Category: Salads

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My Favorite Memorial Day BBQ Recipes

Hard to believe we’re into Memorial Day weekend and the unofficial start of summer! It’s a perfect weekend for firing up the BBQ and doing some grilling! Here are a couple of recipe ideas to tempt your appetite:

For a great side dish to go with the tri-tip, try my recipe for Scott’s Easy Baked Onions – or the Melted Onions actually cooked in the charcoal coals of the BBQ.

Fire up that grill – and have a great holiday weekend!

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Aunt Maxine’s Strawberry-Blueberry Spinach Salad

We had this special – and delicious – Strawberry-Blueberry Spinach Salad with our ham and tri-tips on Christmas Eve this year. The combination of flavors is just amazing! This is a delicious and easy to make spinach salad that everyone will enjoy.

Salad Ingredients

  • 1 (6-oz.) package of baby spinach
  • 8 oz. (1-1/2 cups) fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced in half
  • 1/2 cup fresh blueberries
  • 1 medium cucumber, thinly sliced
  • 1/4 cup red onion, sliced in thin wedges
  • 1/4 cup sliced almonds

Dressing Ingredients

  • 2 Tbsp. lemon juice
  • 2 Tbsp. white wine vinegar
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 Tbsp. vegetable oil
  • 1 tsp. poppy seed

Directions

  1. Mix dressing ingredients until well blended. If necessary, cover and refrigerate until ready to use.
  2. In large salad bowl, mix and toss the salad ingredients.
  3. When ready to serve, pour dressing over salad to lightly coat.

Enjoy!

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Scott’s Roasted Potato Salad

The August/September 2006 issue of Fine Cooking has an article on roasted potato salads – with recipes for making the salad three ways.

Here’s my modification – based upon what we had around the house yesterday! This is a great, quick recipe for a potato side dish – without the mess of the mayonnaise-based potato salads. Roasting adds a great potato flavor to the dish (vs. the boiled/peeled potato approach).

Continue reading “Scott’s Roasted Potato Salad”

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Scott’s Potato Salad

Introduction

This recipe was inspired by a Warm Potato Salad recipe in the June 2001 issue of Gourmet magazine.
Ingredients

  • 2 1/2 lb small (1 1/2- to 2-inch) Yukon
    Gold potatoes, quartered
  • 1/3 cup mayonnaise
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 2 teaspoons cider vinegar
  • 1/4 teaspoon minced garlic
  • 4 celery ribs, thinly sliced diagonally
  • 1 1/2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved
  • 1 whole dill pickle, chopped

Directions

  1. Cover potatoes with salted cold water by 1 inch in a saucepan, then simmer until just tender, about 20 minutes.
  2. While potatoes are simmering, whisk together mayonnaise, oil, vinegar,
    garlic, chives, and salt and pepper to taste in a large bowl.
  3. Drain potatoes in a colander and cool 5 minutes. Add to dressing along with
    celery, tomatoes, and pickle. Toss and season with salt and pepper.

Makes 6 to 8 servings.

Note: this recipe is good even if the celery and/or tomatoes aren’t
available!

Added: July 29, 2001

Update: See also this recipe from Elise Bauer with the additional “secret ingredient” of a bit of pickle juice! The additional tartness from the pickle juice is very nice!

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Scott’s Lemon Pasta Salad with Chicken

We enjoy making this Lemon Pasta Salad on for lunch on a Sunday and then munching on it cold throughout the week either for lunch or when we need a snack. It’s really good either warm right when you make it or cold.

Our inspiration for this salad came from one of our local markets, Andronico’s (now out of business sadly!), who makes a version of this salad for their deli. Our original base recipe comes from a recipe in Bon Appetit, July 2000 issue where the writer claimed it was her own version of the deli version from Gelsons Market in Los Angeles. We tried a couple of our own variations before settling on this particular version.

The recipe uses about a pound (plus or minus — it doesn’t matter exactly) of chicken (mostly breast/white meat which we prefer rather than thigh/dark meat). For convenience, I often get either a roasted chicken from the local market and strip it – or pick up two of the Louis Rich pre-cooked chicken breast pieces (two 6-oz packages) and use that. Of course, you can also cook chicken breasts specifically for the recipe!

Ingredients

  • 2/3 cup canola oil
  • 3/4 to 1 pound of chicken cut into 3/4 inch strips
  • 12 oz of lemon-pepper fettucine (we use
    Mendocino Pasta’s)
  • 2 1/2 cups snow peas cut into matchstick size strips
  • 3/4 cup pine nuts (raw or toasted, your pleasure)
  • 3/4 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley
  • 3 tablespoons lemon juice
  • 2 1/2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

Directions

  1. Boil the water (salted) and cook the pasta al dente style. Drain.
  2. In a large bowl, mix chicken pieces, snow pea strips, pine nuts and Italian parsley.
  3. Add the cooked pasta to the large bowl.
  4. In a small bowl, mix the lemon juice and mustard together and then slowly add the canola oil while mixing all the time into a smooth consistent mixture.
  5. Pour the mixture slowly over the pasta and other ingredients in the large bowl, mixing all the while. Toss until well coated and mixed.