Ahh, summertime when veggies are fresh and you really don’t want to eat hot food anyway, right? Right. So I made this lovely Lemon-Dill Salmon Pasta Salad with Cucumbers and Peas for lunch. Made it up on the fly as I had salmon for dinner last night. In the end, it turned out to be more “northern” influenced… these flavours remind me of Scandinavia, though I doubt this would be authentically Swedish or Norwegian. At any rate, it *is* delicious. I have plenty of leftovers so it may turn into dinner as well as lunch.
Dinner
One of the other things that I have made on my recent strawberry kick is this Spicy-Smokey Strawberry BBQ Sauce. I’ve made a similar Roasted Strawberry and Chipotle BBQ sauce before — this one is a little smokier and a little spicier. And these crazy ribs…. which are phenomenal (recipe is here). Obviously the BBQ sauce also works on wings, for pulled pork, brisket, etc. Yum!
Comfort food. In the winter, sometimes you just need a good bowl of Chicken Noodle Soup, right? Well, I decided to put a little bit of a twist on the classic, adding some spices that add even more warming properties: garlic, ginger, turmeric and black pepper. And it’s a “cheater” recipe as I used a store-bought rotisserie chicken to make it easy on me. For the noodles, I used udon and I added carrots, red pepper and Swiss chard for color. One of the best soups (or is it a stew?) that I have ever made.
I’ve gotten to thinking that Superbowl Sunday is also “official chili making day”. There seem to be a lot of Chili Cook-offs on Superbowl Sunday and per people who poll these sorts of things, it is in the top 4 or 5 “Superbowl Foods”. It makes for flexible meal times, eat when you like and can feed a crowd. This particular version uses boneless beef shortribs and after the 3+ hour braise, is melt-in-your mouth tender. It you are in to chili variations, this is definitely one to try!