So simple it hurts.

Summer chickpea salad

All together now: 2 cans chickpeas (drained and rinsed), 6 green onions* chopped up, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, a tablespoon of lemon juice, about a teaspoon of finely shredded lemon zest (gotten off with a box grater – no fancy microplane zesters here!), salt, plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Then  4 sprigs of mint cut into ribbons and a pint of grape tomatoes tossed in at the last minute.

* chives, garlic scapes, green garlic, or minced red onion would all be lovely as well

I like my dairy. If I’m remembering an article I read many years ago correctly, the ability to digest milk is the result of a mutant gene. Well, a mutated gene that is less common – by a lot – than the regular human system which prefers not to ingest non-human milk. I’m pretty sure my genes are configured in a way that doesn’t just make me able to process dairy successfully, but that actually renders me weak if I don’t get a hefty daily dose of the stuff.

Hot weather brings about a marked difference in my dairy consumption. I move from lots of cheese to putting buttermilk and yogurt in anything I can think of. Sometimes I even use them at the same time, as in this salad dressing. I could just drink a glass of this elixir, but I exercise a modicum of self-control and use it on salads. And as a dip for veggies. And a spoonful once in awhile. Just a spoonful. I swear.

Yogurt buttermilk salad dressing

Shake it up, stick it in the fridge, and wonder why you ever bought a bottle of pre-made dressing. You can add a minced small garlic clove, if you like (although it will get quite garlicky if you leave it in the fridge) or a teaspoon or two of honey if you like things sweet.

1/2 cup buttermilk

2 tablespoons plain yogurt (I’ve used lowfat, I’ve used Greek, I’ve used sheep milk – it all works; just know that the more fat and/or strained the yogurt, the more thickening power it will have)

1 tablespoon lemon juice or cider vinegar

1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon salt

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Put buttermilk, yogurt, lemon juice, and salt in a small jar. Seal with the lid and shake until well combined. (You can also whisk it all together in a small bowl.) Add pepper to taste. I add a lot.

This dressing is lovely in general, but extra yummy with butter lettuce or romaine. Add sliced radishes, scallions or garlic scapes, cucumber, and/or sweet snap peas for more crunch.

Whenever my dashing husband and I find ourselves in the happy position of being able to go out for a quick meal together – which, let’s be honest, just isn’t that often – we head over to Piccino an almost embarrassing percentage of the time. It’s close, it’s easy, it’s delicious, it’s no big deal while also being insanely pleasant.

We darted over there for an early dinner the other night when our son was at a friend’s house for his own last-minute dinner plans.

One thing I love about their salads is they are never quite what you expect, despite the ample menu description. I suppose this would annoy some people, but it fits my eating out strategy perfectly. I eat a lot of good food. Or, rather, a lot of the food I eat is good. I don’t worry too much about whether any given dish is going to be good – at this point I’m often looking to be surprised, if only a bit, when I eat out. This salad did that. Who, as my dad might say, would have thought?

Warm asparagus and cabbage salad

The key to the success of this dish is to use a cast iron frying pan. It gets nice and hot and gives the cabbage and asparagus a bit of a charred edge.

1 egg

3 shallots

Vegetable oil

1/2 head Savoy cabbage, chopped or shredded

1 bunch asparagus, trimmed and sliced on the diagonal

2 teaspoon lemon juice

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Put the egg in a pot and cover with water. bring to a boil, cover, take off the heat and let sit 14 minutes. Drain and peel the egg under cool running water. Set aside.

Peel shallots and slice them.

Heat a thick layer (almost 1/4 inch) of vegetable oil in a cast iron pan over high heat. Add shallots and fry until they are browned and stop sizzling so swiftly. Lift shallots out of the oil and drain on a layer of paper towels. Set shallots aside. Pour out any excess oil from the pan.

Return pan, with its now-scant covering of oil, to the heat. Add cabbage, sprinkle with about 1/2 teaspoon salt and cook, stirring frequently, until it wilts and starts to brown. Lift cabbage out of the pan and transfer to a wide shallow bowl.

Add asparagus to the pan, sprinkle with salt and cook, stirring often, until tender and starting to char on the edges. Add to the cabbage, sprinkle with lemon juice, and toss to combine. Taste and add salt and pepper to taste.

Add fried shallots and toss to combine. Divide onto serving plates or serve family style – but first finely chop or shred the egg and use it to garnish the salad.

The lovely Marisa from Food In Jars sent me this recipe well over a year ago. That’s the kind of recipe backlog I have built up. I finally made this and don’t think I’ll ever stop.

Arugula salad with broiled lemons

The sweet tang of these lemons are the perfect foil for the peppery kick of good arugula. Look for small, dark leaves that are full of natural wild arugula flavor.

2 lemons (regular or Meyer both work here)

1 Tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste

3 Tablespoons lemon crushed extra virgin olive oil

1 Tablespoon lemon juice

6 – 8 cups arugula

Scrub lemons clean. Slice lemons as thinly and evenly as you can. Put the slices and any juice you can wrangle into a medium bowl. Sprinkle with the sugar and teaspoon of salt. Toss to combine and let sit at least 1 hour and up to a day.

