Another Random Salad

I just thought this was the prettiest salad. First of the cucumbers with local crumbled feta, and local black raspberries macerated with some sugar and white balsamic vinegar.

Savoy Cabbage and Beet Salad

I've been eating my vegetables, really! But sometimes it gets hard to be inspired. After about a week of a bare cupboard (due to a bit of interstate traveling) I finally went shopping and felt re-invigorated. I was thinking some kind of winter salad. I bought this huge beet, which was a challenge to grate. My food processor wouldn't really budge on it. So, I did what I knew I should have done in the first place: use my old school Mouli grater. I love this thing.

Then, after lightly toasting them, I went old school on the walnuts.

While doing so, I imbibed: kitchen gin with grapefruit syrup and seltzer.

And then I sat down to this:

After slicing the cabbage, I blanched it and put it aside. After grating the beet, I tossed it with olive oil and pomegranate balsamic, salt and pepper. Put the beets on the cabbage (I kept them separate because you know how beets are) and topped with feta and walnuts. There were other things I was envisioning, but I just didn't have the time. Between teething and a looming bedtime, having a cocktail while making this was all I could do. But you know what? That's pretty good, all in all.

Greek Roasted Lamb and Potatoes

A couple of years ago (okay, more than a couple, but hey, who's counting?) I had the extreme good luck to get a New Year's visit from my friends Eve and Adam. Eve is an incredibly talented and intuitive cook who I've learned tons from. I often wish she'd start a blog cataloguing what she eats, because it's always the best stuff. She has turned me on to so many great things, from Hog Island oysters to Seattle's finest Dan Dan Noodles. When I lived with her in Oakland, Ca., she would take me everywhere. This was her home turf. I was a New Yorker, new to the Bay Area. Her curiosity and unrelenting spirit for all things good is unparalleled. Wine and cheese, falafels stuffed with french fries, Walnut Grove's best burger joint, the Cheese Board, Berkeley Bowl and Berkeley farmer's markets are just some things that come to mind from the distant past. A few years after the Greek New Year's we had, they visited again. This time Eve packed her suitcase to fly across the country with the most incredible oysters I've ever had, Totten Virginicas. I mean, need I say more?

Back then on that New Year's Day, Eve showed me how to make a Greek New Year's Day meal. I wish I had documentation from that day so long ago, but all I have are some scattered doodles on notecards. I'm sure I've lost some nuances but I'm never disappointed, so I'm doing something right. Right now I'm nursing the first of the year's colds, so I won't go into detail, but we had a lovely local lamb roast, with lemon potatoes, creamy tzatziki, and feta. This is somewhat truncated (what? no olives??) but we relished it nonetheless.

Thanks, Eve! And, Chronia Polla!

Collard greens with raisins and feta

When you grow good greens you eat good greens. The collards and kale are still going strong and I hope they continue into the snowy months. They will certainly be in the garden next year because if they grow, I will eat them. 

Clean and chop a huge bunch of collards. Saute a good sized onion in a goodly amount of olive oil. Add the greens and some chicken stock. Let them cook a good long while, continuously adding stock so the greens braise and soften. [It took me a while to understand that collards and kale really need to be cooked well. I like crisp vegetables, but you really want them to soften or they're tough, not crisp.] So, at least twenty minutes. In the last five minutes, add some golden raisins. Go ahead, eyeball it, see how much raisin you can take. I like a bit, but I have a sweet tooth. At the end, add a good sized chunk of feta and crumble it in. 

That's a good green.