Kinda-Sorta Tabbouleh and more

I think this recipe was born from half-watching an episode of Good Eats and forgetting the actual ingredients for a recipe. It's my own version of a salad that I call Tabbouleh. It's great for using up little bits of veggies that you have around or the tale-end of a party platter. I make a lot of it in a batch because my kid goes through it so fast.

3 cups (uncooked measurement) of couscous. Cooked according to the directions and let cool. Do yourself a favor and use reduced-sodium chicken stock instead of water. It will taste loads better. Also, stay away from the whole-wheat couscous. I've tried to like it and I don't. It also cooks up a little gummy and not great for this recipe. I also wouldn't add salt when cooking it, only because I like to be able to control the salt in my food. But honestly, if you salt the stock before adding the couscous, it will taste better.

In a large bowl, add

chopped tomatoes (you'll need about 3 large tomatoes chopped)
chopped cucumbers (about 2 large cucumbers)
chopped onions (you can use either green, while or purple. About 6 green onions, white and green parts. Or 1 white/yellow onion. If you use purple, use a little less than 1 whole onion as they are pungent. But the added color is beautiful )
2 jalapeno peppers, de-veined and seeded and finely chopped
about 3-4 shredded carrots
3-4 stalks of celery, chopped
I have also added chopped radishes, broccoli, and cauliflower because I had them left over from having company over and Parsnips because I had them on hand. You could add pretty much any veggie you like. I would stay away from cabbage though. You could add a little Jicima if you have it, but that will add a slightly sweet taste to the dish.

Toss all of the vegetables together in a large bowl. What you're aiming for is kind of an equal part of everything. If you see too much of one vegetable add more of the others. For the over all dish, you're aiming for a 2-1 ratio of veggies to couscous. After mixing the veggies together, add the dressing.

Dressing:
EVOO
Red Wine vinegar
Lemon Juice
Salt and Pepper
Red Pepper flakes

Like with most of my creations, I don't use exact measurements. The dressing is not different. I eyeball the ratio of Oil to Vinegar and add in the lemon juice for kick. I like a more tart dressing, so I add more vinegar and citrus then EVOO. But basically you're after a standard vinaigrette dressing. I would save the salt and pepper to latter after everything is mixed. But add the Red pepper flakes (just a pinch for heat) into the dressing. Make more dressing than you think you need. Definitely more than for a salad. You want the veggies almost swimming in the stuff because the couscous will soak up a lot of it.

Toss the veggies and the dressing together and then add in the cooled couscous. Mix to coat. You want the couscous to be separated and coated. The dressing will help separate the grains. In the end you want to see more veggies than couscous in any spoonful. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cover and chill for at least an hour. The longer it sits, the more flavor the couscous soaks up. Serve cold.

My kid eats the heck out of this salad. I've tried to use a different grain, like Bulgar (which is in real Tabbouleh) or Quinoa (which I've tried to sneak into our diet for health reasons) but she doesn't grove on either of those. There is also another recipe that I've found for Tabbouleh that calls for Green Brown lentils and Bulgar but she won't go for that either. For this, sadly, I'm stuck using the pasta. I also have to keep soy sauce on hand because she has to put than in hers. With that addition, I think we're as far from the Middle-Eastern original as we can get.

Also, the vegetable combination and rough quantities above, I use in a number of other salads.
I use it in my chicken salad and my pasta salad.

For the chicken salad:

Bake 4-6 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves. Let cool and shred into a bowl. I like to shred the chicken rather than chop because I prefer that texture more. To shred it, just pull it apart and mush it between your fingers into a bowl. Clean hands, of course.

Add in the veggies from above. I prefer a 2-1 ratio of veggies to chicken because I like veggies more than chicken. Toss to combine

For the dressing, you can do a number of things:

You can go with Ranch dressing out of the bottle.
Mayo. And look, I diet as much as then next person, but reduce-calorie, fat-free mayo is not the same. And Miracle Whip is just plain nasty. You might as well just go for it and put the full-fat version in.
Either way, I would add a little lemon juice and hot sauce in with it. Also, salt and pepper and a little garlic powder (I prefer real garlic in most dishes but unless you can mush the garlic up very fine, you don't want to use that here. Biting into a piece of garlic is not good eats. With the ranch dressing, adding the hot sauce is awesome and gives the salad a hot wing sort-of taste. You could also coat the chicken in hot sauce before you bake it. That's really good.
As for how much dressing, you have to eyeball it again. You don't want tons of dressing in it, but you need some to help it go down. Start with 2-3 large tablespoons (because of the amount of salad you are making) and add more, 1 tablespoon at a time, until everything is well coated. You also can add some Dijon mustard in place of some of the mayo; that's good.