Heat your broiler. Cover and baking pan with foil. Spread the lemon slices in as single a layer as possible given the number of slices and the size of your pan. Drizzle any juice in the bowl over the lemons.

Broil lemons, watching carefully, until they start to brown, 3 to 5 minutes.

Set lemons aside while you make the dressing. In a large bowl combine the olive, lemon juice, and any juices left on the broiled lemons. Taste and add salt to taste if you like. Add arugula and toss with the dressing until thoroughly coated. Top with broiled lemons and serve immediately.

Whenever I eat mâche – a.k.a. lamb’s lettuce – I think of Paris.

I say that and you may imagine that I am transported to a magical romantic weekend or a particularly delicious salad at a chic bistro.

While I have had romantic times in Paris and plenty of delicious salads in the City of Lights, mâche tends to remind me of a less glamorous time I spent there.

I used to spend a lot of time in Paris. I went at least once if not twice a year for stints that rarely lasted less than six weeks and I lived there for several longer stretches as well. One of these visits was in the summer of 1995. I was there on a research grant. Rather than staying in one of the shoebox garrets I was used to living in when in Paris, I had been invited to stay in the apartment of my first cousin once-removed family friends’ place in the 8th arrondissement while they were in Sun Valley for the summer.

Parisians who spend the summer – not just August, but the entire summer school holiday – in Sun Valley, Idaho are not the norm. And neither was their apartment. It had its own elevator from the courtyard.

I stayed in what was usually the nanny’s room in the children’s wing/half-floor. The only time I spent in the never-ending art-filled living room was when I walked through it get to the kitchen, which was on the other end of the palatial abode and included a generous eating area. I relegated myself to my bedroom and the “playroom” in the children’s wing that had a T.V. in it and a table I’d turned into a desk. The giant, empty, luxurious apartment was a budgetary god-send to a graduate student on a research stipend but it was also a depressing place to live alone.

I would wake up early, go through the empty apartment to the kitchen to make coffee and toast the bread left from the day before into tartines for breakfast, walk through the empty neighborhood (the 8th arrondissement is where you will find the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Elysées – the residential areas are fancy and my kind hosts were not the only ones out of town for the summer infestation of tourists) to the metro, have my bag checked by police (it was the summer of several terrorist bombings in the métro), answer their curious questions about the laptop in my bag, take the 1 to the Palais Royal/Musée du Louvre station, walk through the Palais Royal, and get to the Bibliothèque Nationale before all the seats were claimed to begin a day of historical research. Nine to five was spent with the books and other groupings of printed matter. I would then either go out with friends or head home – the heat and resulting aroma from that summer’s incessant blistering heat wave assaulting me along the way.

That’s right. It was a summer of terrorist bombings and a heat wave.

On the days I headed home I ate the same heat-friendly dinner more times than I care to remember: some bread, a hunk of cheese, and a giant bowl of mâche tossed with a bit of classic French vinaigrette – one part vinegar, three parts oil, a bit of mustard to bind them, and salt and pepper to taste. If I wasn’t feeling beyond lazy I’d add some minced garlic or shallot. I’d eat this in the kitchen while reading or, just as often often, up in the playroom while watching T.V. stripped down to my underwear with a fan aimed at my face, trying not to die of heat stroke and dreaming of the damp gray of a foggy San Francisco summer.

Mâche used to be something I only had when in France – I never saw it in the U.S. lo those many years ago. I found the beautiful mâche pictured above at the market last week and made a quick dressing that was the best dressing on mâche I’ve ever had. My dashing husband claimed it was perhaps the best dressing I’d ever made full-stop.

I was happy to have made such a tasty dressing, but feel wrong taking much credit for it. Regular readers know I don’t spend much time talking about products here, but the dressing on this mâche was so delicious because of some Lucero lemon crushed olive oil and Katz late harvest sauvignon blanc agrodulce vinegar – both of which were samples sent to me for a story I’m working on. I threw them together in classic vinaigrette proportions (3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar) with salt to taste. I didn’t add anything else. No pungent binding mustard, no bitter astrigent pepper.

The other key to the salad was, of course, the mâche. Fresh, tiny, tender leaves. I know you can sometimes buy mâche in the plastic bags so much salad comes in these days. If you buy it that way, make sure to wash it first – no matter how “pre-washed” it may be for these reasons.

We ate dinner last week in an industrial space that had been re-done into a residence and studio that was so stunning that Ernest jumped up and down as he shouted “Mama, this is so cool!”

I had to agree. The space was cool, the company delightful, and the food perfection. I was offered the serving bowl filled this endive, herb, kumquat salad and took way more than my fair share. I have since made it three times for myself for lunch. I’m making it now, while the kumquats are plentiful.

Kumquat endive salad

This is the ultimate end-of-winter-almost-spring salad. The bitter chicory of winter with the bright tart sweetness of citrus and the fresh green promise of spring herbs. You might not be able to have a real spring salad yet – there is no asparagus in here, no hidden fiddleheads – but it’s starting to seem like you will if you just hang in there.

