A Plainly Elegant Salad by the Careless Cook

 

I admit I adore salads, with a big BUT! (only one T) Lettuce with bottled commercial dressing, carefully concocted to cover up every delicate, fresh flavor, is an insult to your taste buds and if you serve it to friends, you'll hear a loud choking noise and a call for 911, and hope it's not too late.

 

Doesn’t have to be that way. Lots of things you can do with olive oil and a vast array of vinegars, with many flavors. Red and while vinegars. Balsamic vinegar. Rice vinegar, plain and seasoned.  Think of vinaigrette as the baseline and be adventurous!

 

And when it comes to the salad itself, don’t think of “Dang this stuff is exotic and expensive,” think of what you’re got in your refrigerator, your pantry, and what you can do with what you’ve got.

 

First off, start with sipping a sturdy cup of red wine to stir the savage mind and bring it to boil over with a bursting of ideas. Tell no one what you’re doing. You’ll only confuse them. They don’t have your charming and efervescente palate. They probably won’t even pick a decent wine.

 

The Plainly Elegant Salad

 

Ingredients

 

¾  head of iceberg lettuce, cut or chopped as you wish (mine was coarsely chopped)

 

Handful of flat leaf parsley, coarsely chopped

 

2 stalks of celery, just a little thicker than thinly cut

 

½ red onion, peeled and thinly cut in slivers about half as long as your little finger

 

A handful of broken walnuts or another nut of your choosing

 

2 tangerines, peeled and pulled apart

 

A table spoon of Herbs de Provence. Look up Herbs de Provence if you’re curious. 

Short answer: Lots of herbs. I buy my packets from The Spice Lab on Amazon

 

Smoked salmon (I prefer Norwegian, that comes thinly sliced and smaller than your palm) Don’t savor smoked salmon? Try another type of smoked fish that’s not canned. Shrimp might work. I haven’t tried it.

 

A can of black beans, strained and rinsed. 

 

Salt and pepper to taste

 

Olives, if you wish

 

Next comes the dressing:

 

Red wine vinegar, seasoned rice vinegar, olive oil

 

Puttin’ It Teegether

 

The dressing.  I start with a few tablespoons of the oil and vinegars in a cereal sized bowl, taste and add more that suits me.

 

The Salad

 

In a fairly large salad dish, toss all the ingredients together except for the parsley, smoked salmon and herbs.

 

Cut the salmon to about half the size they come in the package, and use them to decorate a large salad dish. 

 

Scatter the parsley and herbs on top.

 

Voila!

 

 

 

 

Careless Summer Soup from The Careless Cook

 

 

Right away you may be thinking: Hot Soup in the summertime? I suggest you gather your pitiful thoughts and tell me if you take your burgers off the gill and pop ‘em in the fridge?  Or don’t like BBQ in the summer. Lots of dishes go well in the good old summertime.  

 

The Careless Cook offers a soup so good, even with 90 degrees outside you’ll take a spoon-full and get so excited you’ll wet your socks, and anybody close.  

 

Hey! Summer sun is no challenge for air conditioning or buckets of icy beer!  Speaking of which, The Careless Cook likes a nice tipple whilst he stirs the pot of his deliciously Careless Soup.  Perhaps a Scotch and a splash of ice and cold water?  Don’t overdo it with the water after the Scots worked to make you smile. Be polite! 

 

Take a sip or two and let’s get going!

Adds a lot of flavor to any soup or pasta
Available for about $10 on Amazon

 

My Ingredients (If you use yours, good luck!)

 

A big pot!

1 lb ground turkey

12 oz frozen mixed vegetables

1 large onion (I like to cut mine in thumb sized chunks)

15 oz can of red kidney beans. Empty the can. Don’t rinse the beans and loose the flavor!

A big handful of fresh spinach, or more

Flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped to decorate the soup

1 big handful of shredded carrots

32 oz chicken broth + two cubes of bouillon 

1 heaping tablespoonful of Marinara sauce

1 heaping tablespoonful of Laksa (available on Amazon, see photos above)

Olive oil and salt and pepper as needed

1 Lemon

 

Puttin’ It Teegether

 

Slosh the bottom of the pot with olive oil and heat up the pot.

