Tag: Kale

An Easy, No-Cook Dinner: Deconstructed Shrimp Salad Rolls

Deconstructed Shrimp Salad Rolls

Print Recipe
Prep Time 15 minutes
Course Main Course
Servings 2 people

Ingredients
  

  • 2 tsp soy sauce
  • 2 Tbsp tahini or peanut butter
  • 4 Tbsps sweet chilli sauce
  • 2 tsp red wine vinegar
  • 10-15 shrimp (pre-cooked)
  • 1/2 pkg rice vermicelli (~115g or 4oz)
  • 6 cups kaleslaw or coleslaw vegetable mix (or sliced kale, brussel sprouts, broccoli stalks, etc.)
  • 3 Tbsps roasted peanuts (crushed)
  • handful fresh mint or basil (sliced, for garnish)

Instructions
 

  • Boil some water in a pot or kettle. Place vermicelli in hot water and let sit for 5 minutes, until tender (or per package directions). Drain vermicelli and let cool.
  • Mix together soy sauce, tahini/peanut butter, sweet chilli sauce and red wine vinegar until smooth.
  • In a large, shallow bowl or platter, place the kaleslaw/cole slaw mix. Top with vermicelli. Place shrimp on top of vermicelli, then drizzle the dressing over the bowl. Sprinkle with mint or basil. Serve.
Keyword Peanut Butter, Peanut Satay Sauce, Rice Vermicelli, Salad Rolls, Shrimp, Vietnamese

And now for the details…

Hi there folks! It has been awhile yet again, but I am coming to you with a nice, easy, no-cook recipe for these hot, summer days!

This recipe was born from a discussion I had with my friend Krystal about ideas for meals that require little to no cooking for prep. Krystal is a dietician who specializes in traumatic brain injury (TBI) recovery. A question she had gotten was about meal ideas that required little to no cooking. Fun fact for you folks out there who have never experienced a concussion or TBI: some things that we normally consider as simple as chopping vegetables or multi-tasking in the kitchen (and hoping not to burn something) is a daunting or unmanageable task when the brain is working so hard simply to heal and provide basic function after injury. And so, me and Krystal put our (healing) brains together and came up with some ideas. And as one of our ideas, this recipe was born.

This recipe is nice and simple, with not too many ingredients to manage, and no cooking required, except to boil some water. Now, one could argue that you are technically cooking the noodles, since they are sitting in boiling water. Fair. But you do not need monitor them on the stove, just boil the water, pour it over the noodles, and then let them sit for a few minutes. And the joy of this is you do not even need a stove to do this. A plug-in kettle works just fine for the job!

We are also going sans cooking by using pre-cooked shrimp. If you want to get fancy, you could always purchase the shrimp raw and cook it and cool it yourself. But there are tons of options nowadays, particularly in the frozen aisle, for precooked shrimp. All you need to do is thaw, and it’s ready!

And so, to get started, boil that water! If you are boiling the water in the pot, once the water has boiled, turn the heat off and add the vermicelli straight into the pot. If you are using a kettle, place the vermicelli into some sort of heat resistant dish (I just used a piece of tupperware), and then pour the water over noodles. If any of the noodles are sticking out of the water, use a fork or spoon to gently press them into the water as the rest soften. Let the noodles sit for about 5 minutes or until tender. Double check the package of your vermicelli to make sure there are not some special different directions for prep needed for your particular noodles. Once tender, strain in a fine sieve, and let sit to fully drain and cool slightly.

As the noodles are “cooking”, draining and cooling, mix together the soy sauce, peanut butter or tahini, sweet chilli sauce and red wine vinegar and set aside. If you are using peanut butter, I would recommend either using the processed peanut butter. If you are using a “just peanuts” type of peanut butter, let the peanut butter come right down to room temperature, or you will end up with a fairly solid “sauce”.

If the shrimp is still slightly frozen, run them under cold water until thawed. Ensure the water is drained completely from the shrimp, even drying them on a paper towel before assembling in your dish.

In a large, shallow bowl spread out the pre-chopped mixed kaleslaw. The kaleslaw is completely a suggestion to make this recipe a little easier. Again, between Krystal and I, we discussed ways to make meal prep easier. And one of those ways is to buy your veggies already washed, trimmed and chopped. For some folks recovery from TBI, standing at a counter and chopping vegetables is just a wee bit too much for the brain to handle. Have you ever appreciated the level of concentration it takes your brain to keep you standing, carefully judging the distance to chop the produce to just the right size, all the while avoiding your fingers? I definitely have an appreciation for what my brain is capable of when it is operating at it’s “better”! If you want to chop your own veg, that is completely an option you can choose as well. Feel free to use any or all of kale, broccoli stems, brussel sprouts, carrots and/or cabbage, julienning or shredding the veggies so they are nice and small.

