Vietnamese Salad

Years ago, before we had our children, we went to Vietnam. It was quite an impressive traveldestination. Straight out of our busy jobs we flew for many, many hours to arrive in an extremely busy Hanoi.
It wasn't a luxury trip, since we wanted to see and do as much as possible with a tight budget, so we stayed in a low budget hostel in the centre of town. Motorcycles racing through the streets at literally every hour, day and night.

The only thing I can remember from these first days was that I needed to get away from all of this noice and I desperately needed some fresh air and space. We decided to take the nighttrain to the northern mountains and from there went to a very small town with only a handful of tourists. In my memory this town had one hostel and a small hotel that was being expanded/renovated at the time. In preparation of the expansion they were advertising (on a printed/typed black and white A4 paper) a walking/culture trip for 3 days and 2 night where you would stay at local families in the small farmingvillages surrounding this town.

This was the best thing we ever did! We walked through the misted mountains in the morning, watched the clouds break for some sun and had more than amazing views throughout the whole trip. What a peace and quietness, just what I needed... Everywhere the people were friendly and hardworking. And they too, were an amazing sight being traditionally dressed in colourful clothes. What made the trip even more worthwhile were the homestays. The first night we were invited to sleep in the house of the chief of the village we visited.

We were asked if we wanted to join the family for dinner or if we wanted to eat separately. Of course we wanted to join them. The organizing hotel had brought a big amount of food, so that our guide would prepare a meal for us. They added the food that was being prepared for the family and on a small open wood fire in the kitchen our guide transformed the seperate ingredients into numerous wonderful small dishes which we all shared.
Our guide only spoke a little English, and our hosts didn't speak any English at all, but nontheless we had such a nice and engaging evening, with supertasty food!

Since then I am a huge fan of Vietnamese food. Vietnamese salads are delicious, they usually have a good bite and delightful freshness. One of these days I will describe some of my cookbooks in more detail, but for today I just wanted to mention my Vietnamese cookbook which has been my inspiration for this recipe. It is an interesting reading book as well as a book full of wonderful Vietnamese recipes. It is in my possession for a few years already, so I am not sure it is still available, but if you happen to stumble across this book I would definitely recommend purchasing it.

Vietnamese Salad, side dish 2p
Inspired by:
bún với rau thơm, salade van rijstvermicelli
Geheimen van de Rode Lantaarn (Secrets of the Red Lantern), pg 118
Author: Pauline Nguyen, Luke Nguyen & Mark Jensen

Ingredients for 2p:
1 small hand of unsalted peanuts
1 shallot
3 dl vegetable oil
1 spring onion
100g rice noodles
1 cucumber
1 baby romaine lettuce
1 hand of mintleaves
1 hand of cilantroleaves
50ml Nuoc nam cham (You can make it yourself, this book has a great recipe for it, but this time I just used a store bought version)
Papertowels

Stirfry the peanuts in a dry wok at medium heat untill they have a light shade of brown. Roughly chop them and leave them to cool.

Slice the shallot in thin rings, rinse and dry them on a paper towel. Heat about 2 dl oil in a small fryingpan or wok untill it is so hot that when you put in a piece of bread it inmediately start to brown. Fry the rings of shallot in small batches untill they are goldenbrown. Take them out with a skimmer and put on another papertowel.

Cut the spring onion in diagonal rings. Put 1dl oil and the spring onions in another pan and bake untill they are getting soft. Let it cool.

Cook the rice-noodles according to the instructions. (A few minutes in boiling water) Cool it down under running water. Let it drain out.

Julienne the cucumber. Finely slice the lettuce. Tear the mint and cilantro leaves. Mix these 4 ingredients.
Put the rice-noodles on your plate, add the lettuce mixture and the spring onions with the oil. sprinkle the nuoc nam cham over it. Dress with the fried shallots and roasted peanuts.

Score:4 out of 5
Tip: You can add some tauge. Nice side dish to any oriental spiced meat or fish, try it with Thai Styled Mussels
Time:45min
Amount of work vs waiting:high
Degree of difficulty:medium
Ideal for:Side dish, salad, asian food

Grilled Zucchini with Fresh Herbs

Italy is my favourite country in the world. It is beautiful, diverse, has a nice climate but most of all the food is great! With only a handfull of ingredients Italians are able to make simple meals that often are beyond delicious.

I absolutely adore antipasti, especially the grilled vegetables. The grilled flavour combines so well with the salty slightly acidic flavours of the dressed vegetables. Although I think that putting herbs like mint and cilantro on these antipasti will be seen as an incredible sin in Italy, I definitely think that they add a lovely freshness to this salad. So, if not forgiven by the Italians, I am totally forgiving myself for this delicious sin!


Making large portions of these, asks quite some time grilling. Your guests however, will be pleasantly surprised and impressed with this work!

