The Green Machine: Asian-Zing Zucchini and Avocado Salad

The last days of summer are upon us. The temperature is still blistering during the day, especially in the sun, but if you venture out in the wee hours you can smell that autumn is on her way. The dew is sweet, the air is crisping up, and the breeze has a little coolness to her. I always welcome autumn, but saying goodbye to summer is always sad, especially from a foodie's point-of-view. Today I am going to celebrate all that beautiful green by marrying the ever so delicious avocado with zucchini in a fabulous summer salad.

I am still at the point where I don't want to fire up the stove or oven or spend hours slow-cooking my meal. No, I want to eat raw, vitamin-rich, happy food while I still can (speaking of can...I need to see if I can do some canning this year), which means that heat doesn't have to touch my lunch dishes just yet. This afternoon I whipped up something off-the-cuff, yet still inspired by some musings that a friend was ranting about the other day: Zucchini-noodles. I saw a nice recipe on the Love and Lemons blog on her zucchini noodles with an avocado-miso dressing. Of course, I changed it up a bit depending on what I had at home, or what I was feeling like I needed in my diet--the body has an amazing way of telling us if we're willing to listen; I love that!

I wanted to eat all the colors of the summer, especially the greens. All in all I had mostly green and purple with some yellow from the lemon. Anytime I see purple and green together in a bowl, I just get all giddy and excited because I know something great is about to be consumed. The Japanese Bento tradition for lunch has always inspired me because the meal is based on pillar colors and textures to balance the diet, meeting all of the body's nutritional needs. I'll probably get more into this when I have to make take-away lunches...something to look forward to!

Moving on to the evolution of this dish... I couldn't find the julienne today so I couldn't make beautiful noodles, but grating them on a cheese grater on the fattest hole worked just fine for my anxious taste buds. I had a gigantic zucchini from the farmer's market, so I cut it in half and grated it lengthwise to get long, continuous strands. Then I combined some additional flavors I had kickin' around in the kitchen, and made a delicious asian-style dressing to toss everything in. Want to know more? Of course you do :)

Asian-Zing Zucchini and Avocado Salad

Zucchini

Avocado

Wasabi peas

Red cabbage

Fresh ginger

Lemon

Sesame oil

Olive oil

Salt

Chili powder

First, you need to prepare all of the ingredients in order to assemble them. The zucchini should be washed and grated as per the aforementioned directions. Cut the avocado in half and remove the pit--the easiest way to do this is to get a sharp knife and tap it into the pit, then you have some leverage to pull it out. Score the avocado while it is still in its skin--this makes for easy removal, just turn the skin inside-out--or just scoop it out with a spoon. Measure out some wasabi peas in the palm of your hand and reserve. Wash the red cabbage and remove the not-so-delightful outer leaves, then thinly slice a few shreds off of the top. Final prep is preparing the ginger: take off a little thumb of ginger, peel the outer skin off and mince. Remember! You can keep the skin of the ginger and steep it with your green tea later in the afternoon...it is wonderful for settling the stomach, it tastes great, and you lessen your food waste! Yay!

Next, you can prepare your salad dressing. I took the avocado that I already had in cute little cubes, thanks to my scoring technique, and then I added about 2 tsp each of the sesame and olive oils. Slice off a smallish piece of the lemon and squeeze the juice out--you can add zest too if you want...even more colors! Then season with salt and chili powder to taste. Pulverize these ingredients in a mixer, immersion blender, or with a fork, like my lazy bum did. Next time I make this, I would also put in black and white sesame seeds.

Finally, the assembly: Take your zucchini noodles and put them in the bowl first, then add the fresh ginger, wasabi peas, and sliced red cabbage. Toss together well. Then you add that glorious green dressing on top and toss yet again, and you're good to go!

The wasabi peas and the ginger give this salad a nice little kick, but it isn't overpowering for those of you who have picante-aversion. The avocado balances the flavors nicely as its amazing velvety texture usually does. The red cabbage brings the colors to life and also has a great flavor and crunch. All in all, I was pretty happy with how it turned out. I sat down with some pita chips, a fork, and a glass of water, and I was totally satisfied by the end of my meal! I hope you enjoy it too.

Eat well!

Summer Night Cloudgazing--At Least We Brought Food!

This past weekend marked one of the best light shows of the year, the Perseid Meteor Shower. My roommate and I baked some cupcakes and savory nibblies, then we headed out to a friend's house in E-town to see this spectacular show without all that pesky light pollution. You know what we saw instead? Cloud pollution! The whole sky was full of fluffy cloud cover that completely blocked the sky from view. Apparently, that night hosted 40 visible meteors per hour with the best viewing between midnight and 4AM. With my trusty new iPhone I was able to tap into the NASA official viewing center and I saw those little beams of light streaking across the sky. Not really the same thing...