4 Belgian endives

about 10 sprigs parsley

about 10 sprigs mint

10 kumquats

2 tablespoons lemon juice (Meyer lemon juice works nicely here, too)

1 1/2 tablespoons vegetable or olive oil (nothing too strong!)

1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon salt

Cut off ends of the endive and pull apart into leaves. Cut leaves into bite size pieces, if you like, and put all leaves into a salad or serving bowl.

Pull off the leaves from the parsley sprigs and put them with the endive leaves. Pinch off the mint leaves and tear them into smaller pieces and add them to the mix. Cut the kumquats into quarters and throw them in.

In a small bowl, mix lemon juice, oil, and salt. Stir or whisk together an drizzle over salad. Toss salad to coat everything evenly with the dressing.

Bright and bitter. Some days that describes me to a T. Purple and salty. Sometimes that works too, although in a more metaphorical way. They all get right to the heart of this salad, which hits the bright and bitter, purple and salty notes perfectly.

Radicchio green olive salad

This is my riff on a salad made at Toro Bravo in Portland. Their version relegates the green olives to the side, as a spread atop two slices of grilled bread. I put all the flavors in the bowl. With some good baguette and tasty cheese, you have yourself a simple and utterly delightful dinner.

1 head radicchio

18 green olives

1 cloves garlic

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons sherry vinegar or lemon juice (good both ways!)

Salt to taste

Lots of freshly ground black pepper

Scads of freshly shredded Parmesan cheese

Trim radicchio and cut or tear into shreds or bite-size pieces. Put radicchio in a large salad bowl.

Mince olives and garlic into a paste and then mix with oil, vinegar or lemon juice, and add salt and pepper to taste. (You can also do this in a blender, if you like.)

Toss radicchio with the dressing. Then add a whole lot of Parmesan and toss it again. Serve topped with more Parmesan.

I have a weakness for celery. Good, fresh celery that has some solid celery flavor to it. I love the crunch of raw celery in particular. For years we’ve made a gingery celery salad with red onion sliced into it much like one served at the once great Eliza’s restaurant on Potrero Hill in San Francisco. The other night a bunch of fabulously crisp celery beckoned from the fridge, but neither ginger nor red onion were on hand.

So I sliced the celery as thinly as my attention span at the end of the day would allow, tossed in a handful of chopped mint, a few thinly sliced green onions, and a few drops of champagne vinegar. Sprinkle on salt as you like.

Easy, healthful, and just the thing to counter the heavy, rich foods of winter.

It was so good that Ernest asked why, exactly, it was so delicious.

I explained how the salmon came from a place that is very good for salmon, that the people who caught it took such good care of it. He looked over at me like I was a complete fool.

“I don’t think that’s why it tastes good, Mama. I think it’s because you took it off the grill at the right time.” Snap.

If that’s your point-of-view too, here you go – I grilled it using this super-simple method: I heat the grill to a medium heat (you can hold your hand about an inch over the grill grate for 3 to 4 seconds), I sprinkle the fish with salt, I brush vegetable oil on the grill grate and the fish skin, put the fish skin-down on the grill, I cover the grill, and I cook it undisturbed until the fish is done to my liking (I go by 10 minutes minimum, and figure about 10 minutes per inch if it’s thicker than an inch). If the fish has no skin or you’re worried about sticking, simply do the same thing but put the fish on a piece of tin foil with plenty of small holes poked in it. With salmon I always buy skin-on and cook it directly on the grill to crisp it up because if there is anything my dashing husband and inquisitive son love more than crispy crunchy salmon skin I don’t know what it is.

You can add marinades or rubs or whatever you dig, but did you notice that the fish does not get flipped? That, I think, is the key to happy fish grilling. And those fish-grilling baskets? I don’t have a place to put one, but when I tried them in the Sunset test kitchen I was not impressed. Sure, the fish didn’t stick to the grill, but it always made a bit of a mess in the basket itself.

So I grilled this Copper River sockeye salmon using the above method and it turned out perfectly – we all agreed (partly because I took my dashing husband’s fillet off the grill way before mine or Ernest’s because he likes his salmon pretty much not cooked). And next to it? It’s this fattoush salad minus the feta and olives. The lemony dressing and cumin seeds were fab with the plain grilled salmon.

I am burying the lede. I forgot to take a picture of the lede. The lede should be (and in life was) the rib-eye steaks from our meat CSA. I defrosted a pair – they were cut a bit thin and I was worried they would cook up ill, but they were delicious simply grilled over a hot flame for 5 minutes on each side having only been lightly drizzled with a bit of oil and salted fairly liberally a moment before being laid ever-so-gently on the piping hot grill grate. I was so excited to eat them that picture-taking was the last thing on my mind as I sliced them diagonally and dabbed them with a garlic compound butter.

I served them to my dashing husband and young Ernest along with some grilled potatoes (with more of the butter slathered onto those, you can be sure) and the salad you see above. It was all very summery and satisfying. It was my last dinner in San Francisco for awhile. Ernest and I are headed to Northern Minnesota for a nice long stay again this summer. What draws us there? Well I could go on and on about the clear lake water for swimming and the extended family for fun and the walleye pike for eating but let me sum it up thusly: the living is easy and the child care is cheap.