Salad with Orange Vinaigrette and Honey-Toasted Pecans

We are three weeks into this year's CSA, and so naturally, we are drowning in greens.

Spinach. Arugula. Mustard. Lettuces of every kind. Literally pounds of these greens have made their way into our fridge over the past few weeks. And though I have definitely gotten creative about adding greens into just about every meal and blanching spinach to freeze for later, with the hot weather we've been having (it's been in the nineties all week), we've been enjoying a bunch of salads, too.

Or maybe I should say, many servings of this one salad.

Because it's pretty much the only one I've been making.

But yes, it is that good.

You can sub any protein for the boiled eggs--grilled chicken or shrimp would be equally delightful, I'm sure, probably even better than the egg. But eggs don't need to be defrosted before you use them, so. You know.

A note on nuts: The DDH and I are not particularly big nut eaters. Neither of us go out of our way to put them on anything, we don't snack on them plain, and please for the love of all that is holy, keep them the heck away from our baked goods.

But the thing about CSAs is they make you try things you don't normally eat. In this case, our farmer's father has a bunch of pecan trees on his land, and so pecans regularly make their way into our CSA bags, especially early in the season when there isn't much else on offer. Except greens, obviously.

And it turns out that if you toast them in honey and butter, even a die-hard pecan-hater like the DDH will gobble them down. So while the dressing is all well and good for any salad, the pecans really make it special. And delicious.

Salad with Orange Vinaigrette and Honey-Toasted Pecans

Boil eggs, approximately 2 per person being served.

In a small bowl or convenient dressing shaker, combine:

1/4 cup orange juice
2 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 Tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons honey
1/8 teaspoon black pepper

Whisk or shake until thoroughly combined. Set aside. 

In a different small bowl, put some pecans, shelled. Ours arrive cracked and blown, so I still have to pick out all the shells and I just do this until I get bored. But if you like measurements, aim for about a quarter cup.

Add enough honey to coat the pecans. It's about a 2:1 ratio, so for a 1/4 cup pecans I use about 1/8 cup (aka 2 Tablespoons) honey. But this is all sort of to taste, so feel free to use a little more or a little less.

Mix the honey and pecans until thoroughly coated.

In a small skillet, heat about 2 Tablespoons butter over medium heat.

Once the butter is melted and foamy, add the pecans. Cook until browned and toasty.  There's a fine line between a browned pecan and a burnt pecan. Your best tool here is actually your nose; the pecans will just start to smell pecan-y and toasty. Stir them about; you'll notice the underside should be a little darker than the top. Give them another thirty seconds or so after your stir, then turn off the heat.

Separate your greens--spinach is especially good here, or the sort of thing called "premium greens mix" at the grocery store, but really just any sort of salad green will do--into each person's bowl. Top each serving with two sliced eggs and some pecans. Drizzle the dressing over the lot of it. Enjoy.

No-Bake Strawberry Pie

Chocolate. Strawberries. Cream.

A magical combination. And even better--you don't ever have to turn on the oven to get it.

If you're looking for a way to showcase fresh spring berries in a quick, creamy, refreshing dessert, this recipe is for you.

Even with whipping fresh cream and photodocumenting the process (and a Very Important Pause to make sure my Wordfeud didn't time out and force me to forfeit to the DDH again), making the pie took exactly an hour (though it is supposed to chilled for thirty minutes before serving).

You can use whipped topping from the freezer aisle if you must, but trust me that freshly whipped cream is worth the extra step.

Yum.

No-Bake Fresh Strawberry Pie
Adapted from Cooking Light May 2012.
Serves eight.

Process approximately 2 cups chocolate animal crackers or other chocolate cookies or wafers in your food processor until finely ground.

Goodbye, little animals.

Ground cookies.

Melt 3 oz. chocolate chips or finely chopped baking chocolate and 2 tsp. coconut oil in the microwave for 45 seconds or until chocolate is melted, stirring every 15 seconds. (You can use canola or vegetable oil instead of coconut oil, but then you don't need to melt it. Just stir it into the melted chocolate before adding to the cookie crumbs.)

Chocolate.

Plus coconut oil.

Add melted chocolate mixture to the cookie crumbs in the food processor.

Process until well combined. At this stage, it looks like nothing so much as damp dirt.
 

Delicious, delicious dirt.

Gently press the mixture into the bottom and sides of a greased 9-inch pie plate and freeze for 15 minutes or until set. Mine was very crumbly and did not hold together particularly well. Once set, it did hold together better, but still makes a crumbly crust--which is not a bad thing, in my opinion, for a cookie pie crust.

Don't forget to grease the pan.

Dirt pie.

Beat 6 oz. cream cheese, 1/3 cup powdered sugar, and 3/4 tsp. vanilla extract on medium speed until smooth.

Cream cheese, sugar, vanilla.

Smooth and fluffy.

Place 1 cup heavy cream in a large bowl. Add a few splashes of vanilla extract and, if desired, several tablespoons sugar. I think the pie is sweet enough to use unsweetened cream, but do it to taste.

Yes, this is 2 cups. The recipe calls for two cups whipped, and 2 cups unwhipped makes way more than that. Luckily, I had extra strawberries and used the extra cream for dipping.

 

 

Vanilla cream.

To do this, place the cream in a bowl and beat on medium high speed for about five minutes. At first, it will sort of splash around and make a mess. Then, it starts to froth, and then it becomes a thicker liquid. Keep going. It will reach the melty-whipped-cream stage. Keep going. This pretty much always takes right at about five minutes. You will know when it's done--it will keep its peaked shape when you pull the blades out and will be thick like, well, whipped cream.

