Arugula by bookseller

I particularly love "wild" arugula (which is in fact simply a different, and cultivated strain that is much spicier than the regular stuff). It makes a great pesto and also a great soup, particularly with some starch (potato, usually) for balance; I also love it stirred into lentil soup, the way I might use kale. And it's terrific stirred around with olive oil and garlic and used to sauce pasta. But to tell you the truth, I like it best in salads.

One thing you might could do is branch out beyond the usual salads. Frex, arugula is delicious in a salad that incorporates, say, grapefruit and orange segments and maybe some cooked white fish or (even better) crab or lobster. It plays very well with the softer, sweeter salad greens like mache or Boston lettuce, with maybe a little endive for a nice jolt of bitterness. Mmmmmm a citrus vinaigrette, throw in an egg if you'd like it creamy, with a little fresh tarragon and some toasted slivered almonds or a few toasted baguette slices (brushed with a little garlic olive oil) on the side....MAN am I hungry!

Salad of Shaved Brussels Sprouts by bookseller

This is my attempt to replicate a salad I love at a local restaurant. The sprouts are shaved into very thin slices, and then those slices are sliced into thin ribbons (this is what's known as a chiffonade). They're dressed with a vinaigrette made, I'm guessing, from white wine vinegar, olive oil, and some walnut oil or hazelnut oil, with maybe a tiny bit each of dijon mustard and honey, plus salt and pepper. And then it's all tossed with finely shredded (but not grated) pecorino cheese and hazelnuts that have been toasted and chopped. It's very, very tasty.

Salad Nicoise by bookseller

Or you could you know just to a big take-off on salade nicoise. Boil the potatoes, poach the shrimp, either grill the zukes or leave'em raw, chunk up the tomatoes, throw in some good olives and, really, anything else that might be in the fridge or the garden -- any kind of lettuce, beans, Cucumbers (you wanna be fancy, you could salt and drain them first), onions (those I really WOULD soak and salt, to make them less overpowering, or you'll be eating onion salad), a couple hard-boiled eggs, slivered peppers (or mmmmm roasted, even better) -- and make a garlicky vinaigrette with anchovies and lots of olive oil and lemon.

Oooh, yeah artichoke hearts would be good, too. Also some canned white beans or chickpeas. Pour me a glass of white wine, please, and shove over on the bench.

...classic salade nicoise is those thin little green beans, tomatoes, canned tuna, black nicoise olives, hard boiled egg, and boiled potatoes (though some people apparently raise their eyebrows at this). You mash acouple of anchovies with a clove or two of garlic and coarse salt to you have a paste, dilute it with a little lemon juice, and then work in olive oil until you have a nice creamy-textured vinaigrette.

Anyway, that's the classic recipe, but you can add just about anything you might find in the summer in the Mediterranean, and it will taste good. I've had it made with fresh, seared tuna, and I don't think it's an improvement -- the texture's wrong. But I've also had it with shrimp and white beans subbing for the tuna and potatoes, and that was lovely.

Pasta Salad by bibbety

Orzo: let's say 2 cups dry pasta cooked and drained to make what, 3-4 cups cooked?

Slivered sundried tomatoes in oil (you can chop them yourself or buy them in the jar already done) 1 cup

About 1 cup of moroccan oil-cured olives pitted and chopped,

1 tub of pearl bocconcini, drained (I think they are about 1 cup or so)

Dressing:

The zest of 1 lemon.

2 tablespoons of lemon juice

1 to 2 cloves of crushed garlic

1/4 to 1/3 cup of olive oil (to your taste)

Salt and pepper to taste

Mix everything about an hour before the meal and add some freshly chopped basil and adjust seasonings just before serving.

Green Gumbo

Recipe from the Washington Post

An Otter favourite.

Old Bay Vinaigrette by Grizzled Adams

This is so good on tomatoes that I just chop one still warm from the garden and splash on the dressing and salt and pepper.

