Hello Friends! After the disaster which was the Pink Dawn Salad, today I am sharing a recipe for my LMNOP salad. This is not only one of my favourite summer dinners but it is also a mnemonic which will help you to make a huge variety of other great salads!
Ever stood at the supermarket wondering if you had picked up everything you needed for your salad? Or come home to realise you had forgotten a key ingredient? ‘Well, with this LMNOP salad you will never forget a single ingredient because the keys to building a great salad are as easy as ABC!
Let’s start at the very beginning – it is, after all, a very good place to start.
L is for Lettuce
In this instance, I have used cos (romaine for my American friends) but this works as well with mesclun, watercress, rocket…whatever salad green you favour!
M is for Mozzarella
Mmmmmm…I am currently OBSESSED with buffalo mozzarella and am eating it a couple of times a week! Burrata is also divine with this. But for our memory device, you can sub in any cheese you wish.
N is for Nectarines
But feel free to swap in your favourite stone fruit fo the Peaches or apricots will work here and see below as to some other fruit suggestions…
O is for Olive Oil…
And in this instance a little bit of red wine vinegar. In our mnemonic, the O equals the dressing we are going to place on our salad.
P is for Proscuitto
In this salad but for our wider application it can also stand for Protein.
Applications of the LMNOP formula
Okay, so you have seen how to make the OG version of the LMNOP salad – here are some ideas of how you can apply the formula to mix things up!
Cos + Parmesan +Apples + a creamy dressing + bacon will give you a kind of Ceasar Salad
Kale and goat’s cheese and apricots and olive oil and vinegar + chicken
Of course you can add more veggies or fruit if you wish. The photo below is the turkey and halloumi salad mentioned above with some grilled snap peas added.
The brilliance of this recipe is that it is so versatile that you could serve it you your friends or family every day for a week and no one will ever know that you are using a formula. Tasty, healthy, easy and you will never forget an ingredient again!
Enjoy and please let me know what creations you come up with using the LMNOP formula!
Hello friends! Today we are talking Thai. I love Thai food in general but I absolutely love Thai salads – my favourite is green papaya or green mango salad but a Thai beef salad or a banana blossom salad are also fine by me. I love their freshness and zing! So I had high hopes for a Thai inspired salad with a lovely name – Pink Dawn Salad. This comes from Good Housekeepings World Cookery (1972). Imagine this as a salad – the perfect mix of colours becoming the perfect Thai mix of sweet, salt, hot and sour!
Gorgeous huh? And now that I’ve set your expectations….let’s take a look at the salad. I mean, I knew from the ingredients that it was not going to be a typical Thai salad but it was definitely touted as such by the press back in the 1970’s. I found an article from back in 1978 in the Vancouver Sun that contains this same recipe which certainly implies if not downright states that this is an authentic Thai Salad. Anyway, here it is…
Hmm…not great is it?
There was nothing wrong with the Pink Dawn Salad. I like eggs, tomatoes and prawns. I’m not that keen on bananas but Holy likes them…
Between the two of us, we ate it all. It was just…meh. Boring…bland…not really cohesive. Not a bit Thai. And only marginally pink.
I’m calling a fail on the Pink Dawn Salad – the great name did not equate to great flavour. And I had to skin tomatoes which is something I find weirdly repulsive.
Pink Dawn Salad – The Recipe
Here it is…although I can’t recommend that you give it a try.
If you are looking for a good Thai salad, I made a Crisp Chilli Whitebait and Green Mango Salad from Australian Gourmet Traveller a few days ago and it was heaven!!!! It was actually this on a plate! Recipe here: https://www.gourmettraveller.com.au/recipe/mains/crisp-chilli-whitebait-and-green-mango-salad-10838/
Autumn is truly here. Most days are bright and sunny days but with a little chill in the air to let you know that winter is on its way. The nights are getting cold and darkness is falling a little bit earlier each day. It is very pretty when I am out on my daily walk with the dogs. And it is perfect weather for an Autumnal Salad.
Autumn salad not only makes the use of one of my favourite autumn ingredients, chestnuts but the colours of the dish are meant to resemble the colours of autumn.