Like this.

Once you have your whipped cream, fold it into the cream cheese mixture. Plop about half of the whipped cream on top of the cream cheese. Dig a spatula under the cream cheese and fold it up over the whipped cream. Do this several times, then add the rest of the whipped cream and repeat a few more times.

Scoop and fold.

Whipped cream folded into cream cheese won't be thoroughly blended, exactly, just mixed together loosely.

Carefully spread the cream mixture over the crust and set in the freezer while you do the next bit.

Ready for the freezer.

Microwave 2 Tbs. strawberry jam or jelly for 10 seconds or until softened. Add 1/2 tsp. lemon juice and 1 Tbs. fruit-flavored liqueur (optional) such as Chambord. Whisk until smooth.

Jam in the microwave.

Melted and stirred with lemon juice.

Add 1 pound strawberries, hulled and halved (you can leave very small berries whole)

Halved.

and toss to combine.

Yum.

 Pull the pie back out of the freezer and arrange the berry halves on top. Chill for 30 minutes before serving.

Somehow I neglected to take a picture of the finished pie! In my defense, I still had dip to mix, veggies to chop, and agendas to print before getting to my meeting.

And there were not any leftovers.

Roasted Asparagus

I've waxed eloquent on asparagus before, so I'll spare you a lengthy introduction to this pinnacle of springtime vegetable perfection.

The best asparagus recipes are simple, allowing the bright green flavor of the asparagus to shine through.

Which means the best asparagus recipes are easy as pie (I have to assume that saying refers to eating pie rather than making it, as making pie crust is definitely difficult).

Say you turn the oven on to preheat while you make some biscuit dough, only to have the darn thing finish before the dough is done rising.

And say it's a warm May day and you hate to waste all that heat (and raise your gas bill) for naught.

And say you have some asparagus languishing in your vegetable drawer and not much else in the way of ingredients anywhere.

I would say you should roast the asparagus.

Simple Roasted Asparagus

Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

Take a 9x13 pan (or whatever size seems appropriate for your asparagus stash) and drizzle a bit of extra virgin olive oil in it.

My bottle's almost empty, so this is pretty sparse.

Wash your asparagus and snap off the tough ends. (The ends of the asparagus (not the pointy tops but the flat ends) are tough and woody and should be trimmed. You can take the bunch, lob off the last couple inches with a knife, and hope you got all the woody bits and aren't wasting too much tender tasty stuff. Or, you can grab each piece a few inches from the bottom and bend. The asparagus will naturally snap at the border of the woody part and the tender part. Voila! Perfect asparagus spears.)

Lay the asparagus in your pan with the tender tops in the middle and the thicker ends toward the edges.

Tops in the middle.

Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Perhaps add a few peeled, crushed garlic cloves (they will flavor the asparagus and get sweet themselves with roasting--so delicious).

Could use more garlic.

Pop the pan in your preheated oven for about 10-15 minutes. The asparagus should darken and shrivel a bit, becoming fork tender, but not burn. Although, because of the strings, you'll still probably need a knife to cut them into bite size pieces.

I wish the lighting weren't different in the pictures so you
could see the difference more clearly. I have no idea why
the light changed in the course of ten minutes, but it did.

Up close and personal.

Enjoy!

Simple spring supper.

Grilled Bacon-Wrapped Asparagus

One of the culinary specialties of the region of Germany where I lived was white asparagus (weisser Spargel). During Spargelzeit (asparagus season), every meal at every restaurant in the city featured different preparations of this treat. Restaurants ran special Spargelmenus featuring secret Spargel recipes, and the local grocery store's Spargelzeit jingle (Oh die schoene Spargelzeit!) is still stuck in my head.

Asparagus--white, green, or purple--may be one of the last truly seasonal vegetables in the modern grocery store. It's everywhere for a few months in spring, and then--gone. We always ate asparagus for Easter dinner, but you couldn't have replicated the dish for Christmas if you wanted to, because there was just no asparagus to be had.

We're in the midst of die Spargelzeit in Tulsa, and the DDH and I cooked up this vegetable in a way that was completely new to us and, we though, utter genius...until I posted it on Facebook and apparently everybody around here does this already.

Still delicious.

Grilled Bacon-Wrapped Asparagus

Our version contains only two ingredients:

Bacon

and

Asparagus

We took small bundles of asparagus--ours were pretty thin, so maybe half a dozen per bundle--and wrapped them in three strips of bacon each, securing the bacon with toothpicks:

Asparagus in a blanket.

We greased our handy-dandy grill basket (which saves us from the tragedy of losing bacon between the grill slats), plopped it on the hot grill (medium high), and shut the lid.

Little pigs all in a row.

Periodically we opened the lid to turn our bacon-wrapped babies.

Unfortunately, reality bit. After about ten minutes of grilling, we ran out of propane. And even though we have not one, but two spare propane tanks taking up space on the back porch...they were both empty, too.

So we took them inside and finished them off on the stove.

Not quite done yet.

They were delicious! Green and sweet and rich and salty all at once.

We liked them just plain, but Facebook friends apparently doctor them up different ways. Try soaking the asparagus in some olive oil, salt, and/or pepper before you wrap them, or rubbing chile powder or brown sugar into the bacon before using it. You can try more or fewer asparagus stalks or bacon strips per bundle, too.

Enjoy!