Thai-Style Radish and Watermelon Salad with Sizzling Ginger-Lemongrass Tofu

Clearly I am fickle because I just found my new favorite watermelon salad.  And I think I declared my previous favorite (Hugh Acheson's Watermelon-Feta-Arugula Salad with Serrano Chili Vinaigrette) about two weeks ago.  So it had a short but well-deserved reign.  Both watermelon salads have a wonderful balance of sweet, spicy and savory, but this one won by a nose.  I think it was the addition of the Thai basil and radishes.  I really liked the crunch and the slight peppery flavor of the radishes, as well as the peppery fragrance of the Thai basil.  And the fish sauce.  I don't know.  It just works so well.  I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about the radishes with the watermelon, but it worked.  It's light and refreshing, but full of punch Asian flavors.  And Asian flavors beat feta cheese for me 9 times out of 10.  I really enjoy feta cheese but I love fish sauce.  After eating a fairly heavy meal at The Marrow last night (duck schnitzel, crispy kale with scallops and bone marrow with uni anyone?) and greasy Chinese at my desk for lunch, I really needed something light for dinner.  This salad couldn't have been more delicious.  Note to those who don't love spice - you're going to want to cut back on the amount of sambal oelek and chili or seed your chili prior to throwing it in.  Just like Hugh Acheson's recipe, there is some fairly serious kick to this dish.  Another note, if you're a Top Chef nerd like I am, it's kind of funny to compare recipes between Tom Colicchio and Hugh Acheson since they are both judges on the show and Hugh was a contestant on Top Chef Masters a few seasons ago.

We served the watermelon salad with sizzling ginger-lemongrass tofu.  We had a block of handmade firm tofu from The Bridge that I picked up at Fairway that I wanted to use and I wanted something different.  So we went with another recipe from Food & Wine that sounded like it would be a good pairing with the watermelon salad.  If you can find tofu from The Bridge in your local Whole Foods I would highly recommend it.  It had a really nice firm, but still creamy texture and it had more flavor than your average block of supermarket tofu.  It was really good.  I can't wait to try it in other dishes.  As for this dish, it was good.  I'm always surprised how much flavor a dish can pick up by just sizzling some aromatics.  And it did go very well with the watermelon salad.  I would totally make them together again in the future.

Recipes after the jump!

Corn and Pepper Jack Quesadillas with Radish and Cabbage Slaw and Mexican Tomato Salad

I'm not quite sure how this happened (because it was not intentional), but this week we did Meatless Monday and then ended up with a Meatless Tuesday.  I hadn't actually thought about the fact that we were serving vegetarian meals two nights in a row.  Granted, it would not have made much of a difference because I wanted to use up our corn and tomatoes from the farmers' market.  It just kind of happened...  And when you buy as much produce from the farmers' market as I did this past Sunday, a few vegetarian meals are inevitable.  I have another vegetarian meal on tap for later in the week.  Don't worry though - tonight for dinner we will be making pork schnitzel.

I have to admit that this dinner came together kind of randomly.  We picked up tortillas and a shredded pepper jack blend this weekend at Trader Joes, so quesadillas sounded like a natural use for both of those ingredients.  And I had one ear of corn left over from Monday's Corn on the Cob with Lime Salt, so I figured I would throw some corn in the filling to the quesadillas.  And I got the idea to add mayonnaise to the filling from a recipe I found on Epicurious.  I was a little skeptical but I went with it and it really worked.  I had tomatoes to use, so I was going to make a salsa, but I decided to make a pico de gallo-esque tomato salad instead.  We also had radishes left over from the farmer's market so I wanted to make some sort of cabbage and radish salad/slaw of sorts.  So we ransacked the fridge (and I picked up some new cabbage from the grocery store since ours had seen better days) and we threw in a little bit of this and a little bit of that and made dinner.  I thought that considering how random my meal planning was this time, dinner turned out surprisingly delicious.  The brightness of the slaw and the acidity and faint heat of the tomato salad paired beautifully with the richness of the quesadillas.

Recipes after the jump!

