Cubed Salad

Cubed Salad

Summer time seems to be the perfect time to crave a salad. I've been seeing lots of cubed salads as well as using watermelon for something other than dessert. I decided to try my hand at a cubed salad with watermelon.

Drawing inspiration from what I've been seeing and what looked good at the supermarket, I went with a 4 ingredient [baby watermelon, tomato, avocado, and queso fresco] salad plus some green onions for a bit of flavor.

Through trial and error I discovered that this salad needed neither dressing nor added salt. The juices from tomatoes and watermelon were enough to keep it moist and the queso fresco provided all the saltiness that I required. Acidity of the tomatoes went great with the sweetness of the watermelon and the saltiness of the queso fresco. The avocado provided a rich creamy texture while the watermelon added a much needed crunch factor.

The salad turned out a bit unusual for my taste buds, but in no way did it taste bad. I should have expected as much from using one of my favorite summer time desserts in a salad.

Beet Salad

Beet Salad

I've been craving beets lately.  Something about the sweetness of them that has had me thinking of them non stop.  So I decided to create my take on a beet salad.

The local market had beautiful gold beets along side red ones.  Having only had gold beets once, as part of a very expensive meal, I was curious about them.  I wanted to compare them side by side with their red counterparts.

I ended up making putting the following ingredients into my beet salad:  gold and red beets, hard boiled egg, cucumber, and queso fresco.  I used parsley and some roasted sunflower seed oil to tie it together.  I originally had a few more ingredients that I wanted to add, but decided they would take away from the simplicity of the salad.

Overall, I am pretty happy with the outcome.  The salad turned out a cohesive and well balanced as well as tasty.  The sweetness of the beets was balanced with the saltiness of the queso fresco.  The overall mushiness of the other ingredients was offset by the crunchiness of the cucumber.  As for the comparison, gold beets are very similar in taste to red ones, maybe just a bit less sweet.

Mini Turkey Shepherd's Pies

Mini Turkey Shepherd's Pie

I've played around with shepherd's pie flavor in the past.  This time I wanted to play around with the layers.  My natural inclination is to mix everything together.  This time around I wanted to separate each ingredient and flavor and let them mix together in a perfect bite.

I started out by planning the dish on a post-it note.  I drew a semblance of a pie dish with layers, numbered those, and then started filling in the legend.  I ended up with 4 layers:  caramelized onions, browned and seasoned meat, peas and carrots, and creamy mashed potatoes.

While on a shopping trip to pick up all the necessary ingredients, I came across some portabella mushroom caps and immediately knew that I would want to insert them as a layer between the onions and the meat.  I cheated a bit by picking up frozen peas and carrots to make my prep a bit easier.

For simplicity's sake, I only seasoned the meat with Worcestershire sauce and the mashed potatoes with salt.  I wanted the flavors of everything else to speak for themselves, and speak they did!  The sweetness of the caramelized onions mixed perfectly with the earthiness of the portabella mushrooms.

I think the layering effect came out really nice.  I got to play with one of our new goodies, oven safe soup bowls.  They made a perfect serving size.  The Guinea Pig got to play with another one of our new goodies:  a food mill.  He did a great job ricing the potatoes.  Perhaps some of the best textured, though labor intensive, mashed potatoes we've ever made.

Spinach, Mango, and Edamame Salad

Spinach, Mango, and Edamame Salad

This being spring (or summer as it has been lately), I've been hoping we could eat more leafy green things to stay healthier...or at least attempt to do so.

Spinach is always a good green leafy choice.  While picking up spinach at the store, there were nice ripe mangoes that I thought would go well with the spinach.  Wanting one more ingredient, I added edamame.

While trying to come up with the dressing for my salad, I seem to have come up with a decent, Asian inspired vinaigrette that does not involve vinegar.  Equal parts of sesame seed oil, lemon juice, and sesame seeds.  The acidity was perfect for the spinach.

Braised Rabbit

Braised Rabbit

For a while now I've been wanting to braise a rabbit. Lots of delays later, I finally got around to it. I would hope that The Guinea Pig considers it well worth the wait. 


I recently received a gorgeous Le Creuset braiser that was used in the preparation of this meal. Ever since I got it, I kept trying to come up with a good combination of ingredients that would enhance the rabbit without overpowering it. I wanted to keep it as simple as possible, but thought that onion alone would be too simple. 


My "Eureka" moment came while I was at work trying to work out a problem. It dawned on me that golden raisins would be perfect, and they were! They added a bit of sweetness and plumped up with the juices of the dish. 


The onions, raisins, a splash (or cup) of white wine, and salt/pepper were all that I used. Once it was done braising, I served the rabbit and sauce over a plate of pearl couscous. 


For a first try, it was pretty good. Next time I'd like to get the rabbit seared a bit better and the onions caramelized a bit more so that the dish would have a deeper color. I bet my Guinea Pig would also appreciate it if I toned down the seasoning a bit.

Bacon Hash

Bacon Hash

Life has been crazy and this little blog of mine has suffered as a consequence.  To breathe new life into it, what better topic is there to post about than bacon?

For Christmas, I got a cook book devoted to bacon.  The very first (and unfortunately only so far) recipe that I have tried was a bacon hash.

I'm still honing in the bacon sizing on this one.  I've now made this recipe twice, once with bacon slices of about an inch and another of about a quarter inch.  Neither was satisfactory.  Next to try is a half inch slice.

Don't get me wrong, the outcome was delicious each time.  I just want that perfect balance of the amount of bacon in every bite without it being overpowering.

The one thing that did surprise me when making this recipe was the ease with which potatoes got grated.  I've always expected it to be a lot harder, more like what grating carrots feels like, but it was almost easier than grating an apple.

The Kitchen Sink

The Kitchen Sink

This is one of those sides that started out as an idea and then I kept adding more stuff to it as time went on.  Feels like this dish contains everything but the kitchen sink, hence the name.  It's got:  bacon, brussel sprouts, granny smith apple, fresh cranberries, golden raisins, carrot, pistachios, and pinot grigio.  It started out as a brussel sprouts with bacon and apples dish.

The kitchen sink turned out to taste a lot better than it sounds.  The salty, sweet, acidic notes all balanced each other out.  If we were to season it, that might even be better, but Guinea Pig and I decided to eat it just the way it came out of the pan over some basmati rice.