If you're planning a meal meant to be nourishing, visually pleasing and flavor-diverse, you'd better not neglect Our Friends The Tubers — nor, for that matter, Our Close Acquaintances, The Legumes; Our Neighbors, The Plant Life; and Our Accountant, Herb.
There Oughta Be A Slaw (Cabbage Salad): Serves four
Ingredients and Directions
1 head/thing of cabbage, washed then chopped
1/2 cup mayonnaise (regular, diet or low-fat)
1 tbs. malt vinegar (or more, to your taste)
1/2 white onion, chopped (optional)
caraway or sesame seeds (optional)
seasoned salt
pepper
Mix them all together, then chill in a covered bowl in the refrigerator for at least an hour. You can also achieve a pretty fine cabbage salad by substituting ranch-style or Multiple Island Dressing for the mayo. If you do so, tone down the other ingredients, many of which are already in most bottled or packaged Ranch dressings.
It's Greek to Me Salad: Serves four
Combine sliced, wedged or cherry tomatoes, Greek olives, mild raw onions (sliced into rings), capers, unpeeled cucumbers and, if you're feeling particularly Hellenic, chunks of feta cheese in a bowl, then top with Your Basic Vinaigrette or just some light splashes of olive oil and red wine vinegar.
Name-That-Tuna Pasta Salad: Serves four
Combine 13 ounces or more of canned tuna with one 12-oz. package of pasta, cooked and drained (or leftover and already nicely chilled from the fridge) with black olives, onions if desired (if you eat them, you won't be, but some things are just plain worth it), three tablespoons or more of any kind of mayo, a tablespoon of red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and a little garlic powder.
A Glossary of Useful, Common and Completely Obvious Cooking Terms with which You Can Dazzle Your Enemies and Irritate Your Friends
This Week: Recipes to Roast
Recipes - Cooking instructions that should be viewed as rough drafts, not blueprints. You should take them with a grain of salt. (Wait, that's just an expression: stop writing that down!)
Refrigerate - An instruction that, if properly obeyed, will mean the difference between your enjoying a re-heated casserole then heading off to bed, or enjoying a re-heated casserole then hearing a bunch of strangers scream "Code Blue!" every time you close your eyes.
Risotto - Rice for people who earn more money per year than their parents did.
Roast - A cooking process often involving over-the-hill entertainers ruthlessly basting one of their own in front of a well-marinated audience of their peers.