Ingredients:
2 zucchini's
3 spoons of olive oil
1 clove of garlic
1 teaspoon of lemonjuice
1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar
1 hand of mintleaves
1 hand of cilantroleaves
Salt & pepper

Make long slices of the zuchini about 3-5mm thick. Cover in salt for 10 minutes, wash, let dry on some kitchenpaper. Meanwhile cut and squeeze half of the garlic clove with a little salt. Make a dressing with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, the lemonjuice, vinegar an garlic.
Brush some olive oil on the zucchini and fry them on both sides in portions on a very hot grill pan or BBQ. Take them out of the pan when they are goldenbrown and rub them with the other half of the garlic clove while they are still hot.
Pour the dressing over the grilled Zucchini, add the fresh herbs and sprinkle with a little extra oil.

Combine it with grilled eggplant for an extra festive salad!

Score: 4 out of 5
Tip: Really impressive salad for a dinner party or a BBQ party. Also very nice with Eggplant. For a spicy touch you could add some chiliflakes to the dressing.
Time: Depending on how much you are making, about 30 minutes for 2 zucchini's.
Amount of work vs waiting: High, a little waiting time which you can partly fill with making the dressing.
Degree of difficulty: Moderate
Ideal for: starter, side dish/ salad, BBQ, dinner party.

Vegetarian Spinach 'Meatballs' for Adults

The kids really enjoyed the spinach 'meatballs'  I made last week. After a few bbq's and picknicks at which they chose to eat the meats and pasta's while carefully getting rid of all the vegetables, they could use some veggies again. Since it was a big hit with the kids last week I decided to make the spinach balls again today. So the youngest one had a feast and the oldest bravely ate one ball to be as strong as Mega-Toby (a superhero from the Belgium children's production Mega Mindy).

Although I liked them too, I wanted to give them a little bit of a spicy twist! So while the children had the original ones, I made a spicy version for us. Without nutmeg, but with homemade chiliflakes (dried chilipeppers from our garden), fresh cilantro (from the supermarket, because the one in our garden had a heat stroke which it didn't survive), and some lemonzest. Which made it a little less heavy, more fresh but also nice and spicy. Next time, I think I'll try to substitute the parmezan for feta or another lighter cheese, ideas are welcome!

Vegetarian Spinach 'Meatballs' for Adults
Inspired by:
Spinazieballetjes
Eerlijk Italiaans, pg 24
Author: Antonio Carluccio

Ingredients for 4p:
500g fresh spinach
2 eggs
chiliflakes
fresh cilantro (leaves and stalk)
zest of 1 lemon
1 clove of garlic
5-6 slices of bread without the crust (this time I used whole-wheat)
50g of grated parmezan (feta, another lighter cheese?)
50ml of olive oil
salt & pepper

Wash the spinach, boil it in lightly salted water for 1-2 minutes, drain and cool it. Squeeze the spinach untill you cannot get anymore fluid out of it.
Finely cut the leaves and put it in a big bowl. Loosely beat the eggs in a separate bowl and add to the spinach afterwards. Finely cut the garlic add a tiny bit of salt and rub the garlic into a paste. Finely chop the cilantro. Pull the bread into fine pieces. Add all of this and the parmezan, lemonzest, some salt & pepper. Mix and make balls from the mixture. (NB, if it is too wet you can add the extra bread)
Heat the oil in a frying pan, add the balls and gently fry them golden brown in 4-5 minutes each side. Take out and leave to rest on kitchen paper. Serve them hot or cold. Serve as an appetizer or combine with a pastadish, a ricedish or any other dish.

Score: 3 out of 5
Tip: Easy to make as a spicy variation while you make the original
Spinach 'Meatballs' for the children. Try it with other cheeses to perfect these balls, and please let me know!
Time: 20-30 minutes
Amount of work vs waiting: High
Degree of difficulty: Medium
Ideal for: Spicy variant of kid's favorite, appetizer, vegetarian dinner

Tomatoes and Pomegranate Salad

Let's knock on wood before and after I say this... This year's summer is wonderful in the Netherlands! We've had one rainy week, but most of the time it is a very lovely Dutch summer. Not too hot, nice and sunny and around 23-25c during the day, cooler at night. It is such a delight! Lot's of days for a BBQ...
I like to serve some fresh salads with a BBQ, especially when there is only meat on the BBQ.

So when my husband had a group of his friends over, and an only meat BBQ it would be, I served this tomato salad, which we all found to be delicious! It took me ages to make for such a big group, but it was well worth it!
It has a delicate flavour combination with all of the different tomatoes, the pomegranate and the oregano.
You'll have an almost meditative work cut out for you when you're starting this job, chopping and choppping and chopping more and more tomatoes... Carefull with getting the seeds of the pomegranate out, I made somewhat of a mess by splashing some of it's juices over my recipepage.

