Roasted Pear and Pepita Salad

I live on the West Coast. I have for almost 6 years now, and I love it. I love the mountains, the ocean, the people, the attitude. I suspect I will stay here for a very long time. My biggest knock on this side of the country, in fact, is the lack of my family. My family has a long tradition of being to the east. While Toronto isn’t really that far east, despite what Vancouverites say, I do have family all the way down the coast, from Nova Scotia to Florida. And I was born over there too in Washington D.C..

It’s been hard today not to spend the whole day looking at pictures of the devestation from Hurricane Sandy. It was hard last night to sleep, knowing my sister was alone in Brooklyn with only broccoli in her fridge. It was tough not to think about my relatives in Boston and my friends in Washington. So I did what I always do when I panic. I cooked.

I didn’t make anything fussy, or fancy, or particularly hard. I made a simple salad, with roasted pears and pepitas and I ate it watching the news, convinced the wind was going to knock down my sisters building or that my cousins would be washed away with the tide.

But there was something, something little, but something none the less, about the roasted pears that made me feel better.  

Roasted Pear and Pepita Salad 

Serves 4

4 Bosc Pears

4 cups Baby Arugula or other sharp greens.

1 cup Fresh squash/pumpkin seeds, or dried. 

1/2 head Fennel, thinly sliced. 

1 tsp Fresh Rosemary, minced

1 tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar

1 tsp Dijon Mustard

5 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Salt and Pepper

Preheat oven to 400F

Cut pears in half lengthwise. 

Using a melon baller, or a small spoon, cut out the core. 

Put the pears face up on a baking tray, rub with a bit of olive oil and bake until pears are cooked through, about 30 minutes. 

In a small frying pan heat up 1 tbsp of the olive oil. 

Add in the seeds and cook until lightly browned. Salt generously and mix in the rosemary. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

In a large bowl mix together the vinegar and mustard. Slowly add in the remaining oil and mix well. 

Mix together the arugula and fennel and toss with dressing. Top with pepitas and pears. Serve immediately. 

BLT Salad

This summer, as anyone who has spent 10 minutes talking to me in the last year knows, is the year everyone I know got married out of town. We were invited to weddings from Brazil, to Rhode Island, to Vancouver island and seemingly everywhere in between. It’s been an extremely fun, love filled summer.

With great disappointment I had to turn down the invitation to Brazil, but I did head out to the other side of the country to go to my cousins immaculate wedding in Goat Island, RI. I will post pictures of that event soon, (and some of the cake I made in the hotel room- holy stress batman) but I made the trip a proper vacation and spend the week beforehand in Toronto hanging out with my mom.

Something you may not know about me; I am a huge Mama’s girl. Huge.

My Mom is woman of extraordinary strength and will, in the most understated way. She is tenacious, she is dedicated and she is almost unbearably kind. I could not adore her more if I tried.

My mom lives in this amazing old house in Kensington Market, a funky old neighbourhood right downtown in Toronto, surrounded on one side by Little Italy, on another by Little Portugal, and on the other by Chinatown. There are the most wonderful produce shops, my new favourite butcher, and my Mom knows everyone by name.

Which is to say we ate in and made dinner nearly every night. Which was perfect.

My mom let’s me lead in the kitchen, which is cute because she easily knows as much about food as I do. This is one of her favourite summer dinners, and now it’s mine. It’s the perfect way to use up the last of summers tomatoes, and it takes only a few minutes of cooking, which means more time sitting in the backyard, having a glass of rose, and talking to your mom.

BLT Salad

*we had burrata, the most glorious of cheeses, in the fridge so we used that, but goats cheese, or shavings of parm, or no cheese at all will be fine here.

2 cups cubed bread

2 cups cherry tomatoes

150g thick cut bacon, cut into lardons

1 cup arugula

1 cup fresh basil

100g cheese (see note)

1/2 lemon

Olive Oil

Salt and Pepper

In a frying pan on medium heat fry up the bacon until crispy. Drain.

Clean the frying pan, then put back over medium-low heat.

Pour in a large glug of oil and fry the bread until nice and crispy, season with salt and pepper. Put into a large bowl.