For my Pasta salad, just replace the chicken with some kind of cooked pasta. You want a least 2 pounds of pasta, sometimes 3. For this you want a 1:1 ratio of pasta to veggie. I've used elbow, corkscrew, bow tie, ziti, or any combination of those. I think the more variety the better. You can also get read fancy and get that multi-colored pasta. For the dressing, I use Ranch. Only Ranch, right out of the bottle or use those packets of dry mix. I hate the taste of pasta salad with Italian dressing, but than I'm not found of Italian dressing to begin with. Again you want everything well coated with dressing. I would also add a little more to this on. As the salad chills, the pasta will soak up some of the dressing and it won't be quite so soupy.

Bloody Mary Tomato Salad

I found this recipe in the July '09 issue of Good Housekeeping. You know, the one with the Jonas Brothers on the cover. I adapted it to make it a panzanella salad, but I think I still need to work on it. The recipe looks better than it tastes.

The original recipe calls for:

2 Tbsp prepared horseradish
2 Tbsp Olive Oil
2 Tbsp Vodka (optional)
1 Tbsp fresh Lemon juice
1-1/2 tsp hot pepper sauce
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper
3 pts grape or cherry tomatoes cut in half
4 stalks celery cut into 1/4-in thick diagonal slices
Celery leaves for garnish

Mix the first 6 ingredients (if including the vodka) into a large mixing bowl. Add tomatoes and celery. Mix to coat. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours. toss again to coat just before serving.

Sounded simple enough. And quite a unique salad to bring to my family's July 4th party, where my uncle's famous Bloody Mary's were a-flowing. When I made it I was making a larger quantity and I ended up using 4 pints of tomatoes and whole head (?) of celery. I quadrupled the amounts for the dressing because I was adding the bread. For the bread, I used a baguette and a half of french bread, cut into medium-large sized croutons that I pan toasted in a small amount of olive oil. I added the bread in before the dressing, tossed everything together and then covered and chilled.

In theory it sounded good and I did get positive feedback from the family. But they're family; they're supposed to be positive. But in tasting the salad, I don't think it was Bloody Mary-ish enough. If you took a bite of tomatoes and bread together, you sorta good the impression of a Bloody Mary. But I think I need to add something tomatoe-y into the dressing. Tomato Paste might be an option or a 1/4 up of tomato juice or V8 ( I prefer V8). The bread will soak up the extra liquid without a problem. But I do need to toast the bread longer, regardless.

My Corned Beef and Cabbage Recipe

You need

a brisket, if you get a whole one, cut it in half against the grain. The grain runs the length of the piece of meat.

two (if you are doing a whole brisket) gallon size freezer bags.

pickling salt

brown sugar

pickling spice (I could list off all of the spices you need but everything you need is in that one jar. You find it in the spice/baking isle around the canning supplies)

6 bay leaves

fresh marjoram and thyme (which I have left out when I didn't have it)

water

a pan or casserole dish

Clean off the brisket and trim the silver skin and some (not all) of the fat from the meat. Cut the piece in to two pieces against the grain. Set those aside.
In each of the freezer bags, put in 1 cup of salt, 1 cup of brown sugar, 3 tablespoons of the pickling spice, 3 bay leaves, and a few sprigs each of the marjoram and thyme. Mix the contents of the bags and then place one piece of meat in each of the bags. Seal the bag and rub the spice mixture into the meat. Reopen the bags and fill with enough water that the meat is covered when you lay the bag on its side (sealed).

Make sure that bags are very well sealed and lay them in your pan or casserole dish, on their sides, and place in the fridge for 7-10 days.

Once a day during that time, you will take the bags out, give them and toss and place them back in the fridge, flipped (so that the side of the meat that was up, is now down). You will notice that the meat will start to feel firmer than when you purchased it. Also, it will take on a slightly grayish color. Don't worry, no germs can grow in that brine.

When you're ready to cook them. Take them out of the bags and give the meat a very good rinsing. You could even soak them in fresh cold water for a few hours to get the salt out.

You will need something pretty big and with a lid to cook them. I have cooked mine in my turkey roasting pan. You know, the green one that you have that you one use once or twice a year. Place some coarsely chopped carrots, onions and celery (parsnips and turnips are also awesome for this) in the bottom of the pan and then place the meat on top of them. Put enough water in the pan to cover the meat. Cook at 350-375F for about 3-4 hours. After that, quarter a head of cabbage (leave the core intact), and whole small red skin potatoes. Cook for another 2 hours or until the cabbage and potatoes are done and the meat is very tender. I mean tender like it pretty much falls apart.