On top of the veg, we will add the drained and cooled noodles. Arrange the shrimp over the noodles. Drizzle the dressing over the entire dish. Sprinkle the crushed peanuts on top and end with the basil or mint. If you want to chop the basil or mint, you can do that before your sprinkle, OR you can simply tear the mint or basil leaves as you sprinkle them over the top of the dish.

Serve and enjoy.

Happy eating.

Warm Kale Salad with Caramelized Shallots and Roasted Apples

Warm Kale Salad with Shallots and Apples

Print Recipe
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Total Time 20 minutes
Course Main Course, Salad

Ingredients
  

  • 3 shallots (sliced medium-thick)
  • 3 Tbsps (plus 2 Tbsps) olive oil
  • 2 Tbsps dried currants
  • 2 Tbsps red wine vinegar
  • 2 tsps dijon mustard
  • 1 Tbsp maple syrup
  • 1/8 tsp salt
  • 2 small apples (cored and sliced)
  • 3 celery ribs (sliced)
  • 8 leaves kale (small leaves, reduce if large leaves)
  • 1/2 cup walnut pieces (toasted)

Instructions
 

  • Heat oven to 200ºC/400ºF. Place shallot slices on large cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Drizzle with 3 tablespoons olive oil. Place in oven for 7 minutes. Remove and flip. Place back in oven for 5-7 minutes.
  • Remove and add celery and apples, mixing to coat all with oil. Place back in oven for 5 minutes.
  • Sprinkle kale over other fruit/vegetables, place back in oven for 3-8 minutes or until kale has softened, but not turned crispy.
  • Mix together currants, vinegar, syrup, mustard, 2 tablespoons of oil and salt.
  • Remove fruit/vegetables from sheet to serving dish. Drizzle with vinaigrette. Sprinkle with walnuts. Serve.
Keyword Apple, Kale, Salad, Salad Dressing, Shallots

And now for the details…

Back for day two of the 14-day-quarantine-recipe-posting-challenge.

Today’s recipe is a warm kale salad. This is a great recipe to throw together when you don’t want to have to spend a whole lot of time thinking about what you are putting together or spend time babysitting a recipe. Yes, there are many removals and adds back into the oven, but as long as you have cut and prepared everything in advance, you can move pretty quickly through each step and use the time in between to either prepare the other elements of your menu, or sip some wine. Or both? Wine not.

If you are normally not a fan of kale, this may be a good recipe to try. Fresh kale definitely has a bite to it that a lot of people find unappealing. To be honest, I really enjoy it, but my tastes in food might be questionable; I’m the one who hates pancakes and French toast, remember? Because we cook the kale for a short time in this recipe, it will soften the kale, as well as cut down the bitterness a little bit. If you have not enjoyed fresh kale salad recipes in the past, give this a try, you might be pleasantly surprised. But if this still is not the recipe for you, I can entirely understand. Kale isn’t for everyone.

For this recipe, I got a chance to use purple, or Redbor, kale. It is what was provided to me by that incredibly generous friend I mentioned in the last post who dropped off a slew of fresh produce for me to use! I viewed this as a sort of Mystery Box cooking challenge, where the ingredients she provided were my “basket”, and now I am finding recipes to use these ingredients for the rest of the week! If you can’t find Redbor kale, fret not. Green, curly kale or dinosaur kale will work just as well.

Let’s get to cooking.

Start out by heating the oven to 200ºC/400ºF. While the oven is heating, slice the shallots fairly thick, maybe ~5mm (3/8″). We want them fairly thick, because we will be turning them over halfway through, and thinly sliced shallots are just going to flop apart when you try to turn them over. Lay them flat on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, and then drizzle with 3 tablespoons of the olive oil, flipping or lifting the pieces if you need, to ensure they are well coated with the oil. Once the oven has heated up, place the sheet in oven and cook for 7 minutes.

While the shallots are cooking, prepare the rest of the ingredients. I usually start by putting the currants into the vinegar and syrup, since I like to give them a bit of soak time to soften and absorb the liquid.

Next, wash and slice the celery, and set aside.

Wash and core the apples, then slice them into fairly thin slices, no more than 5mm thick.