Half cherry tomatoes, tear the basil, wash the arugula and mix it all in with the bread and the bacon. Add the juice of the lemon and a bit more olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

Sprinkle the cheese on top if using.   

Grilled Corn Panzanella

Corn for me is the quintessential high summer vegetable.

As a kid my oldest and dearest friends had a cottage in Muskoka that my family used to go to many times a summer. The kind of cottage that’s hard to find these days in Muskoka, amidst all the monster homes that people summer in, this is a real cottage (or as we say on the west coast, a cabin). It was built by my friends great-great-aunt and uncle, from scratch all the way. They even built some of the furniture and sewed the quilts. It was the home to our most elaborate games and biggest adventures as kids, and I loved it.

Since moving to BC I haven’t been back, which is alarming and hard as it’s been nearly 6 years now, one of my friends was recently up there and Instagraming pictures and it broke my heart a bit. Food was never a big priority up there; besides hot dogs, one great bakery, and traditional Thanksgiving dinner, my food memories from the cottage are few and far between. But I do remember stopping along the way at farmers stands and getting corn. Corn before “peaches and cream” corn, that was savoury instead of sweet and had a much stronger flavour that the kind you can pick up at the grocery store these days, at least where I live.

But I found some at the farmers market the other day, bright yellow and deeply flavoured. I grilled it and put it in this salad and it tasted like summer, the idyllic kind you can only have when your on school break and have nothing to do the next day but swim.

Grilled Corn Panzanella

2 cobs Corn

1 cup Cherry Tomatoes, halved

2 cups Bread, cubed

1 handful Basil

1/4 cup Olive Oil.

half Lemon

Salt and Pepper

Grill the corn- for me this means on a grill pan on my stove top. You could do this on a BBQ or under a broiler. You want to get it nice and charred.

Once cooked take a serated knife and cut the kernels off the cob.

In a frying pan over medium heat, warm the olive oil. Toss in the bread cubes and toast until it starts to darken on the edges. Salt.

Add the corn and the tomatoes, toss a couple times. Add in the basil and the lemon, adjust the seasoning and serve!

Panzanella Salad with Broccolini, Almonds, and Poached Eggs

 

I was reading a piece a while back in the New York Times opinion section about a former restaurant critic. He had a line about trendy restaurants that went something like “Yes, now everyone does hanger steaks with poached eggs, who cares? 10 years ago it was salmon and lentils” And to that article I say, I will totally be putting poached eggs on everything in 10 years. I love poached eggs. 

I think most people associate eggs with breakfast. Maybe it’s because my Mom’s back up dinner was always frittata, or maybe it’s because I used to run a small breakfast restaurant, so I was always thinking about what my specials would be the night before, but either way I eat eggs for dinner all the time.

Mostly I make a big salad and plop a poached egg on top. It’s a simple, protein filled, very cheap way to make a salad feel like dinner, and it’s a wonderful thing. This one is full of day old bread that is ripped apart and fried in olive oil. I’ve also added broccolini but what makes this really special are the slow cooked onions that are fried up with almonds and rosemary. It just makes it feel less like a throw together meal, like your not just making because all of those things happen to be in your fridge, and you had stale bread from last nights dinner and your too lazy to go out and buy some fish. Oh no. This is intentional. And it’s very very good. 

Panzanella Salad with Broccolini, Almonds and Poached Eggs

2 Free Range Organic Eggs

2 cups of Day old (or fresh!) baguette, cut into cubes or torn into pieces.

1 bunch Broccolini

1 Large yellow Onion, thinly sliced.

1/2 cup Whole Almonds, coarsely chopped.

1 sprig of Rosemary, finely chopped

Juice of half a lemon

Olive oil, Salt and Pepper

In a large saucepan over medium-low heat warm up a big glug of olive oil. Add in the onions and a pinch of salt. Cook until the onions are very soft, stirring often and not letting them brown.

Meanwhile get a deep pot of water on the stove on high heat and bring it up to a boil. 

Once the onions are starting to want to brown add in the rosemary and the almonds and let the almonds get nicely toasted and the rosemary make your whole house smell amazing. Now scoop all that goodness into a bowl and get the pan up to a medium heat.

