Rubbishy Cookery

  This is a recipe that uses not one, but two (2!) types of canned fish! Ingredients: Missing from the above photo, but should usually be assumed: salt and pepper. Also missing and a last minute optional addition: Directions: You’ve probably heard that kale needs to be massaged with oil for salads in order to soften the tough leathery leaves. We’re going to be extra frugal and massage our kale (which is coming from the late fall backyard garden crop today, harvested in the dark cold rain) with the fishy olive oil with which our canned tuna is packaged.  Here is a picture of pre-massaged kale: Add that tuna olive oil: Get in there with both hands and massage! Then you’ll have nice tender oily kale: Nice! Meanwhile, in a little dish, squish up a clove of garlic and add some salt to let the garlic mellow and soften for a minute or two: Add an anchovy: Mash them up together: Add some squeezed fresh lemon juice and a few squirts of Worcestershire sauce: Mix it all up and add a good...

  This is a great way to use a $3 bag of beets from the farm market up the road, but be forewarned: beets are not just a vibrant colour! They turn everything they come in contact with a vibrant colour! That includes your hands, your clothes, your cutting board, your tablecloth, and even your insides. So DON’T PANIC when you go to the bathroom the next day! Ingredients: I forgot to photograph the raw beets pre-Instant Pot cooking, how rubbishy of me! Rubbishy bloggery! I also added on a bonus ingredient halfway through: Directions: First, cook the beets. As mentioned previously, I use an Instant Pot and have a chart for pressure cooking time by average beet circumference: I don’t remember where I found this chart, so I can’t give it credit, but it’s perfect every time. Thanks to whoever published this on the interwebs!  You can also boil or roast the beets, just get them cooked so that you can easily poke a knife into them: Peel and slice the beets, maybe wearing an apron so yo...

  Today I will show you how to make a versatile  quinoa salad. Ingredients: The list of ingredients is irrelevant because you can add almost anything to this salad and it will be fine. There’s quinoa, of course, but the remaining ingredients can be whatever you have on hand. Someone gifted me the package of Veggie Sticks Salad Topper, so in they go. We had cucumbers in the garden, so giddy up. I forgot to put feta cheese in this photo, but it makes an appearance because I thought of it later. And so on. Ignore the defrosting tofu burger sitting on top of the toaster oven. That’s not in the salad but will be eaten on the side. But who’s to say it couldn’t go in the salad too? Who’s to say?? Directions: First, we make the quinoa, and we make it pasta-style by boiling a big pot of water. We also start, simultaneously, by boiling a little pot of water for the frozen shelled edamame: Simultaneously, we roast up some frozen corn kernels in the toaster oven on fairly high heat for as...

  This is the closest thing I make to a real salade niçoise, and although it’s much more effort than the other, faker versions (see recipes #15 and #20) (and still not authentic), it’s well worth it! Ingredients: Directions: I’m going to make my hard boiled eggs in the Instant Pot because I have one and it makes perfect hard boiled eggs (as well as cool fun-house reflections on the mirrored interior), but you can certainly make them the old fashioned way on the stove top: Boil up some fresh baby new potatoes and green or yellow beans: The potatoes take longer than the beans, which are really just quick cooked to al dente or barely cooked, then plunged into cold water to stop them from overcooking, then drained well. The potatoes are cooked until a fork can easily pierce them, then drained well but kept warm. Chop all the raw vegetables and put into the salad bowl: Then add the canned tuna with oil, chopped hard boiled eggs, drained beans, drained (and still warm) diced potatoes, an...

  As mentioned in a previous rubbishy post (see Recipe #15), I love a good authentic  salade niçoise… but this is not that. Like Recipe #15, this recipe is a salad that has been inspired by salade niçoise, but like all salads I create containing vegetables, canned tuna, and a passable vinaigrette dressing, that maketh not une vrai salade niçoise. But this one is, dare I say, closer to the mark? Ingredients: Note the two main additions to this version: a hard boiled egg and some leftover cold boiled new potatoes. There is also the addition of grainy mustard for the vinaigrette. We are still using iceberg lettuce so just be cool with it, okay? Directions: Wash and dry and cut up all the vegetables and add them to the salad bowl.  Cut up the hard boiled egg and cold boiled new potatoes and add them to the bowl. Add the tin of tuna with its olive oil: I mix the vinaigrette directly into the salad by adding a squeeze of grainy mustard, a sprinkling of red wine vinegar, more ol...

 This recipe is such a distant cousin to salade niçoise that if the two dishes wanted to get together and have offspring, they wouldn’t have to worry about recessive genes causing any congenital anomalies.  I’ve just gotten into the habit of referring go any salad with lettuce, canned tuna, and vinaigrette as a fake salade niçoise . I have some more elaborate and slightly less lazy homages to the French salad coming in future posts when I have more ingredients, energy, and mobility. But don’t worry. I am not so ignorant in the world of international cuisine to think this, and my future renditions, are in any way real salade niçoise . But it’s vraiment bon et très facile!  So allons-y! Ingredients: You can use any salad ingredients you have around. This is very basic because it’s all I’ve got today. And yes, that’s grocery store iceberg lettuce. Don’t be a lettuce snob.  Directions: Wash and dry your vegetables and chop into salad-appropriate sizes and toss into a big...