Blue Cayenne

My friend Joyce recently made a heritage trip to Japan with her daughter. From luxury hotels to rustic ryokans, they savored the sights and tastes of Japan. 

As dedicated foodies, Joyce and I talked a lot about Japanese food before her trip. While we were fascinated by the beauty and complexity of the kaiseki ryori haute cuisine for which Japan is famous, we also were intrigued by aspects of Japan’s yoshuku cuisine–Japan’s fusion food scene where foods like the egg salad sandos famously sold in Japan’s 7-Eleven Markets are enormously popular.

I savored every second of those food conversations; her  trip was a vicarious food journey into a cuisine that is largely unfamiliar to me. 

Fortunately for me, Joyce was willing to do a lot of food “research” on her trip–eating  a lot of spectacular Japanese food  and searching the markets of Kyoto and beyond for examples of foods like that Japanese egg salad sando that had caught our attention. (You can read about that sando search on Blue Cayenne  here.) When she returned, she also introduced me to Japanese Nama Chocolate, a creamy melt-in-your-mouth chocolate confection to die for! (Hoping to find a doable recipe for that!!!)

In the last couple of months, Joyce and I have  been playing with some Japanese recipes.Most recently, she brought me an elegant lunch feast of Ochazuke (green tea rice) accompanied by a glorious assortment of savory condiments and sauced with her mom’s miso “secret sauce.” Ochazuke, Joyce told me, was a dish she enjoyed at her mom’s table while growing up in Hawaii. The lunch she generously laid out on my table was elegant and delicious.  

So, as I was casting about for new recipes to feature on Blue Cayenne this month, I had Japanese food on my mind and this Japanese Potato Salad with Cucumbers, Carrots and Red Onion recipe caught my eye. As I searched the topic on the Internet, I discovered that Japanese Potato Salad is an exceedingly  popular dish there for bento picnics and lunchboxes. Who knew?

The slightly chunky mashed potato salad traces its origins back to the late 19th Century Meiji Period when Japan was opened up to western influences including western foods. In this case, Meiji chefs adapted the popular-at-the-time Eastern European Olivier (Russian) Salad to Japanese tastes. They subbed in Japanese mayonnaise, rice wine vinegar and fresh sliced cucumbers to great effect.

This Japanese Potato Salad recipe is adapted from a Serious Eats post. You can find the original post here.

Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen. 

Interesting salads. I love interesting salads!

Clearly, I’m not alone. 

Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a “funeral garden”  outside a rock-cut tomb on Dra Abu el-Naga hill in Luxor. Apparently, they have found four thousand year-old evidence of lettuce! There also are ancient tomb paintings that include lettuce representations. So, the Egyptians were noshing on salads alongside those beers they so famously enjoyed. Imagine that!

The Greeks and Romans also loved their salads. For them it was mixed greens dressed oil, salt and vinegar–a vinaigrette! The Romans, in fact, are believed to have introduced lettuces to the rest Europe.

Later, during the European Renaissance, the humanistic appreciation of beauty carried over to food.  The “foodies” of that era often featured elaborate (and artful!, of course) salads composed of exotic ingredients on their tables.

As the age of exploration dawned, Columbus is believed to have delivered lettuce seeds to the Americas (along with  garlic and onions–way to go Columbus!).

But…back to my table. When I was growing up, salad, if there was any on the table, was always a chopped salad with iceberg lettuce and Wishbone Italian Salad Dressing. Boring. Just boring. 

Now, I seek out inventive salad courses whenever and wherever I can. A salad now catches my attention when it incorporates interesting (and sometimes unusual) ingredients and a variety of interesting textures. Plus points if the salad is beautiful. That is the magic of a Caesar Salad, for example. 

This Red Potatoes With Lentils and Avocado Sauce salad is a very interesting salad, mixing as it does a creamy avocado sauce with succulent roasted potatoes, the bitter greens bite of arugula and toothsome black lentils. I used Rancho Gordo’s wonderful Black Caviar lentils (Rancho Gordo) for this dish and they added a perfect chew. They are a particularly beautiful little lentil, too. You could use puy lentils if you can’t find Rancho Gordo’s lentils. 

This dish is based on one from Hetty McKinnon’s cookbook, Tenderheart. This cookbook can be ordered through your local bookstore or at Amazon here.

Got ripe bananas?

Got a chocolate craving?

Can’t face one more banana bread?

These muffins are for you.

Eat them for breakfast, dessert, midnight snack, mid-morning snack, midnight and mid-morning snack, afternoon tea, party treat. Heck, slip one in your purse. 

They’re a compact, very chocolaty, anytime treat. 

This recipe is from Sarah Kieffer’s cookbook 100 Morning Treats. Kieffer’s book is available through your local bookstore or on Amazon here.  She is also the author of the wonderful cookbook 100 Cookies.

Here is the recipe for Double Chocolate Banana Muffins as I prepared it in my kitchen: