A bean salad that people will WANT to eat

"Bean salad" always brings to mind that generic, unseasoned multi-bean staple of the summer picnic .... kinda mealy, kinda bland, kinda blah. It's the sort of thing your aunt brings every year and everyone takes a few bites out of a sense of obligation, but nobody ever gets excited when it shows up on the picnic table.

This bean salad, on the other hand, is completely awesome. In fact, it's so awesome that it needs a different name so it doesn't get mentally lumped in with all the inferior "bean salad" recipes out there. It is shamelessly (possibly illegally) copied with very little editing from one of my very favorite cooking blogs, 101 Cookbooks. (Heidi has wonderful recipes for all sorts of things, and she takes beautiful pictures to go along with her text. I highly recommend a visit.)

This is another favorite to take places, since it's good at any temperature, keeps beautifully, and is allergy/intolerance-friendly (leave the almonds off if nuts are an issue).

Carrot, Dill & White Bean Salad


1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup thinly sliced shallots

more olive oil for cooking
2 cups sliced carrots, cut 1/4-inch thick on deep bias
3 cups cooked white beans (canned is fine)
scant 1/4 cup chopped fresh dill
2 tablespoons brown sugar (or honey, but I like brown sugar better)
1/3 cup sliced almonds, toasted

Combine the olive oil, lemon juice, salt and shallots in a small bowl. Stir and set aside.

In your largest skillet over medium high heat, toss the carrots with a splash of olive oil. Let them cook in a single layer, tossing gently every three or four minutes until the carrots are deeply browned.

Add the beans and dill to the skillet and cook for another five minutes, or until the beans as well heated through. Add a bit more olive oil to the pan if you need to.

Put the contents of the skillet in a large mixing bowl, sprinkle with the brown sugar and pour the lemon-olive oil mixture over the top. Toss gently. Let sit for ten minutes. Toss gently once again, taste and adjust with more salt or sugar or lemon juice if needed. Sprinkle with the almonds just before serving.

A Picnic Favorite: David's Wife's Coleslaw

We spent this last weekend with friends in East Tawas, part of our Annual Fleeing From The Woodward Dream Cruise. I know there are plenty of people who love the Dream Cruise (about a million and a half of them, according to www.woodwarddreamcruise.com), and I can certainly agree in theory with taking a couple of days to celebrate the automobile, which is the foundation of the economy in southeast Michigan.

Most of the cities along the Woodward corridor have related events, fairs, festivals, concerts, etc., and local media talk about little else in the weeks leading up to the Cruise, so by the time the actual event rolls around we’re pretty well ready to be done with it. Staying home means that we can’t leave the house all weekend except on foot, and if we need to venture out we can assume it’ll take several hours to get anywhere – say, the grocery store down the street. Once we get there we’re unlikely to be able to park, assuming that the owner of the parking lot hasn’t shut down their business and rented out the lot to Cruisers all weekend. We don’t have air conditioning in our house, so if we need to keep the windows open to keep from suffocating, we’re also stuck with the accumulated gas fumes and noise from 30,000 extra vehicles driving past our house. (In our defense, the Dream Cruise was NOT this big a deal when we bought our house.)

All of this means that we’re happy to escape to East Tawas for a weekend with our college friends. This year we were a little more disorganized than usual heading out the door, so I left without my usual folder of recipes for feeding a crowd. As my husband has pointed out many times in the past, I’m a slavish follower of recipes – I don’t improvise, I don’t substitute, and I certainly don’t “wing it.” And yet I keep getting into these situations where I have to work outside of my cooking comfort zone. Here’s my latest variation on David’s Wife’s Coleslaw, a perennial favorite at David’s company lunches since it doesn’t include mayonnaise and the leftovers keep forever:

David’s Wife’s Coleslaw

For each head of green cabbage:

1-2 yellow onions, sliced very thinly

1 cup cider vinegar

1 1/2 tsp celery seed

1 tsp dry mustard

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

Salt and pepper

½- ¾ cup olive oil

Slice or shred the cabbage as thinly as you like and toss with the onion, then sprinkle with the 14 cup of sugar and toss again.