Mindy Fox's Peanut Soba, Cabbage and Chicken Salad

This recipe was one of the many I found (and bookmarked) at Serious Eats in the past few weeks.   Until recently I read random reviews and taste tests at Serious Eats, but I never tried out their recipes.  Then I realized that they have some pretty awesome recipes.  Oops.  Take this recipe for instance.  I have never heard of Mindy Fox (and I still don't know who she is), but Serious Eats had two of her recipes on the site, both of which I was really excited to try in the future.  We just happened to get around to making this one first because we made asparagus for lunch yesterday and her other recipe on Serious Eats is for a raw asparagus salad.  That might be a little too much asparagus in one day for Alex.

The thing I liked most about this recipe is that it's hearty and filling, but still feels light because of the cabbage and radish salad.  The noodles get a little gummy once you toss them in the peanut sauce, but what do you expect when you use a peanut butter-based sauce?  Peanut butter is gummy by definition and the noodles are starchy, which just gums things up more.  We tried lightly oiling the cooking water for the noodles and then rinsed them well after cooking, but they still have the tendency to form one sticky noodle mass once you toss with the peanut sauce.  Luckily, I have no problem with sticky noodle masses provided that the flavors are good.  And once you toss the noodles with the cabbage salad the lime juice dressing from the cabbage helps to loosen things up a bit.  I guess my other complaint would be how complicated this salad is.  It takes two pots (or one if you cook the noodles in the same pot that the chicken poached in, which is what we did, but you still need to rinse the pot out/wash it between uses), a few mixing bowls, a mandoline (to shred the cabbage and to thinly slice the radishes), a knife, a mini food processor/blender, a colander and so on and so forth.  Because each element is made individually it doubles the amount of work.  However, keeping the cabbage-radish salad and the herbs separate from the noodles until the very end makes the dish feel fresher and lighter.  So I guess the sheer number of dirty dishes is something that you just have to accept and deal with if you want to make the salad.  In the end it is worth it, but it does make cleaning up something of a process. 

Recipe after the jump!

Jicama, Radish and Pepita Salad

I love this salad.  It is everything I wanted it to be - fresh, bright and clean.  The flavors work together really nicely to give you a wonderfully refreshing salad with a hint of sweetness (frmo the honey and jicama) to counteract the slight peppery flavor of the radishes and the salty flavor of the roasted salted pepitas and Cotija cheese.  It also has great texture (lots of different types of crunch).  I was really happy with it.  And I know I will make it again because it is exactly the type of salad that I crave all spring/summer long.  In a throwdown between this salad and my other favorite "Mexican" salad (Mache and Avocado Salad with Tortilla Strips), I'm not sure exactly which one would win.  They are both delicious and easy to make, but they are very different salads.  I'm going to call it a tie because I'm not sure I could choose a winner (and because I will definitely be making both salads for years to come).

Recipe after the jump!

Pan-Roasted Duck Breasts with Butter-Braised Radishes, Kohlrabi and Brussels Sprouts

 

I have been DYING to make this recipe for a very very long time.  I absolutely LOVE so many of the components - duck is one of my very favorite meats, and brussels sprouts are amazing.  As far as I am concerned, radishes and kohlrabi are okay, but I figured if you butter-braised them they would be amazing too.  And my God were they.    But more on that in a bit.  We took a few shortcuts while cooking the veggies because I was way too lazy to use (and then clean) all of those pans.  I think the recipe as written called for two separate pots of boiling salted water and two saute pans.  And that was just for the veggies.  The duck recipe called for a pan, a bowl, a baking sheet and a cooking rack to go on top of the baking sheet.  If we had used all of the pans Thomas Keller wanted, they would have taken over our entire kitchen.  Actually, I'm not even sure we have that many pans and pots.  And we certainly don't have space on our stove top for that many.  Thomas Keller's recipes are flawless, but they are far from simple.  Believe it or not, this was one of the less labor-intensive recipes.

