Watercress Composed Salad with Citrus Dressing ~ March Daring Cooks

I haven’t been living in one place for a long enough period of to really concentrate on joining any cook-alongs. It’s been over 6 months with this back and forth stuff! I’m so excited t his month to not join one of The Daring Kitchen’s challenges, but TWO!

For March’s Daring Cooks’ Challenge, Ruth, Shelley and Sawsan asked us to totally veg out! We made salads and dressings, letting the sky be the limit as we created new flavors and combinations that reflect our own unique tastes.

I’ve always made my own dressing. Probably because my mother always made her own dressing and my grandmother always made her own dressing. I will occasionally buy a dressing in a bottle, if I want a quick marinade for something, but otherwise I just find them … hmmm, ICKY! Thick and gloppy and off-tasting.

This challenge was right up my alley!

Many, many moons ago, Erie and I went to a Spanish restaurant in Queens (the name escapes me at the moment and perhaps she will chime in and let us know). We had the most wonderful composed salad – and I was surprised as I’m not usually a fan of composed salads.

Since then, this is my go to company is coming, steak themed dinner, salad. It’s simple with lots of great ingredients.

• 1 bunch watercress
• 2 hard boiled eggs
• 2 plum tomatoes
• 1 can hearts of palm
• 1 shallot
• juice from 1/2 an orange, lime and lemon
• 3 t extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 t oregano
• s&p

NOTE: I used plum tomatoes, use whatever tomatoes make you happy.

Wash watercress thoroughly and cut off stems. Place watercress on a platter

Quarter hard boiled eggs into wedges.  Scatter over watercress.

If using Roma tomatoes, cut into wedges. If using other tomatoes, cut into chunks. Scatter over watercress.

Slice hearts of palm into 1/4″ rings. Again, scatter over watercress.

Thinly slice shallot into rings. Scatter over salad.

In a bowl, whisk together citrus juices, oregano and s&p to taste. While whisking, stream in olive oil. When ready to serve salad, drizzle dressing over the top.

Tuscan Potato Salad

I LOVE POTATO SALAD. I LOVE MAYONNAISE. I don’t like the 2 in the same dish.

I am not a fan of hard boiled eggs in my potato salad, or macaroni salad for that matter. I don’t like mayo in my potato salad. I do like mayo on my french fries, though. Yes, I know, picky, picky, picky!

I like a salad that is room temperature friendly and is not likely to spoil or taste funny if it’s too hot outside.

I love this recipe. It started out as a Paula Deen recipe. It was the first non-mayo based potato salad I had seen that I found intriguing. It has changed now – through tweaking and tweaking – to be my recipe.

I was thrilled to see potato salad as this months’ challenge at the Daring Kitchen! I have decided that with my changes that this is a Tuscan-style potato salad.

It’s really quite simple and can easily be doubled or halved.

• 14 or 15 large red potatoes (about 5 pounds)
• s&p
• 1/2 C chopped basil
• 1/4 C chopped fresh parsley
• 1/2 C chopped scallions
• 3 cloves garlic finely minced
• 1 t salt
• 1/2 t dry mustard
• 1 T sugar
• 1 T Worcestershire Sauce
• 1 C extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 C white wine vinegar
• 1 T marjoram

I switch this around quite a bit. Sometimes I substitute tarragon or thyme for the marjoram; or basil for the parsley; or simply add basil in with the parsley.

Give potatoes a good scrub. Place potatoes in a large pot and cover with water. Bring water to a boil. Once boiling, generously salt the water and boil until potatoes easily pierce with a knife and are tender – about 30 to 40 minutes.

Once done cooking, drain potatoes and let sit until cool enough to handle. At this point, you can peel the potatoes if you want.  Cut potatoes into bite sized chunks.

Place cut potatoes in a bowl and sprinkle the parsley (or basil) and scallions over the top.

In a separate bowl, mix together the remaining ingredients. Pour over the warm potatoes. Mix. Let stand at room temperature for at least 4 hours or all day, mixing every hour. Do not refrigerate before serving. This is best served at room temperature.

Edible Containers – Daring Cooks

Really intriguing thought, don’t ya think? That’s what I thought when I saw this as a challenge over at Daring Cooks. Such a good idea that it’s a joint Daring Cooks/Daring Bakers challenge.

Perhaps it’s the thought of not washing a dish that intrigues me. But, wait, that can’t be so. The edible container still has to sit on something, doesn’t it?

So goes that theory.

The question became … sweet … savory … sweet … savory?

I thought perhaps a spun sugar bowl with beautiful strawberries … (stop laughing) … okay, I am laughing too. Who am I kidding?

Savory? Looking through the mountainous recipes next to my bed I came across frico – crispy discs of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese – which can be molded into shapes. I found my solution.

I used Giada’s frico cup method –

1 1/2 cups of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

I didn’t use the smallest holes on my box grater. I didn’t use the largest. I used the ones in between. If I had any sense I would have taken a photos of the grater to show you, sense wasn’t something I was necessarily born with!

Sadly, I wasn’t really holding out hope for this working.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Definitely use a silpat or parchment paper. Use 1/4 cup for each cup, flattening it out to a diameter of 4 1/2 to 5 inches.

Bake 8 to 10 minutes.

NOTE: My second batch I baked for less time, about 6 1/2 minutes, and had a better result.

Working quickly and using a thin spatula, transfer the frico to a muffin tin and put a glass inside to shape.

NOTE: ARE YOU FREAKIN’ KIDDING ME HERE OR WHAT? Totally didn’t work. I tried using the bottom of the muffin tin, but the muffin cups were not deep enough. I tried a juice glass. NOPE. The bottom of my cordial glasses were the perfect size.

If you don’t have the frico molded before they start to stiffen, pop them back into the oven for 20 seconds or so – they become pliable again.

Now that I had the edible container part sorted out, what to put in them?

I was roasting a cut up chicken (surprise, surprise) for dinner with Mediterranean spices and thought I would serve a tomato, cucumber and parsley salad to go along. Usually I toasted pita bread and break it into shards to sprinkle over the top, but the penny dropped and I thought what a great way to use the salad AND my beautiful frico cups.

I removed the seeds and pulp and then diced a couple of tomatoes. Then I peeled, removed the seeds from and diced a cucumber.  Chopped some parsley. A simple dressing of olive oil, red wine vinegar and oregano and we were all set!

The frico are terrific. A little bite of crispy cheese, some yummy salad. A lot of oooohing and aaahing and a lotta gone! Isn’t that the end result we all want?

Tackling something I found a little intimidating is so empowering!