Fried Salad

Photo courtesy Flickr

I’ve been careful about washing salad greens since E coli morphed into a mortal threat. Found some advice about spraying greens with vinegar and then with hydrogen peroxide to kill surface bacteria. It’s a pain in the neck but yields uniquely firm and crisp leaves. Spray peroxide first, rinse, and then let the vinegar be part of the dressing, sort of, even though the oil should go on first. You can add a little sour cream and some spices and call the salad ready to eat, or dry the greens and proceed. Look for sour cream with cream in it.

Recently, a grocery chain had a special on pre-packaged mixed greens, and I inadvertently bought more than I could use right away. The next evening, I stared stupidly at the contents of the refrigerator in the usual meditation and recalled a 1940s Joy of Cooking recipe for lettuce cooked with peas. I presume this is a recipe from the kitchen of a property with a garden full of surplus lettuce. Old cookbooks are gold mines.

There were some whole-grain wraps sitting around, and I stir-fried half a bag of greens in a generous slug of olive oil in lieu of dinking around with spray bottles. Fried salad was delicious, quick to prepare, and calming to digest.

Last night I stir-fried a bunch of spinach-just trimmed off the ends of the bunch in one swoop, rinsed them in a bowl of cold water, parked them on the drainboard while I did something else for a while, and set up to fry, having chopped the spinach so it didn’t tangle. Added ten or twelve drops of smoke seasoning, some garlic powder, and half a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar to the liquid in the pan, and had a substantial meal by wrapping the spinach in a whole-grain tortilla with some sour cream, a few very thin slices of local cheddar, a little hot sauce, and a few minced leaves of basil.

Adding some fruit and a snack bar made a perfectly decent, easy meal.

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