I made a sort of crostini today – or I guess you could call it cheese on toast for a summer day – or odds and ends from the fridge.
I had some sun dried tomatoes that I bought from Trader Joe’s. The kind that come in a bag and then you put them in oil yourself. I had kept some in olive oil with some sprigs of rosemary and some peeled garlic cloves.
So the crostini mixture was:
half a log of left over goats cheese.
zest from half a lemon
chopped up sundried tomatoes (6 or so) plus the rosemary, garlic and olive oil
black pepper
Fresh greek oregano finely chopped from the garden (finally found a use for it).
Mix it all together and spread on toast. Surprisingly delicious but not at all photogenic!
So that kept the woolf at bay, so to speak.
I followed that with barley salad, arugula and steamed beans – but I cheated and took a photo of the beans before I cooked them because they look much cooler purple than green.
Barley salad, beans and arugula
Barley Salad
One cup (pre-cooking) quick cooking barley (cooked according to instructions on the box) then left to cool.
Zest and juice of half a lemon
Olive oil – 3 tbsp
red wine vinegar – 2 tbsp
4-6 scallions, chopped
2 red peppers, roasted, skinned and diced
Basil, chives, parsley chopped.
Mix all the ingredients together and chill before serving.
Very easy, very refreshing and summery. The most labor intensive part is roasting the peppers. I have a gas stove, so I just turn on a burner and put the peppers whole right on top, turning then they go black. When they are pretty much charred all over, I put them in a plastic bag for a few minutes, let them steam and then rub them with a wet paper towel. I chose to roast them because the skins were a little tired and wrinkly, but it actually worked really well with the texture of the barley, so I would do that again. I hadn’t used barley before, but definitely will again – I really like the flavor and I think I prefer the texture to couscous. It made a change anyway.
August 7, 2008
This sounds like an easy dish to play around with, depending on what you have on hand. I make a similar barley salad with equal parts barley and wehani rice (it’s an aromatic red rice; don’t know how accessible that is in other places). I add green onions, halved cherry tomatoes, golden raisins, basil, chickpeas, and toss with a basic vinaigrette. Sometimes I toss in other veggies that I have around. Sometimes I also top it with toasted slivered almonds. Always gets rave reviews when I serve it to others.
Your photos are great! I’ve never seen purple beans like that. 🙂