Summer’s Coming – Veggie Quinoa Salad

Good stuff this – lots of protein, veggies, flavor – easy to make and easier to eat. Good to keep in the fridge for munching, a quick meal, or to a cookout or potluck. You can add nuts (cashews, almonds, macadamia), beans (kidney, white), strips of spinach or kale, chopped fresh parsley…you can grate the carrot instead of cubing it. Wonderfully adaptive salad.  There are lots of these salads around.  This has an Asian flair to it.  A friend served it last week and I stole the recipe.

Recipe
1 cup quinoa, rinsed
2 cups water
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups shelled frozen edamame
3 medium carrots, peeled and diced
1/2 yellow pepper, diced
1/2 red pepper, diced
1/4 chopped scallion (green onion)
1 cup red cabbage, chopped
1/2 tsp. low sodium soy sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
3 teaspoons fresh ginger, finely minced
1 tablespoon sesame seeds (optional)

Directions
Place the quinoa, water, and salt in a covered pot. Heat on high until it boils, lower the heat to low, and cook for about 15 minutes or until the quinoa is soft and the water absorbed. Pour the quinoa into a medium-sized bowl, and mix in the frozen edamame, carrots, peppers, and cabbage. In a small bowl, make the dressing by mixing the sesame oil, rice vinegar, soy sauce, minced ginger, and sesame seeds. Pour the dressing over the quinoa and veggies, and mix thoroughly. Enjoy immediately, or store in a covered container for later.

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Tater Cakes

A frugal dish, but highlty satisfying in its simplicity. On Sybaritica’s blog, there is a sinful recipe with the name of “Champ”.  It is a local dish in his/her area.  Basically, mashed potatoes made with scallions and heaped up and hollowed out with a huge amount of melted butter in a sunshine yellow pool in the pool of mashed potatoes.  There was no special name for this in our area, just….mashed taters. A recipe that has spanned generations in my family is called Tater Cakes and would use those leftover mashed potatoes.  Yes I understand it is amazing there would be leftover “Champ” but trust me, on our family dinner table, there would be such a large bowl of mashed potatoes and in the center would be a lake of butter big enough for a toddler to swim in.  So here is the recipe for Tater Cakes.  Don’t blink or you will miss it.

 

RECIPE

Mix leftover potatoes to incorporate all the butter (if any.  Some politically incorrect Southerners would have sipped out that butter with a straw).  Put in a storage container and store in the fridge.  Next morning for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, take the mashed taters out of the fridge. Get a pan nice and hot with a bit of oil.  Scoop out a couple of tablespoons or so of mashed taters, form into a ball, and flatten out.  Dip lightly into some flour and put in the pan.  Repeat. Let cakes  brown delicately and flip over on the other side to finish browning.  Slip cakes onto a plate and serve as a side dish or entree.  You can add a dollop of sour cream, drizzle with ketchup, or just eat as is.  That’s it.

If you didn’t make “Champ”, then fix your recipe of mashed taters.  Put in fridge to chill.  Bring out and mix into the taters some finely minced onion or scallions.  Make cakes and fry.