1 cup light olive oil

1/4 cup Malt vinegar

1 tablespoon old bay

1 teaspoon chopped garlic

1 finely chopped spring onion or shallot

whisk together all ingredients or put them in a bottle and shake

This is great on all greens, but for best result make sure to include fresh tomatoes, Damn fine eat'n

Easy Maryland Crab Soup by ivy

Typical lack of measurement and precision on my part and you need to start with a meal of MD steamed crabs, which I know can be tricky if you’re not around here.

1. Go out for or prepare blue crabs steamed with Old Bay. Gorge on them. Somehow save 4-6.

2. By the next day, clean the leftover crabs of their meat. Don’t rinse off all (or any if you like spicy) of the spices from the shells first. Assemble pile of crabmeat. This is the difficult part. Not the cleaning; the resisting eating it all.

3. Keep some of the crab in-shell, for example the small legs, the claws, and/or larger joints, which you have hammered on a bit and from which you've removed all loose shell fragments. You don’t want to be biting into fragments, but I'm from the school that believes working with some partially shelled crab bits in your soup builds character and adds adventure. (As you cook the soup the meat will gradually slip out of the shell, but if you want to get at it all, some parts must be plucked out and eaten with your hands, which allows you to revisit your crab feast.)

4. Put the crabmeat in a soup pot and just cover with water. Add tomato puree and perhaps more water until you have a stock you like. Heat to boil/reduce to simmer. Add more Old Bay if desired, I usually do, but be warned the existing/new Old Bay will intensify as it cooks. Things can get spicy.

5. Add mixed frozen vegetables. Combo of corn, carrots, green beans works well. I throw in a couple cubed par-boiled potatoes as well. Add what you like. Lima beans and peas also traditional.

6. Simmer until tomato puree cooks down and loses some of its sweetness. Add more water if you desire. Even though crab is delicate it’s OK to slow-cook the soup for quite a while if you like. The meat just gets all loose and shreddy and heavenly.

I’m sure there are better ways to go about this with all fresh ingredients, etc., but this is my go-to easy recipe for leftover crabs and it is quick and yum. I’m glad this is not a MD-focused board because no doubt 20 indignant people would chime in and tell me I’m doing it wrong. Note my preemptive explanation in #3. People around here are dead serious about how they like their crabs.

Easy Blue Cheese Coleslaw by Grizzled Adams

Griz's easy Blue cheese Cole slaw

1 pkg shredded broccoli/carrot/red cabbage. about 2 cups

1 cup Ken's Stake house chunky Blue cheese dressing

5 oz pkg Blue Cheese crumbles

1 tbl spoon Dijon mustard

1 tbl spoon malt vinegar

1/2 ts spoon Mrs Dash garlic and herb, more or less to taste

fresh ground black pepper

a bunch of red grapes cut in half

Whisk together the BC Dressing, BC Crumbles, Dijon, malt vinegar, Mrs Dash and black pepper, add salt if you like, I'm trying to cut down.

fold in the shredded vegs and grapes, chill (you and the mixture) .

It was pretty good last night and it was great this evening.

Huge Salad by Sicut Cervus

Just made one of those for dinner, using pretty much everything in the fridge and then some:

meat loaf, cubed

rice

1 endive, sliced

onion, chopped

basil, from garden (LOTS)

grated mozzarella

leftover peas

vinaigrette salad dressing

2 large fresh tomatoes (no, not from garden, though we're getting close), diced

juice of one lemon

lots of fresh ground black pepper

Watermelon, Feta, and Arugula Salad by Grizzled Adams

Ingredients:

4 cups watermelon, cut into one inch cubes
3 cups loosely packed baby arugula
6 ounces crumbled or cubed feta cheese
About 20 peppermint leaves, chiffonaded (wash them, dry them, roll them up, then thinly slice into strips)
2 tablespoons fresh orange juice
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons minced shallots
1 1/2 teaspoons honey
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
Fresh ground pepper, to taste

Directions:

Make the vinaigrette: In a small bowl or container, whisk together the orange juice, lemon juice, shallots, honey, salt and pepper.

