Santa Clara Diet: A Garlicky Lentil Salad

I can’t bring myself to make vegetarian grapeleaves, but I feel duty-bound to make sure that my friend’s vegan daughter has something substantive to eat when she comes to parties at our house. David turned 50 this week and we invited friends over for dinner; it’s the busiest week of the year, what with the school year ending and the kids having half days and Anna going to work orientation and so on, so I was looking for things that I could make in advance and hold in the fridge or at room temperature without any last-minute fussing. This garlicky lentil salad from the online archives of Saveur was a winner in all categories.

Lentils are pretty great. I like how their earthy flavor comes through when you do something minimal to them, and also how you can dump just about any kind of spice in and completely change them up. I like the firm bite of cold lentils and the creaminess of dal, and mjadara is a staple in our house because we love it, not just because it’s fast and cheap and easy and we always have ingredients on hand.

This particular salad is poised to become a regular on the summertime menu. It was fantastic warm and freshly tossed with the garlicky, lemony olive oil dressing, and just as fantastic at room temperature later in the day when everyone wandered in for dinner. When I’m done typing this I’m going to see how it tastes cold out of the fridge – but I’m guessing it’s going to be just as good. I’m picturing it piled into pita with some variation of a cabbage slaw and garlic sauce or tzatziki or hummous, and added to fattoush and a bit of chicken shawarma next time we make Flaming Moes. I can see making a big batch at the beginning of the week so the teenagers in house aren’t living on gluten-free Hot Pockets and granola bars because they need to eat Right Now. And given the absolutely heroic amount of garlic in the dressing, I feel confident that we will safely avoid even the hardiest of vampires in our summer travels; this is one of those things that everyone in the family has to eat so that we all have the same garlic breath and nobody gets ostracized. (If you didn't get the reference in the title, this summer is a great time to rewatch The Lost Boys.)

Grandpa still can't stomach all the damn vampires.

A note about the garlic: This is one of those times when the garlic takes center stage, so you absolutely don’t want to use the pre-chopped jarred kind. And for some reason, the pre-peeled garlic always tastes a little funky to me, so I wouldn’t use that either. Faced with the prospect of making a triple batch of this and therefore needing 36 cloves (3 small heads of garlic, in case you care), I borrowed an annoying but effective tip I learned from my daughter. Separate the cloves and put them into a small metal mixing bowl. Put another bowl over the top and shake vigorously for about 30 seconds. This is loud and obnoxious and your arms will realize that 30 seconds is kind of a while…. But when you take the top bowl off, your garlic will be peeled. If it doesn’t all get done in the first round, pick out the peeled cloves and papery skins and do it again. I wouldn’t go through this bother for just a couple of cloves – I don’t mind the smash-peel-have-garlic-hands thing – but this is a really efficient way to get a lot done at once.

Garlicky Lentil Salad (Salata Adas)

1 cup green lentils, rinsed
6 Tbsp olive oil
12 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
3 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp ground allspice
1 Tbsp minced parsley
1 Tbsp minced fresh mint
Salt and pepper to taste

Bring the lentils and 3 cups of water to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until the lentils are tender but not mushy, about 30 minutes. Drain the lentils and set aside.

Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a skillet, add the garlic, and cook until tender but not brown, about 7 minutes. Take the pan off the heat and whisk in the remaining oil, lemon juice, cumin, and allspice. Pour over the warm lentils and mix well. Season with salt and pepper to taste, then add the parsley and mint.

Fancy enough for a birthday dinner: Sesame-Miso Salmon with Kimchi Butter

We’ve already established that my son’s tolerance of seafood is directly related to the price, so when wild-caught salmon went up to $22/pound he immediately fell in love with all things salmon. Sushi-grade tuna? Adores it. Scallops? Pretty great, especially when you wrap the really large ones in bacon and grill them. I’m in trouble if he ever discovers Chilean sea bass, which aside from being the most gorgeous fish fillet you’ve ever seen is also $32/pound at the local Kroger. But honestly, there’s only just so much chicken we can eat; he’s hit-or-miss on pork and beef, especially if there’s evidence that it ever contained a bone; and with all of David’s dietary restrictions, I just don’t have enough energy to make any serious efforts towards vegetarian meals.

I’m always on the lookout for salmon recipes that we can eat without leaving out key ingredients. While there’s nothing wrong with a mostly-naked piece of fish, it’s nice to mix it up and give the appearance of having made an actual effort on dinner, especially if I’m guilting the rest of the family into doing the dishes. This particular recipe was a winner on all fronts: Asian flavors, which we all love and apparently never get tired of; includes kimchi, my latest obsession since our discovery of the Korean BBQ burger; and can be made with absolutely zero modifications in under an hour with roughly 3 minutes of actual hands-on work. I was delighted to see that my local fruit market carries gluten-free white miso so I didn’t have to drive all over hell’s half-acre looking for it or try to interpret food labels printed in Japanese, which is absolutely a bonus in my book. Two weeks after I first made this, the kids are still talking about – and requesting – a repeat.

Since David’s birthday is coming up, this was a logical candidate for the actual birthday dinner (not to be confused with the birthday party dinner, which includes me gang-pressing various family members into helping me make grapeleaves for 20). We eat more than enough rice around here as it is, so it’s going over some rice noodles dressed with sesame oil, with a cucumber-radish-rice vinegar salad and a seaweed-sesame salad on the side. I'm also serving it with one of my favorite sakes; it's a great entry-level one to try if you don't want to buy a huge bottle and/or aren't sure if you're going to like it, since it only comes in teeny bottles and the sparkling aspect makes it lighter and a little less funky than some other types. 

