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Engaging stories of love, joy, comfort and friendship with proven scrumptious, healthy recipes, we celebrate LOVE as the secret ingredient for wonderful food!

Best, unique salad. Best, unique friends.

August 11, 2015 by Mary 24 Comments

Arugula salad with grilled radishes, mango and mint with a Champagne vinaigrette on a yellow bordered plate.My best blogger friend, (BBF) Maureen, of Orgasmic Chef, down under in Australia, has had vertigo and it makes me so sad. She was free from it for a little bit of time but it came back. That sort of thing is maddening.

I suffered from migraines for years after our youngest, Zach, was born and it was horrible until we figured out a low blood pressure pill that prevented them. It is just terrible to be in such a state.

Maureen now has our mutual blogger friend Bobbi Ann, from BAM’s Kitchen, somewhere in Asia, helping her out with tips on massage and nutrition. We’ve all never met but this is the blogging world and ain’t it grand!?!

And then my other blogger friend, Suzanne, from A Pug in the Kitchen just lost her dear, dear dog, Nando. It is so hard. But, Suzanne does live in Brooklyn and WE are going to meet for lunch in late August. I am so excited!!

Meanwhile, this is the longest span that I have not posted and I apologize. Just so, so much to do – all good – just crazy!

And this is THE best, unique salad. Or at least I think so. I hope you will too!

I had reconnected with an old friend (in person!) from our congregation in Summit, NJ. So nice to do that! And about 8 weeks ago, we had planned to have her and her husband over for dinner at our apartment in the city, at a time when both of their children (younger than ours) would be away.

As I went through the grocery store several nights before, I spotted what looked good, all in the category of what I loved, trying to create an amazing new salad in my head.

Baby arugula salad with grilled radishes, mango, mint and scallions.

Here’s what I came up with: baby arugula (always a good start), topped with grilled radishes (done on the stovetop in a grill pan), fresh mango (that looked amazing!), mint leaves (I had in the fridge from my garden) and a smattering of sliced scallions, all drizzled with a champagne vinaigrette.

What do you think?

I thought, unusual, clean tasting (no cheese) and I always love the combination of warm and cool on a salad.

This was really magnificent, if I say so myself!

The sweet mango, which was perfectly ripe by the way, (her husband Steve, offered to cut it as he grew up in Thailand with a mango tree in their backyard, so he was pretty expert at those slippery things with the weird shaped pit), combined with bitter heat of the grilled radishes (I adore grilled radishes – unusual, easy and delicious – my kinda thing!) along with the burst of mint every so often coupled with the mild onion taste from the scallions, bedded with the bite of arugula and drizzled lightly with a champagne vinaigrette – it was all so yummy.

My kinda heaven. I’d take two of these over dessert any day!

Our friends loved it so much that she wrote that they immediately tried grilling radishes 2 days later.

This is simple, but again, it’s all about the quality of your ingredients. Make sure they’re the very best you can find or don’t make it all.

BEST UNIQUE ARUGULA SALAD WITH MANGO, MINT AND GRILLED RADISHES – serves 4

4 oz. baby arugula
8 good sized radishes, scrubbed, trimmed and cut in half
1 Tbs. olive oil
1 ripe mango, peeled and cut into ¼” long strips
40 mint leaves
1 scallion, cleaned and thinly sliced, white and light green parts only

Champagne Vinaigrette:

1/2 tsp. Dijon mustard
2 tbs. Champagne vinegar
scant 1/2 cup of olive oil
salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Place all vinaigrette ingredients in a jar. Cover tightly and shake. Taste and adjust salt and pepper. More salt will cut the tanginess of the vinegar.

Even though your package of baby arugula may say it’s been triple washed, I recommend you wash it again, spin it in a lettuce spinner and then spread it out on your clean counter to air dry. You never know who’s handled it with hands that haven’t been washed and people have gotten sick. So please, always take the time to do this. You can even do this the night before and store the greens in a Ziploc bag with a sheet of paper toweling to absorb the extra moisture that will form.

Toss the radishes with the olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Heat your grill pan to medium high and grill the radishes until crisp tender with some nice grill marks. You’ll want to cover the pan for maybe 3 – 5 minutes in the middle of cooking them as they will produce a lot of smoke and using a lid will also quicken the process.

Baby arugula salad with grilled radishes, mango, mint and scallions on four yellow rimmed plates.

Place ¼ of the arugula on a salad plate, top with the mango strips and grilled radishes as shown in the photo. Drizzle about a tablespoon of dressing over all, garnish with the mint leaves and scallions and serve with love. Wait for rave reviews. So simple, so unusual and so delicious!

Filed Under: Dinner, First Course, Salads Tagged With: arugula salad, Champagne vinegar, grilled radishes, mango, salads

A September Sunday morning

September 9, 2012 by Mary Frances 4 Comments

After the huge storm last night, including tornadoes in Long Island and parts of Connecticut, we awoke in the country to a most spectacular day today! Blue sky, billowy clouds, and a downed, huge, heavy tree branch that just missed one of our cars were the first things we saw this morning. Yikes!Toasted bagels with smoked salmon, Ben’s homemade cream cheese, tomatoes from the garden, thinly sliced red onion, and capers.
This was our breakfast, an absolute favorite of mine. Smoked salmon, Ben’s homemade cream cheese, tomatoes from the garden, thinly sliced red onion, capers and toasted bagels. We finished it off with a fruit salad of black mission figs, mango, red grapes and banana. Can’t beat that!
Fruit salad with black mission figs, mango, red grapes and banana.
Although there is nothing here that I made, except for putting together the fruit salad, I just had to share it with you because it was all so pretty in the dazzling sunlight this morning.

See the view from our dining room window below. Hope you had a great weekend!
View from dining room window.

Filed Under: Breakfast Tagged With: bagels, bananas, black mission figs, breakfast, capers, cream cheese, figs, fruit salad, mango, red grapes, red onion, smoked salmon, Sunday breakfast, tomatoes

You have to love it

September 11, 2011 by Mary Frances 3 Comments

I am convinced, that in order to be a great cook, you have to make something you love, to be able to put love into it and serve fantastic food. You have to be excited to eat what you are cooking. I am fortunate in that my family members are foodies. They pretty much like everything, except for Zach, who does not like fruit, except for apples. Don’t ask me why. But he does love this curry shrimp appetizer dish that I make with a mango dipping sauce. He doesn’t know it’s mango chutney in there. (hope he’s not reading this) And the older one will even eat pigs feet and sweetbreads!

But seriously, you are what you eat and you have to like what you cook. So when I’m trying to figure out what to make for dinner, sometimes I imagine myself reading a restaurant menu, trying to figure out what would appeal to me and then I go make it. I always buy what looks luscious and then figure out what to do with it later. I also cook by color – the plate must look great too. After all, I am a designer and a painter.

Food appeals to you on at least 3 levels – sight, smell and taste. Make those work to the best of your advantage. Always buy red peppers and tomatoes – you’ll probably need a little red during the week!

However, I must admit, there are two foods I cannot muster any excitement for – collard greens and kasha. Kasha tastes like little pieces of cardboard and collard greens – to be able to chew them – you have to cook them until they’re this lurid color of green that I just can’t stomach.

I am open to any ideas though.

tomatoes and sorrel.

Filed Under: Dinner Tagged With: color, love, mango, shrimp

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Mary Frances

Mary Frances

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