Warm up another big glug of oil and put in broccolini. It will spit a bit when you put it in  don’t be alarmed! Just cook them until they turn bright great and the tips get a little bit browned and they are just a little tender to the bite if you eat one. Salt generously and squeeze a little lemon juice on top. Then put them on the bowl with the onions. 

Once again heat up some olive oil in the pan and add bread this time. Let the bread get nicely brown and salt it too. Once it’s crispy and delicious add it into the bowl and mix it all together and adjust the seasoning.

Now poach the eggs. Drop them in one by one and cook them until the whites are hard but the yolks are soft, about 3 minutes.

Fill up salad bowls with the panzanella and add one egg on each. And there is a simple cheap delicious meal in under 20 minutes!

Grilled Spot Prawns with a Thai Mango Salad

In Italy they celebrate the first asparagus with festivals all over the country (though I’m told especially in Veneto), ringing in the first of the local produce after a long winter of root vegetables and grains. I remember being told that in cooking school and feeling a little left out, a little cast to the side that we didn’t have these traditions, that my deep and very self important 19 year old self had missed something important. That some deep rooted cultural practise that I believed in had just passed me by because I lived in Canada.

And while that was many things, self indulgent definitely among them, it’s also not true. We may not have the long standing history of it, but Vancouver has spot prawns. And with them the Spot Prawn Festival.

I didn’t really realize before I moved to Vancouver that seafood is just as seasonal as produce, but it makes sense once you think about it. If you want the best salmon in BC you wait until mid-late summer, you’ll catch the fattiest trout in the fall, but of all seafood nothing is as seasonal as the spot prawn.

They are the first things out of the water in the Spring, big prawns that are bright coral and marked with two namesake white dots on their tails. They are tender beyond any shrimp or prawn I’ve ever had and they have an unmistakably sweet flavour. You have probably seen them in Asian supermarkets swimming around, or on Japanese menus as “ama-ebi” or sweet shrimp, but the taste of them fresh from the water is a completely different experience.

They are also one of the only sustainable shrimp/prawn fisheries in the world, and we are incredibly lucky not only to have these glorious little guys swimming around our local waters but also to have a sustainable fish shop 2 blocks away from our apartment.

Now, spot prawns are not cheap, they cost a pretty penny, so these are not for everyday, at least not on my budget (they average around $15 a pound!) but they are worth buying a few every Spring to celebrate.

I made a light dinner of them the other day, with a simple Thai inspired mango salad and grilled the prawns until just they are just barely cooked. With a cold beer, you’d be hard pressed to find a better summer meal!

Grilled Spot Prawns with Thai Mango Salad

*If you can’t get spot prawns you can make this with any shrimp, but fresh and local will make a difference in the taste if you can get them. 

Thai Mango Salad

1 philipine Mango (you can use Chinese mangos too, but the Phillipine ones are less fibrous, and often cheaper!)

1/2 a Cucumber

1/4 Red Onion

1/2 inch piece of fresh ginger

1 clove garlic

Juice of 1 lime

1 tbsp Fish Sauce

1 tsp Sambal Olek or other Asian chili garlic oil

2 tbsp Peanut or Canola Oil

Handful of cilantro and mint.

Spot Prawns

10 Prawns, head off

Zest of 1 Lime

1 tbsp Sambal Olek or other Asian chili garlic oil

1 tbsp Peanut or Canola Oil

Throw all the ingredients into a bowl and marinade for at least half an hour.

Meanwhile make the salad.

Mix the lime juice, fish sauce, sambal and oil in a bowl. On a rasp grate the ginger and garlic and mix it in. Check for seasoning, it should be quite strong- the lime, sambal and fish sauce should jump out at you!

Thinly slice the onion and add to the dressing.

Peel the mango with a peeler. Throw out the peel, then continue to use the peeler to get nice thin strips of the fruit. Add to the bowl.

Cut the cucumber in half and use the peeler to make thin strips of it. You could use a mandoline here if you wanted to, but then you’d have to wash it after, so I just use the peeler.

