The Funky Kitchen

For Christmas, Mr got me a low profile mortar and pestle (he certainly knows how to make me swoon), it’s so awesome! With the pestle being a full opposite of the mortar, the whole bowl is a grinding surface. Needless to say we’ve been grinding spices like nobody’s business at our house.

Along with the gorgeous mortar and pestle came Bite Me Too, Julie Albert & Lisa Gnat’s follow up to their first cookbook, Bite Me. They put together a cookbook that is really fun to read: a little bit sassy, with playful pictures, and lots of fun and funky recipes. The Stacked Sushi Bowls I made?   They were very loosely based on the stacked sushi recipe from their first book. I made some supremely tasty, retro fun caramel monkey bread to bring to a holiday potluck (I need to finish writing up the post for that too!). Anything I’ve pulled from their books has turned out marvelously, and when you’re talking about a cookbook, that is a beautiful thing.

Another thing that joined our house over the holidays was the game Cards Against Humanity. Mr had been looking to track it down since the fall and the copy I ordered him came in just in time for Christmas. He was so happy! It’s pretty much played like Apples to Apples (another very fun game), each round a player puts out one of the black cards, and all of the other players respond to the hypothetical question or statement with one of their white cards. The person who played the black card gets to pick which one wins and that person gets a point. It’s very sarcastic, irreverent, and has some black humor to it. Like the box cheekily says, it’s a party game for horrible people. I’ve been a little bit surprised at some of the content on the cards, I will admit that, but you can’t help but laugh at: “My plans for world domination begin with _____” answered with  ”Chainsaws for hands.”

In the end, the holiday season treated my mister and I well.  We got to spend time with our nearest and dearest, and I think that is what that time of year is all about. But after all of the celebrations, libations and feasting that come with the the end of a year and the beginning of a new one, sometimes a person needs a recovery period. So, from my shiny new cookbook, here is Julie and Lisa’s delicious twist on a Greek Salad. Fill up on veggies!

Greek Salad with Sugar Snaps

(recipe adapted from Julie Albert and Lisa Gnat’s Bite Me Too)

2 Cups sugar snap peas

1 long English cucumber

2 Cups cherry tomatoes

1 large red bell pepper

1 Cup feta cheese

1 Cup Kalamata olives

1/4 Cup olive oil

2 Tbsp lemon juice

1/2 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp Dijon mustard

1/2 tsp dried oregano

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

Directions

• Trim the ends off of the sugar snap peas and then cut them into bite size pieces (mine mostly went into thirds or halves).
• Cut the cucumber in half and remove the seeds. Dice into pieces bite size pieces.
• Halve the cherry tomatoes.
• Dice the red pepper to a size similar to the cucumber pieces.
• Cube the feta cheese, once again maintaining a relatively similar size of cube.
• Remove the pits from the olives and cut them in half.
• Combine everything in a large bowl.
• To make the vinaigrette, put all of the remaining ingredients into a jar or other resealable container and shake to emulsify,
• Dress the salad and give it a toss to mix it up.
• Munch away!

Three awesome things about this salad: (1) snap peas in salads are fantastic! (2) no offense to greens, but lately I’m loving a salad that does away with them, this salad is a great example (3) normally, I find Greek salads really oily tasting. The vinaigrette they use is bright and citrus-y but it doesn’t coat your whole mouth with oil so that you can’t taste anything else. Fantastic.

What Mr thinks this salad is “awesome! But best as a midnight snack!”

This time last year: Petite Poutine

And the year before that: Chocolate Truffle Trio

Now that the weather has sweetened and the grass has greened Trooper the Wonder Puppy and I have been spending a lot more time outside. It seems that we are of one mind about this May weather being much more clement than past months. It’s just so nice out! (When it isn’t raining…)

Trooper has developed a really adorable habit on our walks. Dandelions are his enemy. When he comes across them in his path he pounces on them and gets all snarly bounding and leaping from weed to weed, biting off the blooms, leaving the wreckage behind him.

