Easy Noodle Salad

This easy salad recipe will have you on your knees! Noodle salads can be hit and miss sometimes, but I promise that this one delivers. Tangy but sweet, crunchy but soft—it’s everything a crisp noodle salad should be. The first time my boyfriend made this I fell in love with it, and it’s a salad that I always wonder how I lived without whenever we make a fresh batch. The crowning glory of this salad is the vinaigrette dressing, as it is so easy to make and tastes so good I’ve actually had to lick my bowl. Uh… you didn’t know that! This also makes a great salad to bring to parties, as it’s not your ordinary green salad nor does it have any expensive ingredients.

So what are you waiting for? Get out the knife and start chopping to make this easy & delicious noodle salad!

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Edited: September 2nd, 2010

Roasted Walnut Balls

I have to admit a guilty pleasure—buying second hand cookbooks online. They’re just such beauties. I recently ordered Looneyspoons and The Vegetarian Epicure. The Epicure, a 1970s cookbook by Anna Thomas, was exactly as I remembered it from my mum’s collection—a bit tattered around the edges, smoothed corners from plenty of use, yellowing pages, and a spine which seems to crack every time you open it but somehow all the pages are still intact. Even better, whoever had owned it before me had taped in various other useful recipes (“90 minute beer bread,” “Zucchini breakfast cake,” “German mustard”) and there are even a few notes in margins (including “yum yum” over the recipe for Cheese & Scallion Quiche). I love books with character like this. I feel like I’m peeking into someone else’s warm kitchen every time I open this book.

This recipe is just one of many delicious ones I plan on sharing from The Vegetarian Epicure. My mum has both the first and the second volumes, and I grew up peering with interest at the beautifully type-set pages (Optima in all its glory! can you tell I’m a typophile at heart?) and whimsical drawings. Anna Thomas wrote the first volume while in university, and it was snapped up by Vintage Press straight away. (I’m so jealous; why didn’t I think of writing a cookbook while in university?) She wrote volume two while in grad school. I absolutely love how she describes learning to cook, as it was “In self defense! I needed to eat, and who could afford to go out?” Oh Anna, I hear you loud and clear! I recommend taking a look at her website which has a sampling of other recipes and excerpts from her other (also vegetarian) cookbooks. I’ve included the Amazon link at the bottom of this post so you can get your very own copy!

These roasted walnut balls are (surprise, surprise) nutty, smooth, and entirely satisfying. They are vegetarian and delicious, and even being a meat eater, I crave these on occasion instead of meatballs! These go great as a vegetarian option for a holiday meal, or really any other time you feel like something a bit different.

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Edited: August 17th, 2010

Granola Goodness

This granola (called “museli” in Australia) was a staple in my house growing up. Whether we were at home, on a camping trip, giving it as a gift, or perfecting a granola bar recipe, this has always been the granola I’ve eaten and enjoyed. Store bought granola just tastes stale and flavourless to me now. In fact, this granola recipe is so good that my friends have emailed my mom for the recipe so they can make it themselves!

The mileage you’ll get out of homemade granola is amazing—literally, because it travels incredibly well. It’s dirt cheap to make. It fills you up. It makes great gifts! I’ve given granola to teachers, friends, and family—it lasts well in mailed care packages, or in Christmas hampers.

My favourite way to eat this granola is with yoghurt and a drizzle of maple syrup—my dad likes it with some blueberry jam and yoghurt, and we both love it with some fresh berries from the garden.

I’ll be posting our perfected recipe for making granola bars soon as well. This recipe can have other yummies added to it, such as raisins or currants if you like those, or you could use walnuts instead of almonds (though almonds are healthier). If you add more dry ingredients, you’ll have to add a bit more of the wet stuff, too.

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Edited: April 20th, 2010

Seared Kangaroo Salad

Australians are oddly proud that they eat their national symbol. I’d say that Canadians can relate to this–beaver certainly isn’t available in your local grocery store as kangaroo is here, but how many national symbols were turned into hats for a few centuries?

Kangaroo populations have grown in Australia in recent decades, so the federal and state governments cooperate to perform herd cullings every year. As a meat-eater but as an environmentally-bent person, my reaction to this is twofold: initially, it seems gruesome and horrible to be killing 10% of a kangaroo herd because humans think that there are too many; but then again, if these cullings are happening, it’s better that the animal be used for something, as opposed to the alternative. Eating the meat from a wild animal that hasn’t been farmed and that has evolved to live in this rather harsh climate likewise makes sense to me.

Kangaroo meat is remarkably delicious. It smells a bit gamy raw, which can be a little off-putting; but once marinated and cooked, it tastes juicy and mellow, and pretty much like beef. This is the first dish I’ve made with kangaroo, and I look forward to trying a few more, as it is an affordable, nutritious (less than 2% fat, high in iron) and ethical choice for a red meat. Since you North Americans probably have no kangaroo meat readily available to you, I recommend trying this recipe with beef or lamb, or bison if you feel adventurous!

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Edited: January 31st, 2010