Mix this all together- this can sit for about an hour like this, but don’t add the herbs until your just about to serve it.

For the prawns- Heat your BBQ, grill pan, or saute pan until it’s blazing hot. Your only going to cook the prawns for about a minute each side, and your going to be taking the shells off, so you want to impart as much flavour into the meat as possible. If the edges get a little black it’s a good thing.

Once your surface is scorching hot put the prawns out in a single layer and let them cook for 1 minute each side and then flip. Once they’re starting to curl up, the edges are getting colored and they have turned bright coral your in business, take them off right away.

Mix your herbs into the salad, place half of it on each plate and put 5 prawns per plate. Poor yourself a beer and dig in!

Thai Chicken Noodle Salad

If theres one thing I find myself making over and over it’s noodle salads. They take wonderfully to nearly anything in your fridge, making them very simple and super cheap, a winning combination for this unemployed girl. I think it’s because I make them so often, and I throw in nearly anything that I worry that they’re not good enough for the blog space and I pass over them again and again when I’m making them. 

That changes with this chicken. It’s a simple enough start, mix a few ingredients and marinate some chicken for an hour or two before frying it up, but it makes this throw together lunch into a legitimate dinner, and a damn good one at that. 

The marinade comes from Martha Stewart, but the rest of the ingredients I think are up to you. I’m putting a guideline for what I use, but it varies greatly depending on the season and if I’m willing to get up and go to the store, or if I have enough in the vegetable drawer of my fridge to make do. Fresh herbs are crucial though, don’t skimp out on those. The cilantro and mint are vital and if you can find thai basil, it really elevates this, although depending on your local shops it can be hard to find. 

Marinade

2 Cloves of Garlic, minced

1/2 cup Soy Sauce

1/2 cup Rice Wine Vinegar

2 tbsp Brown Sugar

2 tbsp Lime Juice

1/2 tsp anchovie fillets, minced

1/2 tsp Sambal Olek, or another garlic chili sauce

1 1/2 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs, cut into thin strips

3 1/2 oz Rice Noods

2tbsp Sesame oil

Half a Cucumber. Cut in half and then sliced thinly

2 carrots, Julienned

1/2 cup Bean Sprouts

1/2 bunch green onions, sliced thinly

1/2 cup toasted peanuts

a handful of cilantro

a handful of mint

To make marinade, mix all ingredients together in a bowl

Put half of the marinade into a plastic zip-loc bag and add the chicken. Mix together and let marinade at least an hour or up to overnight.

Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water up to a boil. Cook your noodles to the package instructions. Strain and run under cold water, stirring occasionally until the noodles are totally cold to the touch. Toss with 1 tbsp of sesame oil. 

In a frying pan over medium heat, heat up the remaining sesame oil. Add in the chicken and cook, stirring regularly until it’s all cooked and the pan is almost dry.

Put the noodles in a large bowl, Mix the remaining marinade with the veggies and put that on top, top that with the chicken and then sprinkle the peanuts on top. And your in business. 

Sunday Staples- Broccoli, Kale and White Bean Salad

First things first. I’m sorry. I really am, I have never been a worse blogger, and I haven’t even been doing this for a year yet. I’m terrible. I could give you a list of excuses, but I won’t. Just please believe that I will get better. I promise I will.

Secondly, I am promising myself, to take more time to cook at home, eat less Tim Horton bagels and plan meals a little in advance so I don’t get home after a long day at work, and end up with take out. I’ve been doing that a lot, and it’s no good for anyone.

So, to fix both of these problems, every Sunday I’m going to post a recipe that is a simple, easy to make dinner that uses ingredients I keep on hand most of the time. Something not fussy, and by telling you right now, that I will do this every Sunday, it will force me to both blog, and eat better. Done deal.

The first one here is painfully easy, but also something I make all the time, mostly because you can substitute anything into it. I made it here with broccoli and kale, but it would be delicious with brussel sprouts, cauliflower, asparagus, anything really. Similarly the white beans are my favourite but chickpeas, romano beans, or fava beans would be equally lovely.What makes it so good as that you take vegetables that normally you steam and you saute them, which locks in the flavour and adds in the crispy exterior and a sweet caramelized taste.

