Shrimp Soup with Coconut Milk, Fresh Corn, and Cilantro

Peeling shrimp and chopping veggies aside, this is very quick to make.  If I was making this only for myself, I would have added some minced jalapenos or some red hot pepper flakes, but the kids wouldn't have wanted it that hot.  So I added sriracha hot chili sauce (rooster sauce) at the table, and it was great.  However, the soup was flavorful and delicious even without the spicy kick.   I created this recipe to satisfy my dairy craving... I wanted something chowder-like, but without the milk or cream.

2 pounds smallish raw peeled shrimp

1 teaspoon virgin coconut oil
1 red onion, minced
1 large red bell pepper, diced
kernels cut from 6 ears of corn
1 box chicken broth (I like Progresso 100% natural gluten-free)
1 can coconut milk (not light)
freshly ground black pepper

1 bunch cilantro, chopped

optional:  minced fresh jalapeno pepper or red hot pepper flakes

Saute onion and red bell pepper in the coconut oil.  Add minced jalapeno or red hot pepper flakes, if using.  When onion and pepper is soft but not browned, pour in the chicken broth.  Add the corn kernels.  Bring to a gentle simmer for five minutes.  Add the can of coconut milk.  Bring to very gentle simmer.  Add shrimp and a few grinds of fresh black pepper.  Cook at a very gentle simmer until shrimp turn pink and are just cooked through.  Ladle into bowls and top with chopped cilantro.

Broiled Fish with Harissa Butter

This is super-quick, thanks to one of my all-time favorite speedy-gourmet ingredients - harissa.  Harissa is a chunky Moroccan red hot sauce.  It's not just hot though, it's very flavorful.  My favorite brand, Alili, contains hot peppers, sweet peppers, and carrots, and is actually made in Morocco.  For you Athens people, this is available at a specialty grocery store on Baxter Street called The Healthy Gourmet.  It is also available at alilimorocco.com.  I have made this with both wild salmon and mahi-mahi, and it was great on both kinds of fish.  This may not sound like kid food, but this is my kids' favorite way I make fish.

Wild salmon or mahi-mahi fillets

2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon harissa

Kosher salt
Freshly-ground black pepper

Rinse fish, pat dry with paper towels, and put on a foil-lined baking sheet.  In a microwaveable cup or bowl, melt butter.  Mix harissa into melted butter.  Spread mixture evenly over fish with a spoon, working quickly (if the butter solidifies it makes it harder to spread).  Sprinkle with kosher salt and freshly-ground black pepper.  Broil until fish is cooked all the way through.  Do not overcook.

I like this served with roasted asparagus and sliced tomatoes.

Cucumbers, Tomatoes, and Onions in Sweet Apple Cider Vinegar Dressing

This is a cool and refreshing side dish perfect for a barbeque, alongside homemade macaroni and cheese, or served with a Southern-style vegetable dinner - you know, the kind you have when your garden (or farmer's market basket) is overflowing.

2 tomatoes
2 cucumbers
1 sweet onion - Vidalia or red

1 1/2 cups cold water
Apple cider vinegar - I like Bragg's
Agave nectar or sugar
Salt
Freshly-ground black pepper

Optional:  2 or 3 crushed cloves of garlic added to the dressing

Optional garnish:  fresh parsley or thyme sprigs, dried or fresh whole hot peppers

Slice tomatoes into wedges.  Peel and slice onion into thin wedges.  Wash cucumber and slice.

Note on peeling vs. not peeling cucumbers:  If it's a nice homegrown or farmer's market cucumber, or an unwaxed English cucumber, you can wash it thoroughly and leave the skin on if you wish.  If it's a regular waxed supermarket cucumber, you probably will want to peel it with a vegetable peeler.  If I have a cucumber with decent skin, I usually peel strips off, leaving some of the green as a compromise, since my husband likes the skin and I do not.

Put 1 1/2 cups cold water into a measuring cup.  Add apple cider vinegar, agave nectar or sugar, and salt to taste.  You want it to taste lightly tart, and slightly sweet.  If you use the sugar, you'll have to stir it for a couple of minutes for it to fully dissolve.  Add the crushed garlic cloves if you are using them.  Pour this mixture over the tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions in a bowl.   It's best to let this sit for an hour or so, tossing occasionally.  When you are ready to eat, find and remove the optional garlic cloves, and put the optional garnishes on top of the mixture.