This recipe comes from Cooking Light magazine, June 2018. I’m back after a decade-long break in my subscription, and it’s the single most useful source of weeknight dinners I’ve ever found. I highly recommend a subscription, plus you get awesome deals when you renew.

Sesame-Miso Salmon

1 (1 1/2-lb.) salmon fillet

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1 tablespoon lower-sodium soy sauce

1 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon sesame oil

1 tablespoon minced garlic

2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger

1 teaspoon sesame seeds

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

2 tablespoons finely minced kimchi

2 teaspoons white miso

2 tablespoons sliced scallions

Pat salmon dry with paper towels. Sprinkle with salt, and place in a gallon-size ziplock plastic bag.

Stir together lime juice, soy sauce, honey, oil, garlic, ginger, and sesame seeds in a bowl. Pour mixture over salmon in ziplock bag. Seal bag, removing any excess air, and gently massage mixture into salmon. Let stand at room temperature 30 minutes.

Preheat broiler to high with oven rack in upper middle position. Stir together butter, kimchi, and miso in a small bowl. Set kimchi-miso butter aside.

Place salmon on a rimmed baking sheet lined with aluminum foil. Broil until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork, about 8 to 10 minutes.

Serve with the kimchi-miso butter on top.

It's Never Too Hot to be Fabulous: Penne with Fennel, Currants, and Pine Nuts

OK, let’s start by establishing that I know it was a long, cold winter. I know that it lasted a really long time and we were all longing for spring. I know it snowed – really snowed – on Easter when we were in Traverse City. I know this. But we went from 40 degrees to 95 degrees more or less overnight; it’s only May and the window A/C units are in and I’ve already had my first heat-induced temper tantrum, which usually doesn’t appear until mid-July. In cold weather, you can put more clothes on; you can turn the heat up; you can give up and go to bed with extra blankets. In the summer there are some obvious limitations to the inverse of this. And thus we come to the dinner hour.

Dinner would be greatly improved by eating it here

I don’t want to cook. I don’t want to eat anything hot. I want to sit on the deck, being fanned by palm leaves, eating prosciutto-wrapped melon and sipping rose and looking at the blue waters of the Mediterranean.

Since this is my actual life, I needed to figure out something that would let me skate by with a minimum of effort without feeling guilty. It’s white wine season and I just picked up my mixed whites/roses case from Cloverleaf, so I wanted something nice enough to justify opening a bottle. And since John had two teeth pulled today (translation: won’t be eating) and Anna doesn’t feel well (translation: won’t be eating), I could go a little further afield without caring a whole lot if they were going to like it or not. The answer came from the depths of my “I really ought to cook this someday” file, courtesy of Gourmet magazine, August 1996.

Following the instructions precisely, I dutifully hauled out my mandoline slicer before realizing that I could perfectly well slice the fennel without it; quarters are easy to deal with since they lay flat (just don’t open the wine until this part is done – you really do want a steady hand!). Literally every other thing was already in my fridge or pantry; I’m frequently grateful for the wide/weird array of things we keep on hand, because it lets me try things like this on the fly without spending a fortune at the grocery store or searching all over for specific ingredients. The whole thing came together in the amount of time it took to boil some water for pasta, steam the asparagus and slice up a Costco rotisserie chicken, and I’ll definitely be making it again.

The author of this particular recipe specifically points out that this is Italian-inspired rather than Italian classic. That’s close enough to the Mediterranean for me.

 Penne with Fennel, Currants, and Pine Nuts

1 large fennel bulb, quartered and core removed
3 scallions, sliced thin
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ teaspoon fennel seed, ground in in a spice grinder or mortar and pestle (yes, I have one, it’s very convenient for small jobs like this)
6 anchovy fillets, rinsed and patted dry and minced very fine (seriously, keep anchovies in your fridge. They’re super useful in saucy things of all sorts, they keep forever, and I swear they won’t make your pasta taste fishy)
1/3 cup dried currants
½ cup good-quality extra-virgin olive oil (bust out the good stuff for this – you can really taste it here)
1 pound penne pasta
½ cup fresh bread crumbs, lightly toasted (in the toaster oven, fer cryin’ out loud – it’s bad enough you have to boil water for pasta!)
1/3 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted
Fresh lemon juice, to taste

Slice the fennel as thinly as you possibly can. In a bowl large enough to hold – and toss – the pasta, combine the fennel and all the ingredients through the pasta. Let this sit for 30 minutes.

Cook the pasta until al dente, drain, and toss immediately with the fennel mixture. Add in the bread crumbs, pine nuts, salt and pepper, and lemon juice and toss again. Add more salt, pepper, or lemon as needed and serve warm or room temperature.

Served with: Casas del Bosque 2016 Sauvignon Blanc (Chile). Grapefruit, grass, and apricot on the nose and lots of grapefruit and mineral on the palate. It really went well with the fennel and lemon juice. I’m not normally a big Sauvignon Blanc fan but this was a nice pairing; I would definitely buy this bottle again and maybe try it with a citrusy seafood dish.