It’s a beautiful thing really, and it takes about ten minutes to get it on the table. This is the sort of salad I make for lunch or for dinner for myself, although if Jordan’s eating with my I usually have to grill a sausage or a chicken breast for him and his manly appetite. But for this girl, the salad is enough.

Broccoli Kale and White Bean Salad

1 large head of Broccoli

1 bunch of Kale

1 tin of White Beans (or 1 cup soaked over night), rinsed well and drained carefully.

1 Onion, thinly sliced

1 clove of garlic, minced.

1 tsp Cider Vinegar, Red Wine vinegar or lemon juice.

A good pinch of dried chili peppers- depending on your space.

A couple good glugs of olive oil

Salt and Pepper to taste.

In a large saucepan on medium heat add some of the olive oil and cook the onion until it’s very soft, about 8 minutes.

Add in the beans and cook until they get brown and crispy. You may need to add more olive oil to prevent browning.

Add in the broccoli and cook for another 5 minutes, until it starts to brown on the edges and turns a deep green. Add the kale and do the same.

Add the vinegar and season to taste. A Voila, c’est finis!

Aunt Loretta's Tomato Panzanella Salad

 

My Aunt Loretta is an amazing cook. Truly terrific. The sort of woman who teaches healthy cooking classes to cancer patients, raised an incredible cook for a son, and makes the marshmallows from scratch that she uses on top of her sweet potato cassorole for Thanksgiving. She does this all with a huge smile on her face, immaculate nails and hair, perfect clothes and just the right amount of southern sass. She is a force to be reckoned with, let me tell you.

She emailed me a while back about a tomato bread salad that she did up with cod, and it sounded amazing because, well, I’ve never had anything shes made that wasn’t spot on.

So when my favourite neighbours dropped off some tomatoes from their community garden last week I could think of nothing else beside big chunks of bread fried in olive oil, big juicy pieces of local tomatoes and big leaves of basil all bound with lemon juice and capers. I bought some local mackerel because I love mackerel and it’s local here and cod isn’t but use whatever you can get!

So here it is, Aunt Loretta’s Panzanella.
Serves 2

1/2 a thin Baguette of 1/3 of a big one

2 Roma tomatoes, 1 beefsteak, or a big handful of cherry tomatoes cut into wedges.

1 tbsp Capers, I like the teeny tiny ones but use whatever you like best

Half a bunch of Basil

Juice of Half a Lemon

A handful of Arugula

2 Herring, Mackerel, or good fresh fish

1/4 cup Flour

Zest of half a lemon

Salt and Pepper

Olive Oil
Turn your oven onto warm or 180F

Mix together the flour, the zest and a tespoon of salt. Dredge the fish in it.

In a small frying pan over medium high heat and add in a tablespoon of olive oil and fry the fish. Put the skin side down first and cook it almost all the way through then flip them and finish cooking the flesh side. Keep them warm in the oven.

Cut the baguette into 1 inch cubes

Warm a large skillet over medium heat. Add in 1/4 cup olive oil and fry up the bread flipping it reguarly until the bread is a glorious golden brown.

Meanwhile Mix the lemon juic, 1 tbsp olive oil, capers in the bottom of a large bowl.

Add in the tomatoes, arugala, and the basil and toss to combine.

Add in the bread and toss again, serve immediately with the fish on the side.

Kale Ceasar

This year J and I spent a good amount of time and money on making a little indoor garden. We planted all sorts of herbs and then swiss chard and kale, thinking they would be good as leaves in salads and when they got bigger we could cook them.

Then we got aphids.

A lot of our plants died.

Jordan gave up on indoor gardening.

Out swiss chard and our kale survived but 6 months in they still haven’t really turned into the big rustic plants we were hoping for, but they do produce some lovely little salad leaves.

So I knew what we were having for dinner when I was flipping through my Tartine Bread book for inspiration and stumbled upon a kale ceasar salad. Now I know that this may sound crazy to some of you who like your ceasars laden with mayo and super crispy romaine, but this salad is alarmingly good. The kale has this rustic nuttiness, and it really stands up wonderfully to the robust flavours of the anchovies and garlic.

