It’s been snowing all day and the wind has made it fierce-going on the trail, but we nonetheless managed to cross the bridge and make our way through the bluster for a rather enlivening walk. Back inside Full Moon Cottage and thawing out with some ginger green tea, I decided to make a salad for dinner, but with enough heat, depth, and bite to stand up to winter, which has made its Maria Callas re-entrance today. The lime, cilantro, and hot sauce, though, brought the energies and smells of warmer seasons to mind.
Located “Pepe and the Bottled Blondes” and “Pink Martini” CD’s: Ay-yi-yi! (Or Thai equivalent.) Look out, 4-leggeds; Mama’s gotta dance!
The salad turned out well: at any rate, I enjoyed it while studying the landscape and fantasizing amidst a pile of garden catalogues and their enticing descriptions of new flowers, vegetables, and herbs. A terrific afternoon of dreaming.
And dancing.
The snow is beautiful; the hush it brings is lovely, but tonight I think I’ll close my eyes to the white-on-white landscape and dream in the colors and flavors of gardens yet-to-come.
Salsa, anyone?
Vegetable Salad in Peanut Sauce
(Everything’s approximate in my salads, just like it is when I make soup: adjust according to your taste.)
6 T rice wine vinegar
6 T sesame or vegetable oil
1/3 C Peanut Butter (I may have used more. Organic and chunky; creamy would be fine.)
3 T of brown sugar
3 T Tamari Sauce (or Soy; Tamari is without wheat and has more soy…)
2-3 T chopped ginger and/or powdered ginger
3 chopped cloves of garlic
2-3 T lime juice
4 T Thai chili-garlic sauce (I used more)
That’s the peanut sauce: Whisk it together and adjust it to the consistency, quantity, and tastes you like.
For the salad: I mixed some:
Red and green cabbage (sliced and chopped like coleslaw)
Chopped green onions
Big bunch of cilantro (chopped).
Julienne 4 carrots and 2 sweet potatoes, and microwave them to soften before adding.
Cook/drain/add some brown-rice noodles. (About ½ lb, or amount that suits you.)
(Could add red/green peppers, maybe an apple or two, and some soft tofu cut into small squares, or shrimp …but didn’t have these on hand today.)
¡OLÉ!
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hi, I found my way to your blog from “A Painter’s Progress” blog…and really enjoyed reading your posts. I got down to the bannock recipe and thought it sounded like perfect comfort food for that evening.
What I ended up with was an oatmeal raisin omelet! There was no way the mixture held any kind of shape. It was a pile of oats/raisins with egg/milk that ran out everywhere. I ended up just dumping the whole thing in the pan and let it cook through. It puffed up from the baking powder, but was too fragile to hold a form and disintegrated when I tried to turn it.
I had an interesting meal of shreds of oatmeal raisin eggish something.
I went back to the original on cooks.com and it’s the same, but other recipes are quite different.
How do yours turn out?
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Wow; mine turns out very differently! I’ve made baked bannocks, too, and prefer them, but thought this might be an easier recipe. So much for your comfort food! I went back to the post and linked to this recipe…This is close to my favorite: I use the cranberries and vanilla yogurt instead of buttermilk, and throw in about a 1/2 C of toasted oats. I melt about a 1/4 C butter in a 7 or 8-inch cast iron skillet (while the oven’s pre-heating) and then pour the batter in and bake…hope this works better for you! http://www.yummly.com/recipe/Irish-Bannock-Allrecipes
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thank you Catherine – how nice of you. I’ll try these again because they still sound like perfect winter weather comfort food.
I just thought I’d report in case something got “lost in translation”…
Or I was wondering if I was expecting the wrong thing.
Eileen
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Good luck! It’s really just a flat soda/oat cake…very humble peasant food. Let me know if it works better…if not, I have a truly tasty cornbread recipe that’s very similar but always reliable because it includes eggs…we could call it New World Bannocks! 🙂
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Ole, Catherine! I love that fact that you have a deep spiritual gnosis and then you erupt into the joyful celebration of life – it is wonderfully reassuring, heaven and earth.
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Thank you! I love the quote, “Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.” (Have seen this attributed to both Pierre Teilhard and Leon Bloy.) I have the word “joy” all over my home and yes, for me, the holy is grounded in “humus.” 🙂
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