Black Gold: Summer Salad for a Fish Taco Feast

Recently a friend added me to a facebook group: Friends who Cook. Last night I tried my first recipe from the group -- I liked the tagline, "Black Gold: Addictive AND Healthy."

Black Gold

Ingredients:
1/3 cup fresh lime juice (about 2 limes, squeezed)
1/2 cup olive oil
1-2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 t. salt
1/4 t. ground cayenne pepper
1 (15 oz.) cans black beans, rinsed
10 oz. bag of frozen corn or corn cut off 3 cobs (cooked)
1 1/2 red bell peppers, chopped
2 tomatoes, chopped
6 green onions, chopped
1/2 -1 cup fresh cilantro, chopped

Directions:
1. Place lime juice, olive oil, garlic, salt and cayenne pepper in a small jar. Cover with lid and shake until ingredients are well mixed.
2. In a salad bowl, combine beans, corn, avocado, bell pepper, tomatoes, green onions, and cilantro. Shake lime dressing and pour it over the salad. Stir salad to coat vegetables and beans with dressing and serve (or refrigerate for an hour or two before serving to allow the flavors to blend).

I went ahead and made the salad about 1 1/2 hours in advance. Pretty yummy, but especially because we took it as our contribution to a fish taco feast at our friends' house. I need to get that recipe -- they grilled rubbed swordfish and the corn tortillas, and spread a spiced mayonnaise on the tortilla, added a cabbage slaw and the fish -- fantastic. 

Tuna Chickpea Pasta Salad

My friends invited us to stop by at a cookout they were having to celebrate their new (and newly renovated) home in West Mount Airy. I was excited to go, but the "potluck" aspect stopped me -- in the middle of painting jobs and reading and cleaning and so on, did I have time to throw something together? I really didn't want to spend too much time going to the store. On the other hand, I always want to show up with something yummy to share.

I looked in the cupboard and found two cans of tuna in olive oil, two cans of chick peas, and a box of orecchiete. Voilà.

Pasta Salad On-The-Fly

1 box any pasta, 16 oz.
2 cans of tuna in olive oil
2 15 oz. cans of chick peas
1/2 - 1 cup sweet or red onion, diced
1 pint of cherry or grape tomatoes, sliced in half
4 T. olive oil
4 T. (or more) lemon juice
2-4 T. flat leaf parsley, chopped finely (or as much as you have -- I have a pot of herbs outside and harvested as much as was ready)
salt and black pepper to taste

This makes a LOT: good for a potluck, to leave some with the hosts who will not want to make lunch the next day after cleaning up, and to take some home. Unless no one else brings anything to the potluck, in which case it should feed a crowd. (You can also make just half a recipe, which works just fine if you have the right bowl to present it in!)

The Perfect *Ricotta* Cheesecake

Okay, so I've perfected my summer cheesecake: light and fluffy, AND I get to use Uncle Roland's zester, AND it helps to have access to my 9" springform pan (and to Trader Joe's or Whole Foods for the ginger snap cookies -- though I imagine any cookies would do).

In short:

Lemon Ricotta Cheesecake with Ginger Snap Crust

Take about 2 cups of crushed ginger snaps and pulse them in a Cuisinart with about 6 T. melted butter. Press into a greased 9" springform pan and preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

5 eggs, separated
2 8 oz. pkgs of cream cheese
1 15 oz. container of ricotta
grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
2/3 cup sugar
1 T. flour.

Beat the egg yolks until light with a mixer or in the Kitchenaid mixer; add cheeses, lemon zest juice, and 2/3 c. sugar and beat until smooth. Pour out into another bowl and stir the flour in with a spoon. Wash the bowl and whisk up the egg whites until they hold soft peaks. Gently but thoroughly fold them into the cheese mixture (with a rubber spatula). Turn the batter into the pan and place pan in a baking dish large enough to hold it comfortably. Add as much warm water as you can to the larger pan; you're baking the cheesecake in a water bath. Transfer carefully to the preheated oven and bak until the cake is just set and very lightly browned, about an hour.

NOTE: This summer I have used my cast iron frying pan for the water bath, which has worked brilliantly.

Turn the oven off, take the cheesecake out of the water bath, and return to the oven to cool for 30 minutes to an hour. Then cool on a rack and refrigerate until well-chilled before slicing and serving. (Unless your family is too impatient. Then explain to them as they are eating how much better it will taste on the next day.)

No huge innovations here -- I am happy with the ricotta substitution and increasing the eggs to 5, which makes the cake light and high, and I've adjusted the crust to get the right proportions. This might be yummy with ginger instead of lemon in the cheesecake -- I'll try that this autumn.

For Tucker and Kayty -- enjoy!

Everyone's into Quinoa: Corn, Feta & Quinoa Salad

Corn, Feta and Quinoa Salad

Adapted from an adaptation from Everyday with Rachel Ray 

Rachel Ray has become a part of our household – though we did not invite her in. I think I must have accidentally not unclicked some checkbox on some internet site I was exploring—and the next thing you know, we are getting Everyday with Rachel Ray in the mail every month. If I get to it first, I try to recycle immediately, but my daughter insists—and I’m sure she is right!—that there are good recipes to be explored if we just take the time. She stacks the magazines up in a corner of my study, or in her own room, and she’ll probably get to them. Eventually.

In the meantime, I was searching for a recipe for a salad using quinoa, and came upon a blog with a recipe (Corn, Feta, and Quinoa Salad) that had been adapted from that very magazine—an issue which I’m sure is sitting around our house somewhere. We had some friends over for dinner and I adapted it some more myself—in part because whenever we have people over in July it is always beastly hot and better to have done the cooking in the early part of the day. In fact, the evening turned out to be lovely—but this was a delicious complement to the bluefish Steve grilled (and the peach salsa I made as a garnish).

2 cups quinoa, cooked (I used multi-colored)

1 large can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

4 T olive oil

4 T rice wine vinegar

4 T lemon juice

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 - 1 cup basil leaves, julienned

1 cup corn kernels (2 ears of corn)

12 oz. feta cheese, cubed (I quadrupled this from the original recipe -- and my son thought the only thing lacking in the salad was "more feta")

salad greens

Toss quinoa, chickpeas, basil, corn and feta together. In a separate bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. Drizzle over the quinoa mixture and refrigerate. Serve chilled or room temperature over salad greens. Yum!