Because I can’t get away with just serving salad for dinner we ate this with a flatiron steak and man was it a good combination.

Kale Ceasar

1 bunch of Kale, or a few big handfuls of of baby kale (see note)

2 Anchovy fillets, minced

2 cloves of Garlic, minced

1/2 cup Olive Oil

1/4 cup Vegetable Oil

1 Egg Yolk

2 tsp Grainy Dijon

Juice of half a lemon

1/4 cup grated Parmesan

6 inches of a baguette, it can, maybe should, be a little stale.

1 Flatiron steak.

Salt and Pepper

Note: If you can’t find baby kale this salad is still delicious, in fact we used half and half. But the adult kale has a very stiff chewy centre so pull the soft leaves away from the big vein in the back and then tear them into bite sized pieces.

Marinate your steak in salt and pepper and leave it wrapped at room temperature.

In a small frying pan on medium-low heat warm up about a tablespoon of the olive oil.

Gently start to cook your anchovies in the olive oil breaking them down with the back of a spoon until they begin to dissolve.

Add in the garlic and cook gently until it just becomes fragrant but hasn’t started to brown at all. Pour this mix into a bowl and put it in the fridge to cool.

(sorry I forgot to take pictures at this stage!)

Meanwhile make the dressing; mix the yolk, the dijon and a little squeeze of lemon into a bowl.

Whisk it together vigorously and while you do slowly slowly start to add in your vegetable oil. If it ever looks streaky stop adding in the oil and keep whisking.

Once you’ve added in about half of the oil add the rest of the lemon juice. Then whisk in the rest of the oil, and about half of the olive oil. It should be a smooth creamy sauce. Now add in the anchovy mixture, whisking vigorously again. Add in the parmesan.Check your seasoning, you may need more salt or lemon.

In a large saute pan pour in the remaining olive oil and bring to a medium heat. Cut the baguette into big chunks and fry them up with a generous sprinkling of salt until they are crispy and golden brown and delicious.

Now, heat a frying pan or a grill pan if you have one to a high heat, pour a little olive oil in and fry up your steak however you like it. For medium rare it usually takes about 5 minutes per side for a flatiron. Then let the steak sit for 5 minutes. this lets the juices run back into the steak so when you cut it open it doesn’t all pour out. Slice your steak up into strips if you’d like.

Now toss the salad, put the croutons on top and lay the steak beside it. Doesn’t that look good?

Southern Goodness!

Two inevitable truths about my life

1. There will always be a half used carton of buttermilk in my fridge

2. My boyfriend will always beg me for southern food.

This will never change.

So recently I decided to join forces, to use buttermilk in southern food. I know I know, this is painfully obvious. I make pretty fantastic friend chicken with buttermilk but that’s not really an every day meal.

Nothing that involves buying 2 litres of vegetable oil constitutes as an every day meal.

But other then that my use of buttermilk in southern food is limited. Maybe I should rephrase that, my knowledge of southern food is limited.

Anyhoo, we had some cabbage in the fridge the other day and a light bulb went off in my head.

And so I made one of the most basic of southern foods and it used up half a cup of buttermilk. That’s right, coleslaw with buttermilk dressing. Obvious isn’t it?

And then I made some really tasty chicken with this amazing spice mix that I picked up at the farmers market, and I made homemade potato chips.

And then I had a very good meal and an extremely happy boyfriend. And my carton of buttermilk is nearly empty. Yes.

Homemade Potato Chips

4 large Yukon Gold Potatos

1/4 cup Olive Oil

A healthy spinkling of salt

Preheat oven to 350F

Using a mandoline or a very sharp knife slice the potatoes paper thin.

Put the potatoes in a bowl and rinse with cold water. The water will get cloudy. This is starch coming out and you want it out! The starch will make your chips soggy instead of crispy so rinse until the water gets clear. You may need to pour out all the water and refill it a few times to get it clear.

Dry off the potatoes gently with a hand towel and spread them out on a baking sheet. Mix with the oil and salt and put them in the oven!