Beautiful Tomato Salad

The key to this salad is to use as many different types of tomatoes as you can find.  Large heirlooms, yellow pear-shaped cherry tomatoes, purple, green, or streaked tomatoes.... whatever you can get.  In the salad pictured, I also used two different kinds of basil - green basil and purple basil.  The purple basil can be very intense in flavor, so you may want to use that primarily as a garnish.  Obviously, I didn't invent tomato-basil salad, but this is how I like to make it.

Tomatoes - large ones cut into thin wedges,
  large cherry tomatoes cut in half,
  small cherry tomatoes left whole
Basil - several large sprigs - wash, strip off leaves,
  stack and roll up, and cut crosswise into thin strips
Extra-virgin olive oil - a generous drizzle
Balsamic vinegar - a light drizzle
Kosher salt - a sprinkling

For the garnish:  green and/or purple basil sprigs

Place ingredients in a bowl, toss gently, and garnish with the basil sprigs.

Peach BLT Salad with Fresh Thyme-Dijon Vinaigrette

For the bacon-lover!  For you vegetarians and vegans out there, I'm quite sure this would rock with some fakin' bacon.

2 hearts of romaine lettuce
2 large tomatoes, cut into chunks
4 large peaches, cut into chunks and tossed with
  juice of 1 lemon (keeps it from turning brown)
1 package bacon (I prefer nitrate-free), fried
  nice and crispy and crumbled

Olive oil (not extra-virgin)
White wine vinegar
Dijon mustard
Agave nectar
Fresh thyme leaves
Freshly-ground black pepper

optional:  one or two green onions, thinly sliced

Discard any not-so-great outer leaves of the romaine hearts, and rip or cut it up into bite-sized pieces (I use a plastic serrated knife that keeps the edges of the lettuce from turning brown when cut).  Spread on a big, pretty platter.  Top evenly with the tomato, then the peach.

Put the dressing ingredients in a jar and shake (the jar).  Start with about a quarter-cup of olive oil.  I am not providing amounts here for the other dressing ingredients because people are so individual in their tastes when it comes to dressings... some like it sweeter, more acidic, more or less mustard-y... let your taste be your guide.  The bacon is so salty that I do not add salt.

Right before serving, drizzle the dressing over the salad as evenly as you can, and top with the crumbled bacon.  Some thinly sliced green onion would be a nice addition on top too.  You can also garnish with a sprig or two of fresh thyme.

Slow-Cooked Pork with Sauerkraut and Vidalia Onion

This is a great one to put in your crockpot in the morning and have ready by dinner.  This would be delicious served with mashed potatoes, steamed green beans, and homemade applesauce.  I used a 2.5-pound Boston Butt I got at the Athens Farmer's Market from the Greendale Farm folks.

2.5-pound Boston Butt pork
2 teaspoons Better than Bouillon (Chicken)
  dissolved in 2 cups warm water
1 can Silver Floss sauerkraut, drained
1 large vidalia onion, halved and thinly sliced
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
2 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar (I like Bragg's)
1 Tablespoon agave nectar
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Put pork in your crockpot.  Pour in the chicken bouillon water, then put in the sauerkraut, onion, caraway seeds, apple cider vinegar, agave nectar, salt, and pepper.  Try to place these ingredients as evenly as you can around the pork.

Cook on the high setting for at least six hours (it can cook longer - it only gets more tender).  After a few hours, it's good to break up the pork a bit to let the flavor get into the meat.

Avocado-Peach-Tomato-Watermelon-Red Onion Salad

Make sure you get a good sweet red onion for this one, and homegrown or farmer's market tomatoes.  This is a summer recipe, because there's no other time of year you can get all these ingredients at their peak.  Serve this immediately after you prepare it.  The cold watermelon provides a wonderful temperature/texture contrast with the rest of the ingredients.

2 perfect avocados
3 peaches
2 tomatoes
2 cups cold watermelon
1/2 red onion

Juice of 1 juicy lime
Kosher salt

Cut into chunks the avocados, peaches, tomatoes, watermelon, and red onion.  Toss with the lime juice and a pinch of kosher salt.