But hey, getting cookbooks dirty means they are being used, so all the better! Usually I also write myself notes on the pages I have cooked from. It was something my grandmother did as well, and it is a very nice surprise to find one of her old notes when I cook from the book I inherited from her. So, I started to do the same!

Tomatoes and Pomegranate Salad
Slightly addapted from:
Tomaten-granaatappelsalade
Plenty More, pg 15
Author: Ottolenghi

Ingredients 6-10p, as a side dish:
500g snack/cherrytomatoes red
500g multicolloured snack/cherrytomatoes
3 truss tomatoes
3 roma tomatoes (but choose any mix of good tomatoes you can find)
1 red paprika
1 red onion
1 pomegranate
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 teaspoon of allspice
A dash of white wine vinegar
2 spoons of pomegranate melasse
60 ml of olive oil
A small hand of oreganoleaves

Chop, chop and chop all tomatoes and paprika in small peaces of approximately equal size. Finely chop the onion, and mix the 3 of them together and set aside. Get the seeds out of the pomegranate and set aside.
Finely chop and rub the garlic into a paste. Mix it in a bowl with the allspice, vinegar, pomegranatemelasse, olive oil and a pinch of salt to make the dressing. Put the dressing over the tomatoes and gently mingle it.
Put the tomato mixture in a nice bowl, sprinkle the seeds of the pomegranate and the oregano on top and finish up with an extra few drops of olive oil.

Score: 4 out of 5 (When good tomatoes are available)
Tips: You'll need good tomatoes for this salad, otherwise all of your chopping isn't worth it. Although it is nice to have different colloured tomatoes, the quality of the tomatoes is more important. So skip all the other collors if neccessary.
Time: 60 minutes (or so? Kind of went in a meditative state and can't really remember...)
Amount of work vs waiting: High!
Degree of difficulty: Very low, it just takes a lot of time...
Ideal for: side dish, salad, BBQ, romantic dinner, dinner party

Salad of beetroot and fresh herbs from our garden

We live in the city, so we only have a small garden, which we are very fortunate to have! Last year we redesigned it so we would have enough space to eat, sit and play on our terrace. We also wanted to have plenty of flowers in the garden, so at first there was no more space for a vegetable garden.
Both my son and I were a little disappointed by that, so in March we bought a big planter and got out our unused terracotta pots. We planted some vegetable seeds and plants as well as lots of herbs. And of course, strawberries for the kids. It is the first time we have vegetables in our garden, what a joy it is to pick something out of your garden and put it right onto your own plate.

So this weekend we went out in the rain and picked two beetroots and a lot of fresh herbs out of our own garden to make this great salad by Yotam Ottolenghi, my ultimate favourite author of vegetable dishes and salads. How cool is that! The salad was delicious, it had a good and fresh bite from the raw beetroot (I never knew you could eat it raw.. but I've never been a fan of beetroot before), a nice little punch from the chiliflakes and lots of flavour from all the different kinds of herbs. The mixture of textures with the raw beetroot, nuts, seeds and leaves was also very pleasant. Mmmh, my mouth is watering again... And besides all of that, the salad is also a beauty!

We ate the salad as a sidedish next to a simple butter-baked trout and some potatoes, but the salad definitely was the star of the evening.

Salad of beetroot and fresh herbs from our garden
Salade van rauwe biet en kruiden
Plenty More, page 21
Author Yotam Ottolenghi

Ingredients for 2p
2 raw beetroot
3 spoons of slivered almonds
1 spoon of sesame seed
4 spoons of pumpkin seeds
2-3 hands of basil leaves (torn)
1 hand of parsley
1 hand of dill
1 hand of cilantroleaves
Leaves of a small branchlet of tarragon
1 teaspoon of dried chili flakes
Zest of 1 organic lemon
3 spoons of lemonjuice
75ml of a nice olive oil
Salt & black pepper

Peel and slice the beetroot into small strips. Roast the slivered almonds, pumpkin and sesame seeds for a few minutes in a pan (or oven) untill they are slightly browned. Let it cool.

Mix the beetroot, most of the fresh herbs, chili flakes and lemonzest in a big bowl. Add most of the nuts & seeds, lemonjuice, olive oil and a pinch of salt and pepper. Mix it all, put it in a nice deep plate and garnish with the extra herbs and seeds. (I put dill flowers on top, to finish it off nicely)

Score: 5 out of 5
Tip: I like the seeds and nuts better when panfried. Ottolenghi advises to eat the salad next to grilled lamb or fat fish, I think that would make a better combi.
Time: 20-30 minutes, most of the time will be spent by cutting and gathering the herbs, so timing depends mostly on your speed. If you are fast, probably you could make it in less than 10 minutes.
Degree of difficulty: Easy
Amount of work vs waiting: All work
Ideal for: Side dish, salad, lunchmeal