Heat the vinegar in the microwave until it’s hot but not boiling. Add the dry mustard, celery seed, the 2 tablespoons of sugar, a teaspoon of salt, and as much pepper as you like. Whisk this together, pour it over the cabbage, and toss. Pour the olive oil over the top and toss it again.

Give the cabbage a couple of minutes to get a little wilty from the hot vinegar, then taste it and adjust the seasonings as needed. If I’m adding more celery seed or mustard I’ll usually heat up a little more vinegar and whisk them in rather than putting the spices directly onto the cabbage, so I don’t end up with clumps of seasoning.

This is best if it sits for an hour or so before serving. It’s great the next day (and the next, and the next), and I love to take it to picnics because I don’t have to be paranoid about everyone getting salmonella from a mayonnaise-based dressing on a hot day.

What We Ate This Weekend; or, My Name is Jen and I Have a Quinoa Problem

We have a quinoa problem in our house. At some point I clearly thought it was the answer to our gluten-free troubles – well, OK, I thought this at several points. Several points at Costco, to be exact, which is how we ended up with 12 pounds of quinoa sitting in our pantry. Fortunately for me, this recipe is just right for toting along to events, since it doesn’t need to be kept hot or cold, and is tasty served at any temperature (including straight out of the bowl in the refrigerator. Theoretically.)

In its original form, this recipe appeared in Cooking Light, January/February 2007. It quickly became a go-to favorite for potlucks, picnics, and any other time that I needed to make sure the GF guys could eat something but didn’t have access to a stove or refrigerator. It scales up easily and, as it turns out, is very flexible.

It’s not all that hard to keep most of these ingredients on hand. And if you’re in the middle of making it and you realize that you’re out of a key ingredient, you can substitute. It goes something like this:

Me: Hey, everyone liked the quinoa salad at the potluck last week. I think I’ll make it again for this picnic dinner that we’re already late for.
GF Guy: What a great idea, especially since you ate it all at the potluck and I didn’t get any.
Me: Oops, I’m out of pistachios. I’ll use slivered almonds instead.
GF Guy: OK.
Me: Oops, I’m out of dried pineapple. I guess I used it all last time. I’ll use these dried cherries.
GF Guy: Sounds good.
Me: Oops, I used all the green onions. I’ll use onion powder.
Me: And I’m out of fresh ginger so I’ll use this curry powder.
Me: And we just ran out of sesame oil so I’ll use some really good olive oil and throw some toasted sesame seeds on top.
GF Guy: Do you want me to go to the grocery store?
Me: No, it’s going to be great even though it has absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the dish I set out to make. I promise.
GF Guy: Aren’t you the person who hates improvising in the kitchen? The follower-of-recipes-to-the-very-last-detail person?
Me: Um.

I Have a Quinoa Problem Salad
1 cup quinoa (give or take)
½ cup toasted chopped pistachios
½ cup chopped dried pineapple
1 bunch chopped green onions
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
1 ½ teaspoons cumin
1 tablespoon sesame oil (the dark kind that actually tastes like sesame, not the cooking kind)
Salt
Crushed red pepper (though we use Szechuan pepper instead, since we're not eating nightshades)

Cook the quinoa in some water or broth (enough to cover it by an inch or so, and let it cook on low heat until it's al dente. Don't overcook the quinoa or it will be pasty instead of fluffy, and you'll end up spending a lot of time issuing disclaimers about your spouse being the one who cooked the quinoa. Or maybe that's just me.)

Mix everything together in a bowl. That’s it. Sometimes we put in a splash of lemon juice to perk it up, and I’ve been known to use a sweet vinegar (fig, basalmic, or rice) as well if the quinoa ends up a little on the drier side.