Raw kale salad with hazelnuts, red onions and ricotta salata

This salad is inspired by one served at Birdbath by City Bakery in SoHo.  It's a lunchtime favorite - raw kale, red onions, toasted hazelnuts and a little cheese.  This salad benefits from being dressed a little bit before serving so the kale almost marinates a bit and softens up a little.

• 1 bunch lacinato or black kale (also sometimes called dino kale), sliced crosswise into thin ribbons
• 1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup toasted hazelnuts, roughly chopped
• 1/4 cup crumbled ricotta salata or feta cheese, more if you like
• 3 Tbsp. hazelnut or olive oil (or a mixture if you like)
• 3 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
• 1 Tbsp. high quality aged balsamic
• 2 tsp. kosher salt, more to taste

In a small bowl, mix the red onions with 1 tsp. of salt and 2 Tbsp. of red wine vinegar and mix well (easiest done with your fingers).  Let it sit for about 5 minutes.

In a large salad bowl, mix the sliced kale with the remaining 1 Tbsp. red wine vinegar, 3 Tbsp. olive oil, 1 Tbsp. of aged balsamic vinegar, and 1 tsp. salt.  Add the sliced onions and vinegar to the bowl and mix everything together well.  Let sit about half an hour before serving.

When you are ready to serve, add the hazlenuts and ricotta salata and toss well.  Taste and adjust seasoning with a little more salt or balsamic vinegar if you like.

Bun rieu - Vietnamese seafood noodle soup

The weather has started to cool off so I wanted to make a Vietnamese noodle soup.  One of my favorites, and probably the quickest to make since you're not slaving over making a perfect, clear broth, is bun rieu, a primarily seafood soup made from either shrimp or crab or a combination.

My mother has always made fantastic bun rieu and usually keeps it simple with some crab stick and the ground pork and shrimp/crab egg mixture, or the shrimp/crab egg mixture without pork and then a few shrimp.  Sometimes she adds fried tofu, sometimes not.  I like a little bit of everything, though do not use crab stick, and instead add some shrimp balls, fish balls and fried fish balls (which you can find in the refrigerator or freezer section of an Asian grocery store, but if you can't find them then you can just omit them), and I always use fried tofu because I really like it. You can decide which combination of proteins you want to use.  My mother thinks its way to much to add the fish and shrimp balls but I like them :)


If you can find already fried cubes of tofu, go for it as it is much easier to use than frying tofu yourself since it always splatters a little oil everywhere.

My mother also sometimes adds cabbage in big chunks to the broth to make it a little sweeter, though she usually removes it after it cooked down before she adds all the other stuff to the broth.  I always loved the cabbage in it so I cut it smaller and just use it as part of the soup - you can add to the broth and omit, or omit altogether if you prefer.

And just a heads up that fine shrimp sauce, or mam tom, is very potent, stinky, salty stuff, but used in small quantities adds a distinct saltiness and brininess.  If you can't find it or are a little afraid of it, you can probably omit it and add a little more fish sauce to adjust for saltiness.

Kimchi somen noodles

This is an easy noodle dish to throw together in about 10 minutes and is a great side dish to serve along side grilled meats with Asian or Korean-inspired flavors.  This dish is a riff on a Korean dish of cold noodles and classic cabbage kimchi.  I punch it up a bit by making a simple dressing of soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, scallions and garlic and adding sliced cucumbers.

The classic kimchi is made with napa cabbage in kimchi base or  Korean chili pepper paste.  Other kimchi include types made with dried radishes, cucumbers, and even slices of fish cake.

Somen noodles

Somen noodles are a thin noodle used in Japanese and Korean food, and are typically sold in packages of different multiples of bundles - I had a 5 bundle package that was 16 oz. and just boiled 2 bundles out of the 5.  They can cook up pretty quickly - the cooking instructions say 7 minutes, but I found that it was closer to 5 minutes when I made them.  Cook until just tender.

Za'atar spiced zucchini, garbanzos and tomatoes with whole wheat spaghetti

I bought an assortment of summer squash and zucchini at the farmer's market and remembered that there was a great looking recipe in Fine Cooking for zucchini and crispy chickpeas seasoned with za'atar, or zahatar.  I'll try the recipe as is someday, but I was wanting to make a more substantial dish, so using the flavors as inspiration, decided to make a quick pasta dish with zucchini, garbanzos, and tomatoes seasoned with red pepper flakes, za'atar and a little raz el hanout.

Za'atar spice blend

Za'atar is a Middle Eastern blend of herbs that are mixed with sesame seeds - the blend that I have, pictured here, includes thyme, oregano, sumac and then sesame seeds.  Raz el hanout is a north African spice blend used in sweet and savory dishes that typically includes spices like cardamom,  cinnamon, cloves, cumin, nutmeg, chilies, and coriander.