breading chicken.

Got this one from Margit and modified slightly, as I was making some for my friend Blaine who is on a very restricted diet at the moment as he battles a brain tumor. The diet is very rich in fresh vegetables, and this salad is a great fit (and tasty too!)

Take about 3 lbs of sweet potatoes (or just one, see my previous post) and cut into approximately 3/4″ cubes. Plop them in a large pot of boiling water and boil until tender but firm (8 minutes was a little too long and they ended up a little soft). Drain and rinse in cold water to stop the cooking process. Set aside to cool for a while (in the fridge if you have room).

Slice two or three sweet peppers of various colors (1 red, one purple in this case) and one purple onion into thin strips and chop a handful of basil as finely as you can (but don’t go overboard!)

Make a dressing consisting of 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil, 2/3 cup apple cider vinegar. Add 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 2 tablespoons chopped fresh garlic. Add 1/2 tablespoon honey (raw if you can get it) or a comparable amount of stevia and shake well. The original recipe for this calls for tossing it with a french-type dressing. I’m rather partial to Annie’s Naturals Roasted Red Pepper Vinaigrette (which is good on all kinds of things), but had to get creative this go around since Blaine’s food plan specifically says no canola oil.

Add the chopped stuff to the cubed sweet potatoes and toss with the dressing. Let it mellow for a little while in the fridge, and then enjoy with a friend or several.

Update: Sadly, Blaine lost his battle with cancer shortly before Thanksgiving of 2007. He is deeply missed by all who knew him.