One of the paradoxes of living in iso is that, just when I have more time to cook, half the time I can’t be bothered. I feel like I can’t remember a time when I didn’t feel anxious or scared. And whilst I am trying to enjoy the pleasures of the little things such as the turning of the leaves, TBH, a lot of the time I just want to sleep and/or play mindless games on my phone. Another weird thing is that I am sleeping more than ever but constantly feel tired.
Anyway, for the days when I am feeling blah, this salad is a lifesaver. Not only does it only take around ten minutes to prepare but Autumn Salad looks so colourful and pretty, is healthy and can be varied to fit what you have in the fridge or what you feel like eating on the day!
Back in the days before the ‘rona I used to regularly stock up on little vacuum packets of roasted chestnuts from the Japanese department store Daiso. I usually have a few of these in my pantry to make this salad and other things requiring chestnuts. I used my last pack to make this one so, for future rounds, it looks like I will be roasting my own chestnuts! Good thing they are in season! This will take this recipe out of the 10-minute realm but it will be worth it!
The Recipe
The original recipe for the Autumn Salad comes from the May 2003 Delicious magazine. The basic recipe is this:
However, the joy of this salad lies in the variations.
Make it vegetarian
Substitute the Proscuitto for Blue Cheese (This is my favourite).
Throw in some chopped up pears if you like. Fresh or dried, both a great!
Make it vegan
Substitute the Proscuitto for Roast Pumpkin or Sweet Potato
You can serve this Autumn Salad on its own or for a larger meal, it is fabulous with a baked potato, loaded with butter and chives,
Today we are celebrating the Ides of March with, what else but, a Caesar Salad. The 15th of March may not have been a good day for old Julius C but, any day in my book is a good day to eat this classic American salad!
The Waldorf Salad may be the funniest American salad but the Caesar salad has to the most highly accoladed:
In the 1940’s Gourmet Magazine called it ‘the gastronomic highlight of the current moment’
In 1953 it was hailed as ‘the greatest recipe to originate in the Americas in 50 years’ by the International Society of Epicures.
Julia Childs called it “a sensation of a salad from coast to coast”
High praise for some dressed lettuce leaves!!!
What is Caesar Salad?
I feel like this is a little bit like trying to explain what is water. Caesar Salad is everywhere. And everyone “knows” what it is. And everyone has their own recipe. But let’s try to break it down a little bit….
Caesar Salad was created in 1924 by Caesar Cardini in his restaurant in Tijuana Mexico. The OG version was romaine (cos) lettuce leaves dressed in a mixture of garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, egg yolk, Worchestershire sauce, anchovies and parmesan cheese, topped with a lone crostini, black pepper and more parmesan cheese.
No bacon
No poached eggs
No multiple croutons
I love this more austere version of what we have come to see as a “typical” Caesar Salad.
Although I am not averse to any of the above and, indeed I usually include all of them when I make a “Caesar Salad” my purist heart balks at adding
Chicken
Kale
Prawns
Avocado, or
Lobster
I love all of those things. And they all have their place. But that place is not in my Caesar Salad. And I will silently judge you if you choose to give them a place in yours.
But I will not be so quiet if you give me, or choose for yourself, a so-called Caesar salad that contains pasta, pesto, quinoa, is served in wonton cups or comes atop of pizza. Because, those things maybe something. But what they are not is the ingredients of a goddamn Caesar Salad!!!
You will need to beware the Ides O’ March if any of those ends up in my Caesar!
By the way, the Cardini restaurant still exists and if you so desire you can drop by and have one of the ensaladeros make you a Caesar salad at your table just like they did back in the day!
Which has made that restaurant in Tijuana top five in my bucket list of places to eat.
If this damn virus ever abates and we can all travel again.
I Digress
Skip over this bit if you are only interested in Caesar Salad
Can we just stop and talk about Covid-19 for a mo?
We haven’t formally been told that we have to, but my work is encouraging everyone to work from home. There was a really weird atmosphere on Friday as everyone was packing up their stuff before heading home. It was like it was Christmas in that we felt like it might be a while before we saw each other again. But like Christmas with all the joy sucked out of it.
They’ve cancelled the Grand Prix which was meant to be in Melbourne this weekend and the Comedy Festival. They cancelled the Robbie Williams concert on Saturday but not the New Order concert I went to on the same night. By the way, the icing on the cake for that show was, as the house lights came up at the end of the gig, the song ushering us all out of the venue was REM’s It’s The End of The World As We Know It.
