Never doubt Jim.
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We’re making homemade meatballs this evening. 50/50 ground beef and pork, minced garlic, parsley, basil, homemade bread crumbs, parmigiano, salt and pepper.
Agree with Jim about Cajun holy trinity.
this week went to a meeting where Treebeards catered. I love Treebeards. I love everything that Treebeards does, and going to a meeting Treebeards caters has been the best part of nigh on 40 years of downtown Houston lunches. Weirdly, the thing that I like most–ok, the thing I like as much as the butter cake–is the Treebeards salad. I hate salad.
The Treebeards salad isn’t hard: sliced carrots, sliced cucumbers, whole cherry tomatoes, sliced radishes, sliced red bell pepper, some lettuce. Romaine? Maybe. I don’t put dressing on it.
Tonight I made one at home. It is the best fresh salad in the world, without any dressing.
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I call that a garden salad.
I love salads, and that sounds like a great one.
I just looked it up on their menu, and so do they. Funny thing was, Kris worked downtown too, and I was telling her how much I loved their salad, and she said effectively that she didn’t know they made salad. I suspect not many people go to Treebeards and order salad.
I believe that a good salad needs lettuce and four other ingredients. I make a damn good salad. Tomato, carrot, and cucumber make almost every salad. Lately I’ve been tossing in artichoke hearts. It’s really good. And a good salad needs very little dressing. Otherwise, just dip like you would off a veggie tray.
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I don’t know…Mrs Hawk makes a tomato, cucumber, and red onion salad that is outSTANding. And one with watermelon, feta, red onion, and mint. Come to think of it…red onion seems to be a key ingredient in most salads I like.
My mom makes that tomato salad but adds bell pepper. It is also not a salad with lettuce.
And the watermelon one has four ingredients.
I like to use poblano peppers instead of bell peppers these days.
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One of our go-to cookbooks is called Saladish. It seems strange to have a cookbook just for salads but there you have it, it rules.
I made carnitas last week (pork shoulder + pork belly) from a Bon Appetit recipe we’ve made many times and tonight I will be making a little batch of what my mom called queso la parilla—melted Muenster cheese with mushrooms and bell peppers added. My plan is to add the carnitas to it (that recipe makes a ton and Mrs banedoodle’s eyes for meat dishes are always bigger than her appetite, which means I’m frequently left scrambling to finish while the getting’s good). A man can only have carnitas tacos with onions and cilantro and lime juice and avocado about six days in a row, I’ve found.
I also made some killer frijoles de la alla for the side, which I had never done before and will definitely do again. Used a little bit of thyme, rosemary and sage as well as the shallot and cooked the beans for a couple hours. Delish.
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Switching poblano for bell is, as far as I’m concerned, always the right move.
I do not care for fruit salad, but I like salads with fruit quite a bit, pears especially, but you can go a number of different directions, especially if you have some cheese involved. And, of course, red onions.
I enjoy salads consisting of a bed of farro (I know, purists will say it’s not a salad), whatever cooked beans I haven’t finished up yet, roasted cherry tomatoes (and roasted haloumi cheese, if I’ve got it), and some splash of acid (lemon vinaigrette works great). And I too have been known to throw leftover carnitas in there, but then I’ll use a lime-based acid.
Wimp.
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Some salad snobs may argue that it’s not a salad if the primary ingredients are cooked, rather than raw, and while they may be correct in the academic sense, screw those guys. I do a dish of steamed white rice, black beans, red onions (there they are again) and cilantro, and it’s one of my favorites. It’s also a salad in my book.
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Who cares what it is? That sounds great.
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Lunch was spring mix, celery, dried cranberries and pecans with a carrot, ginger, miso dressing and some fake cheese on top.
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We had a conversation here fifteen years ago or so about how the Thai dish larb, which is basically small flecks of parboiled rice, cooked ground meat of some kind (chicken is what I usually get but duck larb’s gooder’n hell if you can find it) and a buttload of herbs, chiefly mint, we discussed how this was typically labeled ‘salad’ on the menus and how appreciative we are of that gesture.
Sounds pretty good…except the pecans part. For all my militant dedication to proper BBQ and real chili…I can’t fucking stand pecans.
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Mine was some dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets.
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