Salad bar: several salads from the past few weeks

Sometimes a salad isn't worth a full post, but I still take a photo because it's pretty. Here's a salad bar of a post, with photos of several of the past weeks' salads. Unintentionally, all of the salads below are without any lettuce.

Ever since seeing a post on Joy the Baker about peach, tomato, and mozzarella crostini last year, I've wanted to try it. Rather than a crostini, I tried it in salad form. I also used nectarines instead of peaches, because I had lots of ripe nectarines.

Verdict: I found it to be a disappointment. The mozzarella went well with the nectarine, as it does with tomato, but the nectarine's sweetness blew the tomato away when the two were eaten together. I won't be making this combo again, although I may try combining just nectarine, basil, and mozzarella (with olive oil and salt, of course). Perhaps a slightly more tart peach would have been a better combination.

The cube salad (alternatively "cubey salad" or, more correctly, Israeli salad) is a mix of chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and onions (or scallions in the photo).

Dress with salt, pepper, olive oil, and some lemon juice.

This salad was the husband's creation, based on this recipe for jicama and mango salad. He notes that he just made the salad, not the salmon. He also skipped the ginger and onion, but put in extra scallions. He also put in a few sugar plums in addition to the mango.

 

Both of us enjoyed the salad. His suggestion for the future is to cut the jicama into even smaller cubes than 1/4 inch.

Okay, this next photo isn't of a salad at all, just a quick way to cook some cabbage. I washed and rough chopped the remainder of a head of Napa cabbage, then stir fried it in some olive oil, adding soy sauce and a heaping spoonful of peanut butter after 3-4 minutes of cooking.

It turned out well and was much easier than when I make a peanut sauce in the blender. Served it over rice.

More with cabbage: cole slaw. I used half of the cabbage below and the recipe from the Joy of Cooking (a dressing of mayo, vinegar and sugar, plus some salt and pepper to season it).

I sliced the cabbage thinly. Used the food processor to grate carrots finely.

And then forgot to take a photo of the final product. It turned out well, but was less sweet than most cole slaw recipes. The Joy of Cooking recipe had half the sugar of most recipes I saw on the web (1 tsp instead of 2).

Finally, a photo of one of the husband's creations, which includes a salad of tomatoes, melon, and scallion.

He makes good plantains too.