Pour in the olive oil into the vinaigrette mixture in one thin stream, whisking briskly as you pour to blend.

In a large bowl, gently toss the watermelon, arugula, feta, and peppermint.

Drizzle the vinaigrette over the salad and toss until evenly distributed.

Enjoy!

And NO, I did not "chiffonaded" the fucking mint, I just chopped it into strips....

Pea and Almond Soup by bookseller

Chops three large carrots, two large onions, and a couple cloves of garlic, and sweat them in 3 T olive oil until soft and light gold. ("Sweat" meaning over very low heat, not shooting for browning.) While the veggies are softening, top and tail a pound of green beans, and half a pound of sugar snap peas. When the onions and friends are soft, add in the beans and peas, stir around to mix them with the rest of the kids in the pool, and let it all meld together over medium heat for about five minutes.

Pour in a quart of chicken broth, cover the pot, and let it simmer away over low heat for about 30 minutes. Somewhere in that 30-minute period, measure out 1 cup or 4 oz. (by weight) of almond meal (you can get it at the health-food store or at Whole Foods; Bob's Red Mill is a very reliable, nationally distributed brand -- it's just finely ground blanched almonds, might also be called almond flour). Pour it into a small non-stick frying pan over medium-high heat, and stir constantly for about 2 minutes, as the almond meal toasts, gets darker, and starts to smell good. Once it has definitely taken on a toasted color (it may not be an even color -- some bits will be darker than others), pour it into a bowl or onto a plate, so it stops cooking.

When the beans et al. have been cooking for 30 minutes, taste the broth for seasoning. I wound up adding a fair amount of salt, some black pepper, and the juice of a lemon. Stir in the toasted almond flour, turn off the heat, and let the mixture cool down a bit. Blend it with a stick-blender or in batches in a regular blender. Should make about 6 cups.

The astonishing thing, for me, is that it not only looks like pea soup -- which I love, but have to steer clear of, mostly -- but it tastes very much like it. Adding the lemon juice actually took it in a different direction, but without that addition, and with a little chopped ham or smoked turkey, it would do a really good pea soup imitation. And the almond meal gives it the body that makes it feel like a meal. Pretty cool.

Chicken for Chicken Salad by bookseller

So I had four chicken thighs and I wanted to make chicken salad from them, and I also had a couple cartons of organic chicken broth. Put the thighs in a pan, covered them with chicken broth and NOTHING else, brought them to a simmer and held them there for three minutes, kicked it up to a boil, slapped a cover on, turned off the heat, and let them sit for 45 minutes. The result: PERFECTLY poached chicken, moist and juicy, ideal for chicken salad. And what's really interesting to me is how flavorful the chicken is, as though I had spiced the broth. And the broth, too, is terrific. Straight out of the carton, it's bland and dull, but now infused with double-chickaliciousness, it's something I would actually choose to eat as soup.

[Later] Nomming my chicken salad, and I will never cook chicken -- for salad -- any other way again. This is amazing. I recommend highly.

Otter Chowder by Grizzled Adams

1Cup chopped onion

1/2 cup chopped green pepper

1/2 cup chopped celery

3or4 garlic cloves chopped

put a couppla glugs of olive oil in a heavy soup pot add 1st 4 ingredients fry till onions are translucent

1/2 lb mild whitefish

1 qt lowfat/low salt chicken broth

add fish to onion mix, when half done add chicken broth then add

1 teaspoon Smoked Paprika

1 teaspoon Mrs Dash Garlic and Herbs

1 teaspoon Old Bay

1 4oz can chopped green chilies

1 small can tomato paste

1 14 oz can whole tomatoes and juice

add 2 potatoes cut into 1/2 inch cubes and bring to a boil, then simmer for 45 min

next you will need;

1/2 lb "seafood mix"(raw octopus,raw cuttlefish,raw squid,raw shrimp and cooked clams and mussels)