 

Add the ground turkey and stir to break up the meat as it cooks.

 

When the meant is no longer red, add the onion, mix and cook until the onion is translucent.

 

Add salt and pepper.

 

Add the spinach and allow the leaves to wilt, then mix with the meat and onion.

 

Add the kidney beans WITH the juice.

 

Add the remainder of the vegetables and the broth. Let the broth simmer before crushing and adding the 2 bouillon cubes.

 

As the soup comes to a simmer, add the Laksa and Marinara sauce and stir well.

 

Taste to see if it needs more salt or pepper.

 

To give another taste of summer, grate the lemon, toss the grated bits in the pot and squeeze the lemon juice into the pot.

 

Mix.

 

At this point, I turn off the heat, cover the pot and let the soup rest for an hour or two or overnight.

 

Fill your bowls with soup and sprinkle chopped flat leafed parsley on top. 

 

Then, my three faithful followers, it’s time to see if the Scotch has gone bad. I have some that lasts for days.

Best Burgers You’ll Ever Eat! Says The Careless Cook

 

What’s the best hamburger you’ve ever eaten?  Don’t tell me it was when you were eighteen in the dark of night, in the backseat with…. Be honest or dishonest, I don’t care because either way you don’t remember if you were clutching the hamburgers or the buns. 

 

Let’s stick to your taste buds. Ah, maybe not.  Let’s stick to a hamburger you remember.

 

Most burgers I’ve had were dry and/or tasteless, overcooked, and not worth the calories.

 

Now I’ll stop with nostalgia of your nights in the backseat, or the ruinous burgers and march on to how to make the best burger you’ll ever eat.  

 

Rest easy. It’s not made with beef raised by Japanese farmers in Kyoto and sold at a price that matches what it costs to fix a Ferrari. 

 

This hamburger is made with American beef and you make it in your kitchen.  Which means you can drink wine while you cook and not worry about those sirens and pesky blinking red lights.

 

Ok. Time to pop the cork and get to cookin’!  By the way, I prefer a polite red while I cook, or whatever you say, if you’re buying.

 

Do y’all know that outstanding Chef, Jamie Oliver? He offers a hamburger almost as good as the Careless Cook’s version.

 

Best Burger

 

Ingredients for two burgers

 

2 hamburger buns.

 

6 oz ground beef per burger, with about 84% lean. If you go too lean, your burger will be dry.

 

Cut a handful of strips of onions. 

 

Slice some rounds of pickles. Enough to cover a bun. Any salty pickle will do.  I make my own.

 

Mustard and Catchup.

 

Coarse salt.

 

Black pepper.

 

Unsalted spicy Cajun seasoning

 

Putting it together:

 

Stretch out some parchment paper. 

 Roll the ground beef into two balls until they are solid.  

Slap each ball down on the paper.  Mash it down with your palm.

 

Give each patty a good amount of coarse salt and black pepper, then add a good dose of  unsalted Cajun spice.  Use your palm or a spatula and press the patties to a medium thickness.

 

Add some olive oil to a large skillet and saute the strips of onion until they are browned

 

Before you take out the onions, open and brown each of the buns.  Let them soak up the thin layer of oil. 

 Take out the buns. Don’t let them burn!

 

Put in the beef patties, spices down.  Use your spatula to press the patties down a bit and let ‘em sizzle!  

Add the onions on top of the burgers and flip ‘em over.  I cook my burgers about 2-3 minutes on each side.

 

Put pickles on the bottom buns, then add catsup.

 

Put the burgers on the buns with the onions up. 

 

Put mustard on the top bun.

 

Put the top bun on the burger!

 

Let it sit for a moment.

 

Press it down to allow the juices to absorb into the buns.

 

Cut the burger in half. 

 

Ask your wife if she really wants to eat both halves of her burger.

 

Pour her another glass of wine. Compliment her on how much weight she’s lost.