To remember a successful salad is generally to remember a successful dinner; at all events, the perfect dinner necessarily includes the perfect salad.
George Ellwanger
While I don’t think Mr. Ellwanger is wrong when he refers to salad as being part of the perfect dinner, I think that is only true when you have a 3+ course meal. In fact, I’m a huge fan of just salad for dinner, or better yet, lunch.
A few months ago we celebrated my Mam’s birthday. My mam loves Mexican food – well probably more Tex-Mex, to be honest, and so I prepared a feast. We had so much food. I think we had two different types of rice – my Easy Dressed-Up Cilantro/Coriander Rice and Green Rice (will have to share some day but as it’s something that I only make, from a recipe book, on very special occasions that will be some time in the distant future), as well as chicken and beef, lots of veggies, burritos, tacos and salads. In two words: A FEAST! The chicken was from this recipe book that I bought for my sister a couple of years ago called Everyday Mexican and it’s a wonderful little book that includes aforementioned Green Rice as well as this fantastic Chicken Fajitas recipe where the chicken is marinated in honey/maple syrup, oregano and chili-flakes. It was a hit, particularly with the adults at the table and I definitely need to make it again at some point. The taste of …
Friendship … is born at the moment when one man says to another “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . . ~ CS Lewis When I was living in Korea, I frequently had my friend Maria come to stay. Whenever she stayed it was a weekend of catching up, tons of food and lots of experimentation. We would sit at my little tables, chopping boards and knives at the ready and prepare anything from curries to stir-fries to experimental desserts. Despite the readiness of our knives, our tongues tended to wag a bit too much and we’d end up taking forever to chop, instead sharing stories about our past and current lives, exchanging cooking ideas or discussing teaching achievements and problems. It was always great fun and we’d both take away enough food for several meals the following week. In fact, she was my faithful helper when I made the rather wonderful meal that I shared with you in the June 2015 In My Kitchen – we ate Egyptian, Indian, …
From morning till night, sounds drift from the kitchen, most of them familiar and comforting….On days when warmth is the most important need of the human heart, the kitchen is the place you can find it; it dries the wet sock, it cools the hot little brain. – EB White It’s Autumn! Hooray! Autumn is my favourite season, narrowly beating out winter (which has Christmas and my birthday, so it does still rock!) thanks to all the amazing food, the crisp, crunchy leaves, and Hallowe’en, not forgetting blazers, jumpers and snug cardigans. With the onset of autumn, my tummy revels in comforting soups, spicy curries and hearty casseroles. I find that these help me to acclimate to any sharp changes in the weather and to remind me that my two favourite holidays are just around the corner. The following recipe really seals the deal in reminding me that it’s autumn with the scent and taste of spices like cumin, cinnamon, cardamom and a hint of nutmeg wafting their way out of the oven. The deep purple of …
“[Salad] freshens without enfeebling and fortifies without irritating.” ~ Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin Well, it’s been two months since I last posted a recipe and man, has it been a very eventful two months. To begin with, as any regular followers of this blog would know, I was planning to leave Korea and return to my native Ireland in August 2015. I had been planning to return to Ireland for about a month before heading off on the Camino in sunny Spain. The Camino is a very, very long walk and the route I was going to take was around 700km. I was going to have some friends join me at different points for a few days. After that, it was going to be a winter of study preparation in order to do a CELTA course in the spring, plenty of cooking, and tons of walking. Unfortunately, my sister’s death meant that I returned home two weeks early and all my plans got a little topsy turvy. The unexpectedness of her death and the amount of time it took to get her …
Spoon in a Saucepan 