Winter Foliage

Today's the day to pick up our next box of vegetables from the farm! By Saturday night we had completely exhausted the last box of veggies, and since then we've been eating cereal and reminding each other that the good eating starts again on Tuesday. Here's what we did with the last delivery ::

The salmon seaweed salad and slaw were the dishes that really stood out for me this week.

Unfortunately both were gobbled up during late night dinners, so I have no pictures to share, but I don't want to forget the recipes, there are no measurements, just a list of ingredients & descriptions.

For the slaw I wanted to recreate a delicious and surprisingly light slaw that I had at Route 6. The first thing I noticed about their slaw was how tender the cabbage was. I had been slicing my cabbage {with a knife} when making salads and slaws. This time I decided to grate the cabbage, and I think the smaller pieces made a huge difference. To the cabbage I added grated carrot and very thinly sliced white onion.

For the dressing, I mixed together mayo, dijon mustard, celery seeds, and fresh lemon juice ~ I think the celery seed and lemon juice were the two flavors I tasted at Route 6 that really made their version taste light, and it worked at home too. Of course, the longer this sits, the better it gets, but ours only lasted about 24 hours and by the end we were racing each other to the last bite.

The salmon seaweed salad is a variation on the Kyoto salad from Sprout Cafe. I was at Sprout in May when I was in CA for work, and I've been thinking about recreating that salad ever since.

The original salad calls for tuna, wakame seaweed, somen noodles, firm tofu, nori, edamame, kaiware sprout, carrots, sesame seeds, miso sesame dressing.

Our salad included :: mixed greens, grilled salmon, wakame seaweed, avocado, black beans, cucumbers, corn, grated carrots, nori, and sesame seeds.

Wakame seaweed is the deep green seaweed found in the salads in Japanese or sushi restaurants. I love those salads, and really wanted to be able to make them at home, but I didn't have a clue where to find the seaweed {I was expecting to see it fresh, not dried in stores}. It wasn't until I heard an interview with David Tanis on The Splendid Table, that I realized I should be looking for dried wakame and rehydrating it.

After rehydrating the seaweed, I added a dressing of rice wine vinegar, sugar, sesame oil, soy sauce and lemon juice. Back to the large salad ~ rather than making one big salad these were made in separate bowls for each individual. We piled the greens and veggies in the bowls. Added a nice serving of the dressed seaweed salad {about a 1/3 of a cup}, and then topped it with the grilled salmon. I didn't added anymore dressing than what was on the seaweed and this worked perfectly for a light, summer salad.

That's a wrap.