The reason this salad holds up so well at room temperature is because you dress it twice. It absorbs the first round of dressing completely, the second addition keeps it glossy, and a fistful of walnuts and breadcrumbs means there’s always something to bite into.
If you’ve never had a bánh mì, it is a Vietnamese sandwich, typically made with salty-sweet marinated pork. It’s tangy, too, from the pickled radishes and carrots, and spicy from the jalapeños. It’s all of my favorite flavors housed between a crusty baguette. I’ve turned this classic sandwich into a lighter, plant-forward salad, fusing in a Tex-Mex avocado crema as the dressing. The honey–soy sauce roasted chickpeas, used in place of the pork, are good on their own as a snack. This salad takes a bit of work when done in a single breadth, but most of it can be made ahead, like the Quick-Pickled Radishes and Carrots, the croutons, and even the Avocado Crema. When prepped in advance, dinner takes no time at all to throw together and tastes this good.
It might seem a hassle to roast the fennel and tomatoes separately, but it does make things easier when you come to assemble this, as each element stays intact and keeps its shape.
Smashed cucumbers, or pai huang gua, is a Sichuan dish that is typically served with rich, spicy food. We started with English cucumbers, which are nearly seedless and have thin, crisp skins. Placing them in a zipper-lock bag and smashing them into large, irregular pieces sped up a salting step that helped expel excess water. The craggy pieces also did a better job of holding on to the dressing. Using black vinegar, an aged rice-based vinegar, added a mellow complexity to the soy and sesame dressing.
I am not sure that I want to live in a world where ranch dressing is more beloved than Green Goddess, which is superior in both name and taste, so I’m doing everything in my power to bring this vibrant, herb-packed green dressing into the limelight. Green Goddess is a kitchen MVP. It can be used as a salad dressing, yes, but it’s also a dip for crudités, a marinade for grilled chicken, and, if you’re one of the weirdos who like to do this, it’s great on pizza or with French fries too. For this super-green salad, I combine crunchy romaine, cucumbers, snap peas, green onions, and avocado, then douse it with the irresistible dressing.
Recipe provided by Kate Jacoby and Rich Landau, chefs at Vedge in Philadelphia. Hear more in The Key 3 segment recorded at their restaurant.
Recipe provided by Kate Jacoby and Rich Landau, chefs at Vedge in Philadelphia. Hear more in The Key 3 segment recorded at their restaurant.
I was a green goddess once, sort of. It was in high school, where I had a very brief solo in the school play. I cannot for the life of me remember what that play was, but my part involved me singing a little song while wearing a sea green toga and gold slippers in the latest goddess fashion.
Daniel and I spent our honeymoon in Istanbul, a magical city with heavenly food. One of the most distinct and memorable dishes was one we sampled at the house of a friend of a friend. Engin Akin, an expert on Ottoman palace cuisine and a crackerjack cook, invited us over for a historic meal inspired by what the sultans ate during Ottoman times.
One of the most gratifying things for a home cook is to scrimmage a meal together out of leftovers. It’s enormously satisfying to ransack the fridge and use up what lies under plastic wrap or is lounging about in the vegetable drawer; it always provides a relaxed, unforced creativity. I certainly would never have thought of using horseradish as a dressing for a tomato salad if I hadn’t wanted to find a way to use up a horseradish root staring beseechingly at me every time I opened the fridge.