I am the Queen of False Promises. Broken Promise #1: More frequest postings, post-bar. Broken Promise #2: Monthly charcuterie. I’ve been running around crazily and prepping for my 3-week trek across Southeast Asia…and I realized I had no time this month for Charcutepalooza, and that when next month’s post is due I’ll be stumbling off a 20-hour plane right from Hong Kong with a bellyful of Xanax (I hate flying).
The good news: I’m bringing my camera and computer to Thailand and Vietnam (don’t worry, all my hotels have safes), and I’m going to try to do posts for each of my five main destinations. It’ll be epic. In the meantime, I have two recipes for you – one from travels of yore, the other from The Complete Greek Cookbook. First, I bring you: a classic Greek Salad, or χωριάτικη (horiatiki).
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This is one of those “off-concept” times. I kind of walked into Whole Foods and went bananas over spring greens. Not as bananas as I went over bananas the other day…but pretty crazy. I kept trying to think of things to satisfy everyone in at dinner: vegetarian stepsister, the littler picky-eater ones, meat-loving dad, and those trying to diet (myself included). Somehow I grabbed a whole bunch of beets and decided to go from there. The result: beet salad with goat cheese and kale crisps, and turkey burgers stuffed with goat cheese and topped with sauteed beet greens. The beet salad was definitely the prettiest part.
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In metulis: liquamen porrum concisum cuminum passum satureiam uinum; mixtum facies aquatius et ibi mitulos quoques.
– Apicius, De Re Coquinaria IX.ix
Translation: For mussels: fish sauce, chopped leek, cumin, raisin wine, savory, wine; add water to the mixture and cook the mussels in it.
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Sixties salads are really something else. Those ladies (puh-lease, no gender neutrality necessary here – the gents were all off sippin’ old fashioneds) were willing to chop up anything, put it in mayo, and serve it up. OK, so maybe I’m exaggerating. But seriously, salads and canapes were a staple of any wife’s party repertoire, and there are many varieties of both scattered around the books on The Collection. Sometimes you find some with interesting flavor combos we might not necessarily think of in the 21st century.
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