I am obsessed with this dish.  It never ever would have occurred to me to butter braise radishes and serve it with kohlrabi and brussels sprouts.  I was worried that the kohlrabi and the brussels sprouts would be soggy and flavorless since they were blanched without any seasoning, but they were totally delicious.  And the duck was so good.  The skin was perfectly rendered and the meat was tender and juicy.  We have never rendered the fat out this low and slow before throwing the duck in the oven, but the cooking method worked really well.  The meat was perfectly cooked.  The recipe called for orange zest to be grated over the duck while it marinated, but we didn't have any oranges in the apartment so we just skipped that step.  The next time we make the duck (and there will be a next time), I'll make sure to pic up some oranges so I can see how that affects the flavor.  This was a great hearty and rich winter meal with enough butter to make it feel decadent, but enough veggies to make the dish feel balanced.  I loved it.  Sure it had a ton of steps (and necessitated a lot of clean up), but I thought the end result was well worth it.  Once again, Thomas Keller has proved that he is an absolute genius and I am just a baby in comparison.  And once again I am reminded that we really need to make more recipes from this cookbook ASAP.

Recipes after the jump!

Radish Butter

 When I studied abroad in France I could never understand the French proclivity for eating radishes with butter.  I just didn't get it.  Granted, at the time I thought radishes were pretty nasty, bitter, peppery little creatures.   My dad used to eat them at home with just a sprinkle of table salt, which I found equally baffling.  But over the past few years I have discovered that radishes aren't so bad.  And from time to time, they're actually quite good.  I would never order a plate of radishes and butter.  Gabrielle Hamilton serves radishes and butter at Prune (which I have briefly considered ordering because it is Prune after all) but I just don't like radishes that much.  With that said, this Radish Butter was one of the recipes that first drew my eye in The Lee Bros. Simple Fresh Southern.  I have no idea why it drew my eye, but it looked so pretty in the picture and the recipe was so simple.  Plus I love how pretty the radishes are at the farmers' market.  I literally have to seriously restrain myself from buying them they are so pretty.  And I find that I have a need to try ingredients that I don't particularly like over and over again until I either decide I like them after all, or I finally admit defeat.  It's kind of like poking at a bruise (and yes, I do that too) - you keep poking at it and it keeps hurting, but somehow you expect a different result.

I think the key to this recipe is to use some really nice butter.  We picked up some butter from Ronnybrook Farm, which was delicious on its own and could only become better with the addition of radishes fresh from the CSA.  It was butter with a slight peppery kick and crunch.  Alex said it grew on him, but I thought it was pretty delicious from the start.  I thought that the butter really improved after we let it sit for 10-15 minutes while we fried up our Fried Green Tomatoes (more on those later).  The flavors really melded.  I think part of that was because our butter and radishes weren't exactly at room temperature when we mixed them together so as they sat they warmed up and the flavors intensified.  Yum.

Recipe after the jump!

Misticanza

I am a big believer that sometimes you just need particular things.  Sometimes you just need a big huge bowl of salad.  Other times you need a big, greasy burger and french fries.  Sometimes you really just need a fabulous pair of shoes, but that is beside the point.  I guess I am am a believer that you should eat everything in moderation, but if you really need or want something, I say go for it.  While my wants/needs aren't always healthy, I figure they balance out okay in the end (although you periodically have to do the "are my pants getting snug?" readjustment).  Take today's lunch for example.  After feasting on chicken, vegetables, and bread from last night's Roasted Chicken with Vegetables, what I really wanted for lunch was a big bowl of salad.  And some hummus and pita to round the whole lunch out.  The craving for salad was helped along by the knowledge that for tonight's dinner we were going to clog our arteries with some pork belly adobo.  So I started looking through random cookbooks for ideas on what kind of salad to make based on the ingredients we have in the fridge, and I found this recipe for misticanza in Molto Gusto.  I love arugula salads, and we had both radishes and fennel in the fridge so I was totally on board.  Luckily Alex agreed to go along for the ride.  Given the combination of ingredients we knew that there was little chance that we would love the salad, but I would give it a solid like.  It was different.  And interesting.  But you had to make sure you got a little bit of everything in every bite, because the whole was more than the sum of its parts.  Each individual part was a little boring, but together it was a nice salad with an interesting combination of ingredients.

Recipe after the jump!