You can’t buy hand sanitizer, toilet paper or tissues for love or money. The supermarket shelves are largely empty of all non-perishable items.
Because I will be working from home for the indefinite future I went online tonight to buy a monitor that I can plug my work laptop into so that whilst keeping myself safe from the coronavirus I am not giving myself massive eyestrain. At one point I was trying to log on to our biggest office supplies company on two different laptops and my phone and it took FOREVER to finally make my purchase. I’m sensing monitors may join toilet paper and Graham Gene Potter on Australia’s most-wanted list!
What is happening in all your countries in reaction to the virus? Are you scared? Worried? Bored?
I am about 1% worried for my personal safety. I am mildly asthmatic so I am already slightly compromised on a respiratory front I am more scared for my mother who is obvs older and massively asthmatic.
I am also really annoyed that people have responded to this in the way they have in relation to panic buying.
I have been listening to the wonderful podcast American Hysteria recently and so much of what I am seeing resonates with what I have heard on there. Can we please all just calm the farm down in this?
And just to lighten the tone? Mystery solved!
Who, Who Was Caesar?
Caesar Cardini was an Italian immigrant to the United States who, along with his brother Alex, opened restaurants in San Diego and Tijuana. If you recall, the United States was under Prohibition from 1920 through to 1933. Mexico was not. So many of the rich and famous, including many Hollywood stars, would cross the border to eat and, more particularly, drink. Caesar’s became a popular hangout for these people.
Legend has it, that the restaurant was particularly busy one Fourth of July weekend. Kitchen supplies were running out so Caesar had to make a salad from what was on hand…ecco! Caesar Salad was born.
Then, as now, the Caesar salad was made tableside for a little bit of dramatic flair.
Caesar Cardini died in 1956, but as they say, the candle burned out long before the legend ever did!
The Recipe
I used a recipe from Taste for my Caesar and I can heartily recommend it.
recipe via taste.com.au
For a more austere version, probably close to the OG version, I can also recommend Grace Kelly’s Caesar Salad as featured in Silver Screen Suppers as featured in Recipes For Rebels by all-round internet good guy Greg Swenson.
Variations
There are probably a million recipes for Caesar salad on the internet. TBH, a lot of them, as mentioned in the intro above are not “Caesar” Salads.
Choose wisely!
Modern Day Caesar
There are not that many modern-day Caesar’s.
There’s the Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan and of course, the original Joker, Cesar Romano. But, today of all days, there can only be one Caesar for us to celebrate!
To me, watermelon is an icon of summer and happiness. And I love feta cheese. So I am unsure why I was initially so resistant to the idea of a watermelon and feta salad. But the minute I tried it, I realised how wrong I had been. It is DELICIOUS!!!! And a really good way to use up a little bit of watermelon you may have left in your fridge.
It is winter and dark and grey here in Melbourne at the moment so this salad is a mere memory of sunshine. However, for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere, I hope this becomes as much a staple on your summer table as it is now on mine!
Before we even get onto the taste, let’s talk about how my Watermelon and Feta salad looks!.
It is such a lovely contrast of colours – the deep pink of the watermelon against the white of the feta, the deep blackish purple of the olives, the lighter purple of the onions and the bright green of the leaves.
And as for the taste? It will get your tastebuds dancing lust ike this!
The girl in the white mini dress is the watermelon…it’s the first thing you notice and she’s bringing the sweetness.
The girl in the leafy bikini is the feta. Also up front but bringing a bit more complexity by adding some salty creaminess to the mix.
Blue Speedo guy is the red onion. He’s adding some pow!
Sitting down girl is the olives – she’s bringing some more salt and a briny oiliness and somehow keeping all the others on beat.
White bikini in the background? She’s the leaves – she’s bascially a supporting player for the front four
And finally, orange Speedo’s? He’s the sprinkle of fresh dill and chilli flakes….not noticeable all the time…but when you do…it’s memorable!
Add them all together and you’ve got a party just ready to happen!
This is a fun salad and if you aren’t into the beach party breakdown I have given you, look at some other ways people have had fun with it:
