Chickpea salad (Turkish-inspired)

This was sort of a blend of several salad recipes I had done during Turkish month.
Ingredients:

• 1 cup dried garbanzo beans, cooked
• one tomato
• 3/4 cup chopped parsley
• 1/4 cup chopped mint
• pinch of ground coriander
• 3 tablespoons dressing:  50/50 lemon juice and olive oil with salt and pepper to taste

Preparing the chickpeas:

• soaked for 24 hours
• simmer for one hour

By the end of cooking, many of the garbanzo bean skins were coming off and some of the beans/peas were splitting in half.  Undesirable in my opinion.

In the end, I thought this salad turned out really well: meaty from the beans, fresh with the parsley and interesting flavor with the mint and coriander.

Salad of melon, cucumber, greens and cheese with mint vinaigrette

From "Mediterranean fresh: a compendium of one plate salad meals and mix-and-match dressings" by Joyce Goldstein.

Fantastic. A nice refreshing summer salad. I cheated and used some left over, frozen Mexican queso fresco instead of feta -- I think it worked fine. Also, used green leaf lettuce instead of the watercress.

 
 
 
 

Carrot and orange salad

Really easy and simple, but completely exotic. My housemate Mike scarfed it down. Definitely nice and refreshing -- perfect match for a spicy main dish.

Lentil salad (Salatet Adds)

From Roden's "The new book of Middle Eastern food".

A simple, comforting and filling dish. A good addition to the culinary repertoire.

Gaziantep-style chopped salad (bell pepper and tomato)

From Paula Wolfert "The cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean".

Of course Gaziantep is a city of southeast Turkey. Actually, I had never heard of it, but Wolfert says that this area is one of the major sources of her Turkish recipes. Despite the massive amount of sumac in the salad, it had a relatively mild flavor, and a light feel.

On a side note, it bothers me, for some reason, that so many of these Middle Eastern dishes make extensive use of the tomato. Before the tomato was introduced from the Americas several hundred years ago, what did they eat? Have they given up those dishes in their modern cooking?

Turnip and orange salad

From "The new book of Middle Eastern food".

Strictly speaking, this doesn't fall within the "Northeast Mediterranean" theme. Mike brought some turnips in from the garden though, and we needed a way to use them up. This is a North African dish -- with a intensely unfamiliar flavor. In a way, it reminded us of Korean kimchi or some other Asian pickled item.

Kisir (Bulgur and tomato salad)

From Claudia Roden's "The new book of Middle Eastern food".

This dish reminds me of the more well known tabouleh -- the main differences being that this has noticeably less parsley and mint (a more pure starch salad as opposed to a starch-greens blend).

Lacking a couple of ingredients, I left out the minced green chili pepper and most of the scallions. Unfortunately, I think it suffered -- felt a bit flat/heavy. Also, I used #2 bulgur (fine-medium grain), which may have given it a slightly "mushier" consistency than desired. Still, I finished off the whole bowl after a couple of days with no problem.

Coleslaw -- Jamie Oliver's favorite

The recipe comes from "Cook with Jamie", which sits on my bookshelf at home.

The base vegetables are white cabbage, red onion, carrot, and apple. I thought it would be simple to Julianne and slice all of these vegetables in the Cuisinart, but that was not quite the case. Slicing is straightforward, but julianning is a pain in the ass because you have to slice first, then gather up the slices from the Cuisinart bowl and reinsert them into the feed tube in the "opposite" orientation. Clearly, I need to get myself a mandoline.

Since I was short on lemon juice for the dressing, I ended up using some oranges, squeezed from our garden as well as some apple cider vinegar (it's all fruity right?).

I think the final result was quite good. The crowd at Chu's pulled pork/chicken basketball-viewing party gave excellent reviews for the coleslaw -- especially the lightness of the dressing and the sweetness of the apple.

Salad: beet, citrus, jicacama, and cilantro

This combination is slightly Mexican inspired. For the dressing I used left over Chile-lime-cilantro and it all came together very well: the meatiness of the beats; the zing of the dressing and orange; the crispness and refreshing quality of the jicama; and the aromatics of the cilantro. Next time, maybe I would add some cheese on top like feta or farmers?