The local butter lettuce in my fridge was calling out for larb, the simple, adaptable Thai salad generally made from minced pork or chicken cooked in broth with the addition of fish sauce, lime juice and other spices. Served at room temperature and tucked in lettuce or cabbage, larb (or more properly, larp or lahp) is sublimely citrusy, gently spicy and full of pleasing crunch.
It’s also really easy to make. Here’s how:
My friend Elena once set a clear and simple personal goal: eat a salad everyday. The resolution was straightforward and easy to measure, exactly as a doable goal should be. Elena’s idea was that by committing to a daily dose of green, she was assured of a healthy injection — no matter what the rest of the day brought.
I love salads – and I love this idea. It checks so many boxes. Salads are affordable and generally good for you. You can change them up daily, creating something substantial and rich in protein, or something light and refreshing. They’re seasonal, portable and naturally stress-reducing. All that crunching takes your mind off life’s realities.
This week, I’ve got three comforting and filling salads that will start your new year off right. Enjoy.
For the record, I’m a big fan of the mini-marshmallow.
Big fan.
One of my greatest food memories is cozying up to a marshmallow-y fruit salad — classic Southern ambrosia – that someone brought to my maternal grandfather’s after funeral gathering. I’ll never forget the way the baby marshmallows melted into the citrus juice, creating creamy goodness and a perfect comforting texture. I couldn’t stop eating it. Years later, I similarly fell in love with something called Green Stuff, a congealed cottage cheese and marshmallow fruit salad made by an old boyfriend’s mother and always served at his family’s Thanksgiving dinner. Yum. I love a bowl of trashy.
But as much as I savor marshmallows, and as much as I bow down to tradition, this year, I wanted an all-natural version of the classic holiday side….
I am a huge, huge coleslaw fan.
Given a choice between coleslaw and potato salad, I’d choose the former every time. I love the crunch of the cabbage. I love the range of dressings, from creamy to vinegary. I love to experiment with old-fashioned, church supper versions steeped in mayonnaise-y simplicity, as well as modern takes that incorporate stone fruits or Asian flavors. I love slapping coleslaw on a hot dog or a pulled pork sandwich. And I love when the homemade barbecue sauce on my smoked baby back ribs seeps into the adjacent pile of slaw on my plate.
With Labor Day right around the corner and the fall football season nearly upon us, it’s time to get into a slaw routine. It’s incredibly easy to make at home with fresh ingredients, and a lot cheaper than using packaged cabbage and bottled dressing.
OK, it may sound so nineties, but pesto remains one of summer’s tastiest and most versatile condiments. Made fast with homegrown basil, mint, spinach or other seasonal green stuff, it’s useful spread on sandwiches, drizzled in soup, tossed in pasta or draped between thick slices of tomatoes and fresh mozzarella. By now – mid-June – the basil many of us planted this spring is high, lush and screaming to be harvested. And f you live in a hot climate like I do, the leaves you pick today will quickly replenish throughout the summer, because basil is an herb that likes to be used.
It’s on.
This is the summer that my children, ages 13, 11 and 8, WILL learn to cook.
Yes, I should have done this before now. But like most busy moms, I’ve been more focused on slapping dinner on the table than about explaining how it got there.
I realize that my kids are only getting older, and one day soon they’re going to need to scramble their own eggs. And that, as you know, is not as easy as it sounds. The one thing that cooking requires, more than natural talent or creativity, is practice. And unless I invite them in to make some messes and slow me down, they will never learn.