Soup and Salad
Soup and salad is such a traditional combination–cold and hot, liquid and solid–that I like to continue the contrasts with flavors. This corn soup from Sara Foster’s Fresh Everyday is divine, especially with sweet, fresh summer corn. I followed the recipe exactly, so I won’t reproduce it here (if you don’t have that cookbook, you really should buy it anyway), but I paired it with a salad full of contrasts. I love to mix a sweet fruit with a sharp cheese on top of a salad and then top it with a sweet-and-sour dressing. In this case, the Asian pears serve as the sweet and their classic partner, blue cheese, as the sharp. If you don’t like blue cheese, feta works well too. To fulfill my husband’s starch needs, I also cooked some hash browns, which we really like better at night than in the morning.
Pear and Blue Cheese Salad
Salad greens of your choice (I used Romaine because that’s what I had)
2 pears, diced
4 ounces blue cheese
Walnuts, chopped coarsely (I also like to toast them in the oven)
Sherry vinegar (about 1 Tablespoon per salad)
Olive oil
Kosher salt
Cracked pepper
Arrange the greens on a plate, top with the pears, cheese, and nuts. Drizzle equal parts vinegar, olive oil, and honey over each salad, and season with salt and pepper. Makes 2 servings.
Easy Hash Browns
Yukon gold potatoes (they really do make the best hash)
Yellow onions
Butter and olive oil
Salt and pepper
Dice the potatoes and onions really small. Heat the butter and oil in a skillet over medium; add the potatoes and onions. Cook in a single layer for a good 5 minutes or so to allow the bits of potato and onion to begin to brown; stir and repeat. These make a terrible mess in the skillet, but they taste so good. There are no magic proportions; if you like lots of onion, chop lots of onion. If you prefer a more potato-ey flavor, chop less onion. I usually dice as many potatoes and onions as I have on hand and save the raw leftovers for hash browns on another occasion (like with my hamburgers on Friday). The key is not to get your skillet too full; otherwise the vegetables will steam instead of sauté, which will not give you the crisp brown texture you want in hash browns.