Slice very thin and serve in bowls with the veggies from the pan. I use all of them, even the carrots and other root veggies that I started with. That are so yummy. Ladle a bit of the pan juice over top and serve with a good loaf of crusty bread for dipping.

My "Clean out the Fridge" meatloaf

There's really nothing magical about making meatloaf. Certainly not mine. I've always looked at things like soup and meatloaf as an opportunity to clean out my refrigerator. You know that overloaded front door that contains the last drops of salad dressings and that bottle of hoisin sauce that you bought just to make the one stir fry. Here's where you clean it all out.

Oh and just so you know, I never measure, unless I have to.

• A couple pounds of meat (beef if you're a hard-core carnivore, turkey if you want to maintain some semblance of healthiness)
• A pint-size carton of Eggbeaters or a couple (2 or 3) of eggs (I haven't bought real eggs in a long time, so I'm more likely to have Eggbeaters or some egg substitute on hand)
• 1 chopped onion
• Chopped mushrooms, if you have them. If not, oh well.
• a clove or two of garlic (none of that commie garlic powder crap)
• a couple of slices of bread (NO bread crumbs!!). You might need as much as a half a loaf depending on how much meat you have.
• Salt and Pepper (freshly ground, of course)
• Catsup (yes, that is how I spell it)
• Every single bottle from the front door of your fridge

Get your biggest bowl from the cupboard. You know the one that you use to make punch in or to make that army-feeding batch of cole slaw for your last cookout. Ground beef usually comes in packages of 3 lbs or so. So just dump that all in (you DO want left-overs, do you?). If your using ground turkey, that usually comes in packages of a pound or so. So, just buy a couple of packages. And if you insist that you need to cut either of those with ground pork, or sausage or lamb or whatever, then you need to move on. This is recipe is for those non-recipe following people.

So you dumped the meat in. Chop up your onions. Make sure they are small so your loaf with hold together. Same thing with the mushrooms, if you're adding them. Add in your garlic. Now look, if you're going to add in fresh garlic, make sure you've smushed and chopped it properly. No one wants to bite into a huge piece of garlic.

Now, I've skipped over a couple of ingredients on purpose. Go to all of those bottles that you've pulled out of the fridge. Mustard, barbecue sauce, Italian dressing, ranch dressing (everyone has that), hoisin sauce, hot sauce, that last bit of tomato paste. Whatever. Lets toss it in there. And look, I'm not saying that if you have half a bottle of something, that it should all go in there. This is for those tail ends that you don't know what to do with and can bearly get out of the bottle. Speaking of that, if you have a couple of drops in a bottle, lets crack (or pour) an egg into it and shake it up. That'll get it out. But don't be hung up on what goes with what. It's all flavor!

OK. About the eggs and the bread. Look, it's an by-eye thing. Sometimes I've added as much as 3-4 eggs (or the equivalent from the carton of Eggbeaters). Whatever you add, you need to add enough bread to counter that. Think of the bread like beans in chili. It's just another meal on the cheap. It extends the size of the loaf and you can feed that many more people. It's OK, I swear. Don't get snobbish on me now.

So take about 3-4 slices of bread and smush it between your fingers and break it up over the bowl. Then get your hands in there and start mixing. Does it feel too wet? Soupy? Add some more bread. Yes, bread crumbs would soak up the moisture your added from the condiments. But I've always found that it soaks up all of the moisture in the room. That's how you end up with dry meatloaf. Besides, I kinda like that mushy bread stuff. But then I like mushy stuffing for my turkey (but that's another show).

Once you've added enough bread that this mound of stuff is holding together in the bowl and you mix it, you're good. Get out your largest roasting pan or casserole dish or whatever will hold this mass and have enough room to hold all of the juices that will run from it as it cooks. But please! Whatever you do, do NOT put this in a bread loaf pan. I know it's meat LOAF. But doing that is just stupid.

Dump this all in your pan and form it into a loafy-ovally shape. Do pay attention the cracks. We want to minimize those. press and form it into a fairly tight shape and then get a small dish of water. Wet your hands and run them over the meatloaf a couple of times as you're forming it. The added water is a good thing. Squirt some catsup over the top of the loaf.

Then put this in a 350-375 degree oven until it's done. When is done? When your meat thermometer says so. And yes, if you don't have one, you are a loser.

When it's done, take it out and let it rest for about 30 minutes or so. Then slice and eat.


And if you don't like it, well...you just didn't have the right stuff in your fridge.