Radicchio-Blueberry-Wild Rice Salad with Walnuts

When people find out I don't eat wheat or dairy (except butter), sometimes they'll say, "What do you eat, nuts and berries?"  To which I reply, "Yes."  This beautiful salad is for those who enjoy the bitter taste of radicchio. The wild rice called for is just wild rice (the dark part only), not the wild rice/white or brown rice blends often sold in stores.  Apparently wild rice is not true rice, it is more like a grass.

1 head radicchio
3/4 box blueberries
1/2 cup wild rice, cooked
  (measured before cooking)

2 Tablespoons walnut oil
1 Tablespoon rice vinegar
1 Tablespoon agave nectar

1/3 cup lightly toasted walnuts
1/4 box blueberries

Cut radicchio into short shreds.  Combine with cooked and cooled wild rice and blueberries.  Mix together walnut oil, rice vinegar, and agave nectar.  Pour over radicchio mixture and toss thoroughly.  Top with walnuts and the last of the blueberries.

Chicken Salad with Grapes and Walnuts with Maple-Dijon Dressing

This is an excellent potluck recipe. Last time I took this somewhere, grownup, mature people were fighting over the leftovers. This will serve 15-20 people in a potluck-type situation.

6 - 7 large skin-on, bone-in chicken breasts
  (single breasts)
1 onion, cut into chunks
1 celery stalk, cut into a few pieces
1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
1 bay leaf

1 cup halved black seedless grapes
1 cup halved green seedless grapes
4 stalks celery, cut lengthwise, then thinly sliced
  (make sure it's fresh, crunchy, and green)
1 bunch green onions, thinly sliced
1 cup walnuts, lightly toasted and broken up
half a bunch of flat-leaf Italian parsley, minced

1/2 cup olive oil (regular, not extra-virgin)
1/4 cup real maple syrup
2 Tablespoons dijon mustard
Rice vinegar, a few generous shakes

Freshly ground black pepper
Kosher salt

Put chicken, onion, celery, peppercorns, and bay leaf into a stockpot and cover generously with water. Bring to a gentle simmer, then immediately turn the heat down to low. You do not want it bubbling, or the chicken will get tough and dry. After awhile, take out a piece of the chicken and cut down into it to see if it's cooked through. If not, return it to the pot. As soon as the chicken is cooked through, remove it from the pot (you can strain the stock and save it to make soup if you don't want it to go to waste).

When the chicken is cool, remove the skin and bones and cut it into chunks.

To toast the walnuts, put them on a baking sheet and into a 300 degree oven. Check every couple of minutes until they just start to turn golden. Remove immediately and put on a plate to cool.

In a large bowl, combine the chicken, walnuts, green and black grapes, celery, green onions, and parsley. In a jar, shake up to combine the dressing ingredients: olive oil, maple syrup, dijon mustard, and rice vinegar. Taste and see whether the mixture is to your liking. If you like it sweeter, add more syrup, more acidic, add more vinegar. Pour dressing over the chicken mixture and toss thoroughly. Add plenty of freshly-ground black pepper and kosher salt to taste and toss again.

Carrot-Pineapple salad with Lime Zest

This is great for a potluck because it's vegan, which means anyone can eat it, yet it's made with very familiar ingredients, so it won't scare anyone off.  Also, it goes with anything and won't get dodgy at room temperature.  This makes enough for 10-15 people as a side dish.  This is pretty quick to make with a food processor to shred the carrots.

10 carrots, peeled and grated
1 ripe pineapple, cut into smallish chunks
3 juicy limes, zested and juiced
2 Tablespoons agave nectar

Put the grated carrot and pineapple chunks in a large bowl.  In a small bowl, mix the lime zest and juice and the agave nectar together.  (To zest the limes, rub the whole limes against a very fine grater just until the green part of the peel comes off.  If you don't have a grater, shave paper-thin pieces off of the lime peel - green only, don't get into the white, which is bitter - with a paring knife and finely mince it with a chef's knife).  You only need to zest one or two of the limes, as the peel is very strongly flavored.  Pour the lime mixture evenly across the carrot and pineapple, and toss it thoroughly.

I don't think this needs salt, but you can certainly toss a pinch or two into it if you think it needs it.