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copyright ©1999-2003
DigsMagazine.com.
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soup
up
your
salad
eat
your greens and like them too
by Yee-Fan
Sun | 1
2 3
continued from page 1
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2
go nuts
A
light sprinkling of toasted
nuts adds a scrumptious flavor and pleasingly crunchy texture to salads. Get
gourmet with some pecans, walnuts, hazelnuts or almonds. To get those
nuts all golden-gorgeous and aromatic, dry-roast them – no oil – in
a skillet over medium-high heat, stirring and tossing frequently for
about ten minutes. Monitor them carefully, as they have a tendency to go
from pale to blackened in the blink of an eye, and cool
completely before using. For
a little more effort, candied pecans are swoon-inducingly good. Make a big batch and store in an airtight container
for weeks.
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candied
pecans
1 cup pecans
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp. olive oil
Preheat oven to 325F. Line a
baking pan with foil and grease it up well. Mix ¼ cup brown sugar, 1
tbsp. balsamic vinegar and 1 tbsp. olive oil in a small saucepan. Cook
over medium heat until bubbly and syrupy, about 3-5 minutes. Stir in 1
cup pecans. Spread out pecans in a single layer on the prepped baking
sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes or so, until nice and toasted (check
frequently, by tasting a pecan, after 10 minutes – sugar burns easily.
) Let cool and store in a tight container.
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3
say cheese
Some
might say topping a salad with cheese negates one of the primary reasons
that many of us choose to eat salads: you know, to keep the calories low
and the pounds from piling on. But a little bit of cheese can add so
much flavor to an otherwise ordinary salad, making you that much more
likely to actually want to polish off that bowlful of all those
good-for-you raw greens. Added to which, what cheese lacks in
weight-loss-friendliness, it makes up for in nutritional value as a
great source of calcium.
| Use
good, strong, intensely flavorful cheeses like real parmesan, pecorino
or romano, a creamy blue cheese like gorgonzola, perhaps, and you’ll
find that that just a little bit of cheese goes a long way. Fresh goat
cheese (chevre) and feta are both very tasty and lower-in-fat than many
other cheeses.
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more
ways to pep up your salad:
•
antipasto favorites: artichoke hearts, olives, sundried
tomatoes
• real
bacon, crumbled
• hardboiled eggs
• canned beans: chickpeas, black beans
• stir-fried,
sautéed or grilled chicken, beef, shrimp (good way to use
leftovers)
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4 cuckoo for croutons
I
have to admit: I even kind of sort of like those little, uniformly-sized
pellet croutons that come out of a box. I know the gourmands like to
pooh-pooh them, but there’s something about those little bites of
crunchy, herby, bready goodness that gives a nice shot of flavor and
texture to a bland salad. For just
a little extra effort, though, make your own croutons. They're so easy
and yummy, you just might never go back to the boxed kind again.
keep
on wandering this way
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