Beef Tacos with Radish and Avocado Salsa

So it seems that I like radishes.  A lot.  Who knew?  After we made (and loved) the Sugar Snap Pea Salad with Radishes, Mint and Ricotta Salata I decided to pick up some more radishes in the hope that we would get more sugar snap peas from our CSA.  But there were no sugar snap peas to be had last week, so I had to figure out something to do with our radishes.  This recipe was one of those recipes that just seemed to come together perfectly.  I had already defrosted a nice skirt steak and happened to have just picked up cilantro, scallions, and corn tortillas the other day.  The only thing we needed was an avocado.

Steak tacos are one of my absolute favorite quick and easy meals. Skirt steak and hanger steak are both so inherently flavorful that they make fantastic tacos. I have made several different variations - on the blog alone I have made Skirt Steak Fajitas with Lime and Pepper, Six-Spice Hanger Steak Tacos with Pickled Onions, and Skirt Steak Tacos with Roasted Tomato Salsa.  This version was delicious.  I loved the salsa.  It had very little heat, but a ton of flavor.  And the combination of the avocados and radishes gave the tacos some really nice textures to go with the bold flavors of the steak and lime juice.

Recipe after the jump!

Sugar Snap Pea Salad with Radishes, Mint and Ricotta Salata

Planning out our menus around our CSA produce can get a little exhausting.  First of all, there is always at least one crucial ingredient for every recipe that we are missing, which requires a trip to the grocery store.  We have so much produce, but as we are trying not to buy anymore produce from the grocery store we are inevitably missing a crucial herb or something else.  For instance, we had everything for this recipe - the radishes, the mint, and the sugar snap peas were all from the CSA - except for the ricotta salata.  We probably have 10 types of cheese in the fridge right now, just not ricotta salata.  Bummer.  But considering this recipe is using up so much of our CSA produce I can't complain too much.

We served our Sugar Snap Pea Salad with some wild king salmon that we prepared using Tyler Florence's Salt and Pepper Salmon recipe - which incidentally is one of my absolute favorite ways to simply prepare a nice piece of salmon.  And it was a fabulous meal.  I loved the salad - it was so fresh and seasonal - and it paired wonderfully with the salmon.  I always like sugar snap peas, but the combination of the sugar snap peas, radishes, mint and ricotta salata just blew me away.  What a wonderful summer dinner.

Recipe after the jump!

Seared Radish Crostini and Wilted Mustard Greens Salad with Bacon

The past two weeks radishes have been part of my haul from my CSA.  I don't know about you but I generally find radishes pretty to look at, but not all that palatable.  I don't mind them thinly sliced in salads, but their peppery bite is something that I'm not altogether sure I enjoy in big moutfuls.  My father used to eat raw radishes and scallions with just a sprinkle of salt - something I will never be able to do.  Since I don't really enjoy the taste of raw scallions (although I do love the crunch), I decided to try roasting them.  Depending on the ingredient, roasting can either mellow flavors out or intensify them.  In this case, I was hoping that roasting the radishes would mellow them out and make them a touch sweeter.  About a month ago I saw a recipe on the NY Times website that called for roasting radishes and making crostini out of them so I have been saving it for the day when I had enough radishes from the CSA to whip up some crostini.  To go with the crostini I decided to make a salad with another part of our CSA haul - half a pound of mustard greens.  I'm not overly familiar with mustard greens, so rather than go at it blindly I decided to hit Epicurious for some recipes and inspiration.

I was very happy with tonight's dinner.  And by extension I am super happy with our CSA Chubby Bunny.  All of the produce we picked up yesterday was super fresh and super delicious.  The radish crostini was really interesting.  I loved the combination of the toasted bread, the nutty and buttery bagna cauda-based sauce, and the roasted radishes.  I might very well be a radish convert.  I do think that the recipe makes an enormous amount of sauce for the amount of radishes it calls for, but that's ok with me.  I used a levain boule from Balthazar as the base for my crostini and it worked out fabulously.  I thought that the salad was also pretty fabulous.  The balsamic and the onions made the salad slightly sweet, and the bacon gave it a nice porky, salty flavor.  Hurray CSA and hurray dinner.

Recipes after the jump!