1/2 lb salmon cut into large chunks

4 oz bay scallops

4oz backfin crab meat

4oz oysters

olive oil

white wine

garlic chopped

juice from one lemon

add olive oil to fry pan, when it is hot add garlic after about a minute of pushing the garlic around put in the "Seafood mix" turn the heat down, what you want to do is heat up the seafood mix in a scampi sauce, so add the lemon and wine and let it cook down keep stirring.

when the potatoes are about done, add the scampi, and the salmon chunks and simmer till the salmon is almost done. Then add the crabmeat and about 2 minutes before you serve add the oysters.

Serve with a salad and garlic bread.

Now I thought this tasted pretty damn good, and Leviticus would have tasted it, his book would have been half as long.

Hazelnut and Bean Salad by Bibbety

Toast hazelnuts and rub skins off, cool, then chop roughly. Simmer green beans for three minutes, shock in ice water. Simmer sugar snap peas for 1 minute, shock in ice water.

Make vinaigrette with olive oil, hazelnut oil, a clove of minced garlic, sea salt, pepper,and the zest of one orange.

Toss the hazelnuts, the green beans, the peas, and the vinagrette together and serve at room temperature.

Bean and Ham Hock Soup by PegS

The final recipe was 8 cups broth, 1/2 lb of small lima beans, 1/2 lbs of small Northern beans, a med parsnip, two small carrots, an onion, six cloves of garlic, a handful of dried thyme, the ham hock, and some collard greens. The weird mix was my attempt to make as nutritious a mix as possible while still having it taste like a smokey white bean soup.

WONDERFUL SUMMERY CHICKEN SALAD by Sicut Cervus

(or presumably year-round in LA!)

Make dressing: 3 T chutney, 1/3 cup mayonnaise, 1/3 cup yoghurt, 1/4 teaspoon cardamom, juice of 1 lime, 1/4 teaspoon each salt and pepper

Combine in large bowl: cups cold cooked chicken (around 2 whole breasts) cut into chunks, 1 large peach or medium-sized mango cut into chunks, 2 cups melon (honeydew and/or canteloupe) cut into chunks, 1 cup blueberries, 2 green onions, minced

Add dressing, stir gently, refrigerate before serving.

White Bean and Ham Hock Soup by PaganMama

This has been one of my standards this winter. I crock-pot it. So easy. Soak a pound of white beans (navy beans, whatever) overnight. Finely chop a bunch o/onion, carrots, celery. Drain beans. Throw beans, veggies, and smoked ham hock in crock pot. Cover with water. Cook on slow all day. Remove ham hock and dice meat; return. If you like, puree a portion of the soup to make it creamier. Add salt and pepper. Enjoy very much.

Cucumber Salad by falalalala

I like cucumbers peeled and thinly sliced with salt, lime juice, and chopped cilantro, especially if you add a small amount of hot pepper (like some of the juice from a jar of them) with it. Makes a nice side dish to go along with tacos or similar.

Cold Cucumber Soup by bookseller

Peel the cukes, seed them if necessary, and salt and de-water them. Mix with yogurt or buttermilk (yogurt more delish, frankly, particularly good Greek yogurt), walnuts, garlic, fresh dill, and chicken broth in proportions that taste good. Chuck briefly in the blender -- there will be some small chunks, but that's fine. Eat.

[Go fairly easy on the garlic; it gains strength over time. And if you leave out the chicken broth and walnuts, you have a fair approximation of Greek cucumber salad which is also Hungarian and Swedish cucumber salad, in which case the addition of some sliced radishes and/or sliced (raw) mushrooms would not go amiss. But I'd make the soup.]

Vaguely Chinese Chicken Heaped on Salad Greens by pagan Mama

. I poach chicken breasts, shred them, add chopped scallions, cukes, radishes, and red pepper, and toss it all with a dressing including sesame oil, soy sauce, a little mirin, a few drops of chili oil, and rice vinegar.