salad

In honor of an upcoming Twin Cities visit by world-renowned chef Francis Mallmann, we provide this selection from his new book. Behold, the power of fire. 

This is one of the few fresh vegetable salads you can put together all through the winter. It is a favorite at my restaurant in Garzón, even in the summer. Very crunchy, very fresh. The eggs make it a complete light meal. I first had it on a trip to Australia with a number of other chefs, including David Tanis. If you don’t know David, he has had a very interesting life: For many years, he spent half the year as the chef at Chez Panisse and the other half of the year as a private chef in Paris. Now his recipes appear every week in The New York Times Dining section, and they are a highlight of my Wednesday morning reading. 

This is part 8 of a summer long series about our CSA boxes and what we do with them. Recipes for Roasted Delicata Squash, Quick Stovetop Greens, Everything Radish Salad, and Sweet Roll Dough with Mashed Potatoes follow.

I’m going to be honest with you. I had a busy week and didn’t cook at home as much as I would have liked to.

Can you pick up a tomato and sniff it to know that it’s ripe? What about a sweet pepper? Or a cucumber? In reality, there is no such thing as a “ripe” scent. Truth be told, you need more of a knack than your nose to know what’s ripe and when to buy it, so you won’t be throwing it away tomorrow.

As I’ve written before, I used to work as a farm hand for an organic vegetable farm. So I have a pretty good idea when a vegetable is ripe and ready to bring home to your kitchen.

Summer Squash