Thursday, June 21, 2007

Salad Straviganza - I love tomatos and pineapple.

My lovely friend Lis and her friend Kelly are ladies on a mission: to add more variety to their salad repertoire. They've put out the call to all bloggers to share salad recipes and here's my contribution.

Of course this is the perfect time of year to discover new salad recipes. Today happens to be the first day of summer and I am keeping my fingers crossed that our weather will stay as nice as it has been the last few days. Ease up on the rain please, Mother Nature, and no more snow!

Ok so here are the first two salads, I call this Tomato Salad, Two Ways.

Here's the first salad, the base salad, if you will.


This is delicious, easy and light. Chop up (bite size chunks, not too small) some lovely ripe tomatos. I used reds and yellows. Toss the with 1/2 to 1 tsp salt and let them sit for 20 minutes so all the juices can start to run out. Finely chop 1 big fat garlic clove and 1 hot red chile, seeded. Mix them in, along with some dried oregano, and a splash of red wine vinegar and a bit of olive oil. Let the salad sit on the counter for 30 minutes or so to meld all the flavors. When you serve it up, make sure every one gets some of the juices to mop up with bread.

The second way to serve this tomato salad is to turn it into a pasta salad. So boil up some noodles, drain them and toss into the tomato salad. Add some basil if you've got some handy. Some cheese (feta, mozza, parm) would be yummy too.


Oooooooooh, I'm hungry again!


It might be a bit of a stretch to call these next two plates salads, but this is my blog and I'll do what I want.

I love, love, LOVE pineapple. If I could only have one fruit for the rest of my life, I'd choose pineapple. And cherries. If you do a search on my blog like this, you can see some of the stuff we've done with pineapple.

A few months ago I got my hands on a bottle of orange flower water. And then I couldn't remember why I had wanted it. So it's been sitting in the pantry for a while. My first pineapple salad is "Pineapple and Orange Flower Water" Give me a prize for coming up with that name!


Thinly sliced pineapple on a plate drizzled with orange flower water. Be sparing with the water until you try it; the taste is quite interesting.

Next up is practically the same thing, yet different. I love pineapple in dishes like stir fries and curries. So here I've eliminate the pesky noodles and vegetables and served up my two favorite tastes. And they taste great together: Curried Pineapple "Salad".


Cut up your Ananas comosus into little chunks. Plate 'em up and sprinkle lightly with curry powder.

It is so damn good.

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In other news, I am doing some guest blogging from time to time over at Food for Thought, the Foodtv.ca blog.

My first piece is up. Won't you go check it out?

13 comments:

Rachel said...

YUM! I'd never thought of pineapple salad before but it sounds good.

MyKitchenInHalfCups said...

Ha, you are a genius Sara!
I'd say each one of those is a fabulous salad . . .
That sounds like some good fixings you got at the market . . . you'll be sharing soon I hope.

Sara said...

Rachel - like I said, calling it a salad is a bit of a stretch, but whatever.

Tanna - thank you and thank you!

Anonymous said...

They all sound really yummy - I love pineapple too! I like your atricle at the food network!

Brilynn said...

I need to try these pineapple salads, and great job on the foodnetwork article!

Lis said...

Are you kidding me? 4 different salads? Can you say "above and beyond"? YOU ROCK! And no, I don't care that both have base salads that are built upon.. that's still 4 mighty tasty salads! Yay!

And I gotta thank you - you've reminded me of a salad my father use to always make and how I forgot about it, I have no idea how I could forget because he made it often.. he'd take the tomatoes and do EXACTLY how you do (only he wouldn't use the pepper, he'd cut in a lil red onion) and an hour later there was nothing more perfect for munching on in front of the TV with a big hunk of crusty italian bread to sop up the juices. Holy crap - I'm having this for lunch tomorrow! Yay!!

As for the pineapple, I love them too.. and I'm intrigued with the pineapple and curry sprinkles.. I will try it! Hey.. off the salad subject.. have you ever taken a big plop of marshmallow fluff in a bowl and then dipped pineapple in it? No fat! And fanfarkingtastic for a light dessert. ;)

Hugs!! Love you! Thank you so much!
xoxo

Lis said...

PS - Congrats on the guest spot on FoodTV!! You are going to be famous and I can say I knew you when! :D

xoxo

Going to go read now...

Meeta K. Wolff said...

Congrats on the spot at FoodTV!! With an array of such fab salads like this you should get a permanent spot girl!! Pineapple in salads - ummm that does sound yummy!

Anonymous said...

The tomato salad pasta sounds devine. I love tomatos. :)

Anonymous said...

Congrats!!!

Ani
foodiechickie.com

Peabody said...

Well it looks good. Unfortunately I am allergic to curry and raw tomatos...so looking is all I get to do.

Anonymous said...

I just did some salad using Chinese bok choy sum and tomatoes. Maybe we could do a salad exchange ;) ?

Sara said...

Mags - aw, thanks! Did you go to Millarville last weekend?

Brilynn - thank you!

Lis - no, YOU rock! Any salad that needs bread for mopping up is a good salad in my book. I really really love the pineapple and curry. It's so good.

Meeta - aw, you are too sweet. Thanks.

TCN - me too!

Ani - thank you!

Peabody - that is terrible! I will eat your share.

Tigerfish - Absolutely!