I sent my wishes up anyway! Clouds are just a bit of water after all.

The bright side of this event was that we chatted and enjoyed a nice sit-down snack, then we hopped in the pool for a nighttime dip. I prepared a potato salad from a recipe I learned from my days in Austria, and I made some cracker snacks out of sun-dried tomato cheese spread, roasted beets, and oven-crisped kale. I'm planning on getting my roommate to do a guest-post on her beautiful cupcakes with edible flowers (I'm going to give you all a sneak peek because they're just so darn pretty), that will be coming soon. I liked this little meal because it was a semi-late night snack, and was just the right amount for the three of us.

My Austrian Potato Salad recipe has a special ingredient that you can probably find at Rainbow Blossom or Whole Foods: Pumpkin Seed Oil (Kürbiskernöl)--I swear it has mystical properties. I lived in "das grüne Herz des Österreichs" or the "Green Heart of Austria" in Graz, Austria. It was seriously green, and the pumpkin seed oil flowed abundantly. It is an emerald green color and tastes great on anything, even vanilla ice cream! It imparts its nutty beauty upon everything it touches, especially this potato salad. I would recommend adding this to your condiments and using it often.

I also used blue potatoes that I picked up at the farmer's market. I love blue potatoes! I also love red, yellow, and all other potatoes! They are so great, and they add a wonderful aesthetic dimension to any dish. The opportunity to buy some blue potatoes was one of my favorite parts of the day, so I seized it. The blue potatoes are not a necessary part of this dish, but if you have red potatoes, I prefer those over any other for their texture in this salad. I mixed red and blue.

Now for the recipes!

Austrian Potato Salad

6-8 Potatoes (red and blue), boiled

1/4 Onion, grated

Pumpkin Seed Oil

Mustard (good German mustard or Dijon if you like that)

Apple Cider Vinegar

Salt

Black Pepper

Cut the boiled potatoes into half-inch cubes and reserve them in a bowl. Then make up your dressing, which consists of the remaining ingredients on the list. Let the dressing sit for 10 minutes to let the flavors marry. Then you pour all that deliciousness on top of the potatoes and toss them until coated. You can serve this warm, room temperature, or cold. It also keeps well for a few days. 

Roasted Beets and Crispy Kale Crackers
4-5 Beets of roughly the same size

Kale, enough to cover a large oven pan

Olive oil

Sea salt

Sundried tomato cheese spread
Hearty Crackers

To roast beets you should coat them in olive oil and a little salt then wrap them loosely in foil. Bake them in a 350º oven for about 25-30 minutes or until you can pierce them with a fork. When you take them out, let them cool down completely. The next part is really fun! The skins of the beets come off so smoothly it is amazing. You can rub a little part and then peel off the rest. Then your beets are ready to cut into discs and reserve for use.

The kale should be trimmed and cut into smaller pieces. Spread them out evenly on an oven pan and drizzle liberally with olive oil, use your fingers to coat the kale well and salt to taste. Then you can cook them in the oven on 375º for about 10 minutes and lower the temperature to 325º for the last 5-10 minutes. They will come out as the most incredible chip you have ever put in your mouth. I eat them like popcorn (very healthy popcorn) and the crisp is just the most rewarding feeling. I love it. They are super quick and they taste great. I'm pairing them here with beets, but they easily mix with eggs, on their own, with macaroni and cheese, basically anything where you need a good green, and if you prepare them in this way you will have a light crisp to add as a texture--a texture that you can't find in many other places!

Now take your favorite cracker and smear some of that sun-dried tomato cheese spread (goat cheese spread would be lovely too...ooh, that just made my mouth water) and top with the beets and kale. Then, go to town on that crispity, crunchity cheesy happiness!

Now for the beauty pageant portion of this post: Happy Cupcakes with Edible Flowers!

Bon appétit!

From Julia Child

Highland Morning: Breakfast of Champions

Ever since I won my battle with jet lag (this time around), I have been waking up around 8.30 everyday. Now this is a feat to accomplish, because I am certainly not a morning person. However, I have always been a huge fan of breakfast, and all breakfast food makes me endlessly happy. The weekends always involve at least one exaggerated brunch often completed with egg and pork product proteins, fresh fruit or some concoction of fruit, grains whipped into pancakes or wrapping up the goodness of a breakfast burrito, and the list goes on. I actually tried something fun this week and I made my favorite: Eggs in a Basket, but with a bagel! I know, I should have thought of that earlier...