When the shallots are done with the first 7 minutes, remove the sheet from the oven, and turn the shallots over to the other side. I find two forks seems to work best to do this. If the shallots fall apart while you do this, don’t worry too much, try to flip the majority as well as you can, then return them to the oven for another 5-7 minutes, or until they have caramelized.

Once done, remove the sheet again, and add the celery and apples, stirring everything together to coat all pieces with the excess olive oil. Place the sheet back in the oven for another 5 minutes.

Finally, place the kale above the other ingredients on the sheet and put back into the oven a final time for 3-8 minutes (will vary greatly on whether you have a convection oven or not). We want to cook them just until the kale has softened, but has not all turn dried and crispy. A few crispy edges are okay, and I find add to the texture of the salad, but I made the mistake when I moved to our new house with the convection oven of cooking for 5 minutes, and all the kale had turned essentially into kale chips… not what I was going for…

Finally, using a fork, whisk the mustard, salt and olive oil in with the currant, syrup and vinegar, and get ready to plate your salad.

Remove the veggies and fruits from the sheet to your serving dish. I usually like to remove the kale first and lay it as the base, then scoop the rest of the items on top. Drizzle with the currant vinaigrette, spooning any leftover currants onto the salad, and then top with the toasted walnuts, crumbling slightly.

I felt as though this salad could have used a cheese element of some kind, maybe some goat’s cheese or bleu cheese. But, well, quarantine. Feel free to add either of those if you want a salty, creamy element added to the salad.

Finally, serve and enjoy.

Happy eating.

Fennel and Kale Salad with Grainy Mustard Dressing

Fennel, Kale and Potato Salad with Grainy Mustard Dressing

Print Recipe
Prep Time 20 minutes
Course Salad
Servings 2 servings

Ingredients
  

  • 1/2 fennel bulb (cored and sliced thin)
  • 2 kale leaves (destalked and sliced thin)
  • 4 small potatoes
  • 1 Tbsp mayonnaise
  • 1 Tbsp grainy mustard
  • 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
  • 1/4 lemon (juiced)
  • 1 garlic clove (shredded)
  • 1/4 cup Emmentaller or Swiss cheese (shredded)
  • salt and pepper (to taste)

Instructions
 

  • Wrap the potatoes in aluminum foil and place on preheated bbq or oven for 10 minutes on medium high heat. Place the kale and fennel in a bowl. Mix the mayonnaise, mustard, vinegar, juice, and shredded garlic. Add salt and pepper to taste. Once the potatoes have cooled enough to touch, cut into 3-4mm slices and add to the bowl. Toss the veggies with the dressing. Serve.
Keyword Kale, Potatoes, Salad Dressing

And now for the details…

Okay, so this dish was totally another one of those “what do I have in the fridge” moments to bring something together at the last minute. I was having a friend over for dinner, already had steak on the roster, but needed a veggie to go with it. The result? A garlicky, creamy salad that has a freshness hit from the fennel, the added bite of the potatoes and earthiness of Emmentaler cheese.

If you have no Emmentaler, fret not, readily available “Swiss cheese”, as we know it in North America, is actually based on Emmentaler cheese. Because, yep, you guessed it, Emmental is a region in Switzerland. (Fun fact: did you know that the holes in Swiss cheese are known as “eyes” and if the cheese has no eyes, it is considered “blind”?)

Let’s get to the cooking.

Before starting to assemble the salad, we need to cook the potatoes. I used the barbecue, since it was already on to cook the steaks for our meal. But you could always cook them in the oven, or even boil them, as alternatives. I cleaned the potatoes well, since I wanted to keep the skins on, and placed them in tin foil, then cooked them for about 10 minutes. They were just wee, so they didn’t need much time to cook through. Adjust your cooking time as you need, depending on what size of potatoes you are using.

Now prepare the rest of your veggies. Slice the fennel thinly, and chop the kale into bite-sized pieces. Allow the potatoes to cool after they have been cooked; if you add them hot to the salad, they will melt or cook the other ingredients and the results will be quite different.

Slice the potatoes into little medallions, and add all the veggies to your salad bowl.

Whisk together the mayonnaise, mustard, vinegar, lemon juice, and garlic. Add salt and pepper to taste. I used my handy-dandy garlic grating plate to get a nice garlic paste going. If you do not have a garlic plate, grate the garlic with a fine grater right into the dressing bowl, trying to allow any garlic “juice” to make its way into the dressing. Next, grate the cheese, adding it to the bowl with the salad dressing.

Toss everything together gently, trying to avoid breaking the potatoes up into little pieces. Serve, and enjoy!

Happy eating.