What dandelions ever did to him, I don’t think I’ll ever know, but he sure is adorable in the process. Trooper the Wonder Puppy is a friend to gardeners and a scourge to the dandelion population.

Trooper is also very interested in salads when they smell like bacon.

Spinach and Bacon Salad with Pickled Red Onion and Feta

(adapted from Chef Michael Smith’s Kitchen: 100 of My Favorite Recipes)

For the onions:

1 Cup sugar

1 Cup apple cider vinegar

1 tsp sriracha sauce

1 tsp freshly cracked pepper

pinch of salt

1 large red onion

For the salad:

8 slices of bacon

2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp Dijon mustard

salt and pepper

12 ounces spinach

6 ounces feta cheese

Directions

• Pickle the onions first. This can be done a day ahead. In a small saucepan, boil together the sugar, apple cider vinegar, sriracha, salt and pepper.
• Cut the onion into very thin rounds (if you have a mandoline, this is the perfect time for it.
• Add the onion to the pickling liquid and continue to simmer for 2 minutes.
• Allow to cool.
• Cook the bacon in a pan, reserving 1 Tbsp of the fat once finished.
• Dice the bacon.
• Whip up a vinaigrette using the reserved bacon fat, vinegar, olive oil and dijon. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
• Toss the spinach with the vinaigrette, and then garnish it with the cooked bacon, crumbled feta cheese and some slivers of pickled red onion.

This recipe gives you way more of the pickled red onion than you need to use in the salad. It’s been really tasty to sneak into other salads, and sandwiches as well. The difference a quick pickle can make, yum! Just store what’s left of your pickled red onions in a jar in the fridge.

Normally, I’m a stickler for a salad having good toothsome crunch, and spinach isn’t really the green to use for that. Still, this salad brings together smoky, sour, sweet, salty, and briny flavors perfect for an (almost) summer day.

Mr says that the pickled red onions go really well with the vinaigrette.

This time last year: Sour Cream Ice Cream

And the year before: Roasted Butternut Squash

A few days before Easter I got a phone call from Mr’s mum. She was looking for a recipe for a curried chickpea salad; something she could whip up a batch of and keep in the fridge for a few days while bringing portions of it to work for lunch. I told her I was sure I could find something and that I’d make a batch for Easter supper, so we could try it out, and she would have some left to start off taking it for lunch.

I was pretty happy with how it turned out, as was Mr’s mum and the other Easter guests. The chickpeas take up the spicy, tangy vinaigrette really well. Next time, I would suggest a little more curry, because I would like the flavor to be a little more prevalent, but that’s just me.

There was one person who was downright unenthused about our curried chickpea salad, Mr. He’s the apple of my eye, but decidedly not a fan of chickpeas; nor does he enjoy curry. In his eyes this was pretty much salad gone wrong. Luckily, the Easter feast provided a lot of other options for him, so he could abstain from the chickpeas and the curry without missing too much of the meal.

Curried Chickpea Salad

(recipe adapted from Quick and Dirty in the Kitchen)

1/2 Cup sultanas

2 – 15 oz tins chickpeas

1 red bell pepper

2 tsp apple cider vinegar

2 Tbsp lime juice

1/4 Cup olive oil

2 tsp curry powder (I’ll increase to 1 Tbsp next time, I like a little more heat)

2 tsp maple syrup

1/2 tsp salt

1 punnett alfalfa sprouts

Directions

•  Soak the sultanas in some hot water so that they will plump up.
• Drain the tins of chickpeas and rinse them well.
• Dice the bell pepper.
• Put the three aforementioned ingredients together in a large resealable bowl.
• Add the apple cider vinegar, lime juice, olive oil, curry powder, maple syrup, and salt to a bowl and whisk together the vinaigrette.
• Drizzle the vinaigrette over the chickpea, sultana and pepper mixture, and seal the bowl. The longer you let it sit the more married the flavors will be.
• Add the alfalfa sprouts just before serving, so that they don’t get soggy, tossing to coat.
• Serve!