Today we are going out for breakfast with the Louisville Lady Gourmet. This past week, a friend of mine and her mother came to visit Louisville for the first time-- I bet you can imagine my excitement. I was able to cover my favorite spots in the city, a few very important food destinations, and probably too many tidbits of information and history in just two days. Nonstop baby, nonstop. Well we stopped for food of course. Right before they left on their 10-hour leg back home, I had to squeeze in a visit to Highland Morning, my favorite spot for a substantial early breakfast in the Highlands.

We were lucky enough to have the best weather of the entire summer on their short visit. No, it wasn't a scorching 100+ degrees and 99% humidity, which normally requires us to grow a set of gills in order to breathe. In fact, it was in the 70s and low 80s (almost a miracle in August) with a sweet breeze and some sun. This serendipitous happening allowed us to grab a seat on the sidewalk to soak in the movement of the city and the morning sun, all while enjoying the tastes of Highland Morning.

If you have never been before, I would recommend going for the daily special menu. Right before I left for Spain, Highland Morning was just a budding restaurant, and I was so in love that I would go at least once a week. Their Grits of the Day are my mainstay (sun-dried tomato and basil grits?!...yes, you are a genius if you can make that happen), but I went for the french toast special this time. I knew I wouldn't be disappointed.

New Orleans French Toast: Breakfast of Champions

This time it was the New Orleans French Toast, which is a magical combination of bananas and apples cooked up in butter and brown sugar and mixed in with some cream cheese. That cream cheese mix is then spread between slices of perfectly cooked french toast, kissed with powdered sugar, garnished with strawberry, and subsequently drowned in maple syrup by me (it's been a while since I've had maple syrup guys, and I vow to never make that separation so long again). I was in love. It was the perfect start to my day, and a great way to prepare me for a visit to the Farmers Market...because we all know what I can do at the Farmers Market on an empty stomach >.>

If I recreated this New Orleans French Toast at home, I think I would fold in some crunchy granola (from Kizito!) and see what would happen. I just thought of that because the banana and apple mixture reminded me of a breakfast I used to prepare in Austria with my Swedish and Canadian roommates: fruits and granola pan fried in a little butter and brown sugar until happiness ensues. Gloriousness.

Loaded Baked Potato Omelet: Daily Special

My tablemates also made some delectible choices including: the Baked Potato Omelet (the other daily special), the Classic (bacon, eggs how you like, grits, and a biscuit), and the Classic Eggs Benedict. I weaseled my fork onto all of the plates, don't you worry, and everything tasted delicious. I must comment that the potatoes in the baked potato omelet could have been more cooked through--they were still edible, but not cooked to perfection as usual. I absolutely loved the hollandaise sauce because it didn't overdo it on the lemon juice...that's just embarrassing when that happens--but that day wasn't today, because Highland Morning knows what they're doing.

Eggs Bene: Hollandaise from Heaven

Along with breakfast they offer an array of breakfasty beverages (non-alcoholic and alcoholic) including an awesome mimosa, bloody marys with your choice of fire level, Highland Coffee coffee, tea, iced tea with different fruit flavors, fresh-squeezed orange juice (just like Spain, except without their oranges), and on and on. I had the Highland Coffee coffee, which came with free refills that assisted my expedited speech and twitching. Highland Coffee, for all you Louisville noobs, is an amazing coffee shop that is not far down the street from Highland Morning. You won't be able to look for their signs because Urban Outshitters has demaded all street advertisement with their new rental agreement, thus robbing Highland Morning and the Knit Nook of their street signage. If you are visiting, ask anyone on the street to point you in the right direction to Highland Coffee--then order the mocha with blackberry whipped cream (I know, right?!?!?!)

The Classic: You'll never go wrong with a side of grits!

Okay, back to Highland Morning. What I loved about this visit was that we could enjoy the outdoor patio, our food came out in a timely manner in all its quality deliciousness, and the service was prime. I specifically remember commenting to my fellow diners that the food runner was super pleasant--he was very happy and conversational, and you could tell he loved his job (please, former or present restaurant workers, when was the last time you met a gregarious food-runner?). I often see friendly service at restaurants in Louisville, but this kid and our very pleasant server were rockin' out, and thus made our experience all the more enjoyable. I'll be passing by soon for some grits of the day...always love a bit of soul in my food!

Highland Morning
1416 Bardstown Road
Louisville, KY 40204

Phone	: (502) 365-3900
Email	highlandmorning@yahoo.com