Every ten minutes or so take them out of the oven and flip them gently so that you can ensure that they cook evenly. They may stick together a bit so push them apart whenever possible. Pretty soon they’ll look like this:

In the meantime make your coleslaw.

1/2 cup Buttermilk

1/2 cup Mayonaise

1 tsp Dijon Mustard

1 tbsp Lemon Juice

Fresh herbs, I used italian parsley and mint

Salt and Pepper

Half a head of Cabbage

Mix everything but the cabbage together. Test for seasoning.

Mix in your cabbage! and your done!

Now, I didn’t measure anything for my chicken, but I roasted 2 legs off with just some southern spice mix and salt in the oven at 350 for about half an hour. And it was delicious!

Vietnamese Noodle Salad with Halibut

Jordan has a lot of Italian friends. I`m not sure why or how he, being half Portuguese and half British, got in with this group of guys but any way he did. And while they may all be upstanding citizens with no mob connections they, without fail, always know a guy who knows a guy.

We know a guy who knows a guy who can fix our plugged drain, another who can build us a bookshelf, someone who give us fresh tomatoes in the summertime, and someone who makes their own prosciutto in their backyard shed, and yet another who sometimes give us fish.

Which is how several beautiful black cod and an alarmingly large piece of halibut appeared in my appeared in my fridge last week. They had never been frozen. They were unbelievably fresh. I was unbelievably happy.

So, while I wrecked my eyebrow tweezers plucking out pin bones, I thought about summer. About the sun pouring through the window, about fresh veggies, and all things green. I thought about hiking, which made me think about canoeing, which made me think about bikinis which made me think that perhaps we should eat a salad with this piece of fish.

But here,s the problem with salads: I always think their great until an hour later when I’m super hungry again.

So instead of just veggies, I made a Vietnamese noodle salad, with edamame, and peanuts, and cucumbers, and sprouts. And of course, on top in it`s place of honor, the most incredible buttery, soft piece of halibut imaginable.

Vietnamese Noodle Salad with Halibut

Don’t worry if halibut is out of your price range, it’s out of mine nine times out of ten. Just use any kind of white fish, cod, talapia, snapper, whatever looks good and fresh at your market will be delicious here.

For Halibut

2 fillets of halibut

Juice of 1 lime

1 tbsp Soy Sauce

1 tsp Fish Sauce

Oil for frying

Salad

Half a package of rice noodles, or rice stick noodles

1 cup Edamame, shelled

5 green onions, slices thinly on a bias

1 cup Bean Sprouts

1 cup Pea Shoots

Half a Cucumber, cut into quarters lengthwise and then cut on a bias.

Half a Cup Peanuts

A big handful of Cilantro

A handful of Thai Basil

For Dressing

1tbsp Lime Juice

2 tsp Soy Sauce

1 tsp Fish Sauce

2 tbsp Peanut Oil, Canola Oil, or Olive Oil

Preheat your oven to 400F

Get a big kettle on the stove and bring to a boil.

Prepare your Fish

Put the lime, soy, fish sauce and halibut into a ziploc bag and shake it up a little to disperse everything. Set aside. This can be done up to 2 hours in advance.

Make Salad

Cut up your veggies, pull apart your herbs, peel your beans.

Roast your peanuts at a 400F oven for about 10 minutes or until they start to get yummy and brown inside. The skins might smoke a bit, but that doesn’t mean that their done yet, cut one open or bit one in half and see. Peanuts need to be nicely roasted to be tasty.

Roughly chop them up.

Mix all the ingredients for your dressing and taste it. Is it seasoned properly? Is it lime-y enough for you?

That kettle should be boiling by now. Put all your rice noodles into a big bowl and then pour the water over top. Give it a little shake and let it sit there until they cook through but there is still a bit of bite to them.

Strain it into a colander and rinse with cold water, stirring sometimes to make sure it all cools down evenly.

Mix all your salad ingredients together except the peanuts.

Put the halibut onto a baking sheet lined with parchment and bake until it’s nice and browned inside but still very moist in the middle, about 10 minutes. (sorry, no picture here!)

Put the halibut on top of the salad, sprinkle with the peanuts and your in business!