24 June 2016

Our salad days

I mean that literally, not idiomatically. I don't know, maybe these are actually our metaphorical "salad days" too. But it's the time of year when we especially enjoy making big salads for our main meal of the day. The warm weather encourages it.


It's very early to expect any of the produce to come from our vegetable garden. I had to buy tomatoes, artichoke hearts, lettuce, and potatoes for this salad. The dressing was a garlicky vinaigrette made with  white wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and sunflower oil, with Dijon mustard and some fresh chives.


And a salad here in France doesn't include just raw ingredients. The artichoke hearts are cooked. The potatoes are steamed in a steamer. And I added some smoked pork lardons to the salad too — that's a form of what we in the U.S. call bacon.


I also did something I've never done before: I made "hard-boiled" eggs in the steamer. I was cooking the potatoes that way anyway, and it was just an idea. One more time, I looked it up on the internet and there were several "recipes" for cooking whole eggs in a steamer. One was from Elise's Simply Recipes site, which I refer to regularly.


I steamed the eggs you see in my photo for 11 minutes, and then immediately plunged them into cold water to stop the cooking. I like the result — the eggs are hard-cooked, but there is still some moelleux (softness) in the yolks. They're not dry, in other words.


The garden is not yet producing vegetables, but there is fruit. These raspberries came from plants that Walt put in and has been tending to for a few years now.

17 comments:

  1. Do the yellow raspberries have a different taste from the red ones?

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    1. But they look horrible the moment they go slightly over-ripe...
      They turn grey! Like a dark red slightly over-ripe ordinary raspberry they taste quite acceptable...
      in fact quite nice....
      But they just look horrible!!
      You can happily get away with a few over-ripe red uns....
      But not the yellow!!

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  2. Eggs in a steamer, why on earth not? Well done for taking the plunge and passing on the news. The saucepan that I normally do hard boiled eggs in always leaves a nasty deposit. Thank you.

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  3. You probably know this, but "raconter des salades" means to tell stories, especially tall tales. There's a sweet restaurant in Brussels that specializes in salads, called "Raconte-Moi Des Salades."
    We don't have any raspberries yet, despite the rain, and the now-abundant sun. They were great last year.
    Why steam and not boil? Also, @potty: If the deposit is lime or tartre in the water, boil some vinegar in your saucepan to get rid of deposits. Or just pour some in and leave it overnight, then clean the next day. Ketchup also works, not just for that but also if you burn something on the bottom of the pan. Let it sit a day or two and the burned stuff comes off easily.

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    1. Elise Bauer of Simply Recipes says that steamed hard-cooked eggs are much easier to "peel" and end up looking prettier. She says something about how the steam comes between the shell and the egg while, loosening the shell. The ones I cooked in the steamer were fairly easy to peel but they didn't come out perfect.

      Good hint about vinegar. A product like AntiKal will do the same thing. Never thought about ketchup but just cooking tomato sauce in a stainless steel pan really cleans the metal and makes it shine.

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    2. I wonder if ketchup has the same effect on your stomach?
      You no doubt know that CocaCola is the best fluid for cleaning your windshield and ... your stomach!

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    3. White wine is also a very good cleaning product!

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    4. It's the vinegar in the ketchup, along with the acid of the tomatoes, that makes it do such a good job of dissolving calcium deposits.

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    5. I don't know what salade(s) means in Belgium, but in France, and in French, this special acceptation means something incoherent, mixed up, meaningless. Or an incoherent tall tale, if you want.

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    6. From the Robert Electronique:

      - 1. (1856). Fam. Mélange confus, réunion hétéroclite. - Confusion, désordre, enchevêtrement. Quelle salade! Le candidat s'est embrouillé dans les noms, il a fait une salade indescriptible.


      - 2. [a] (1901). Vendre sa salade (péj.), se dit d'un camelot qui bonimente, et, par ext., d'un artiste médiocre qui se produit (- Fourmi, cit. 8).

      [b] (1890; souvent au plur.). Histoires, mensonges. - Fable, histoire, sornettes (- Blablabla, baratin). Pas de salades! Elles m'avaient mis à bout avec leurs salades (- Noix, cit. 8).

      Loc. C'est toujours la même salade, la même histoire.

      - 3. Pop. Chercher une, des salades à qqn, une querelle, des histoires.

      Argot. Affaire confuse et mauvaise.

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    7. Oui, je suis tout à fait d'accord!

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    8. And it corresponds to what Taste of France said in her comment.

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    9. Corresponds to what the Brexit camp told the voters!!

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  4. my brother who is a great cook swears by the steam method

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    1. Steaming makes a lot of sense. You end up boiling much less water, so you use less electricity or gas. And the result is good. I recently invested (very little) in a new steamer that is very good.

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  5. In Belgium "salade" can mean a real salad like lettuce (the most common in this country), and it means also a mix up of different ingredients (among others la salade de fruits), but it can also mean a vegetable cut into slices, with a dressing (salade de tomates).

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