Potato Salad

This isn't just any potato salad recipe. It has pancetta, lemon juice, garlic and rosemary. I needed an alternative to the typical mayo-laden recipes and this was great. It has just enough fat to be delicious, but still light because of the lemon juice and celery.

If you're wondering why there are so many potato recipes, it's because my dad gave me a 10 pound bag of potatoes. They were on sale.

Crab Cakes

I was stuck in LAX for a few hours on my way to JFK and the only thing in the Virgin America terminals was Burger King, Starbucks and Gladstone's. I ended up in Gladstones with a crab cake sandwich. It was bland with very little crab. When I got back home, I had to make a good crab cake. The recipe includes an avocado sauce, but I skipped it.

crab cake + arugula + red onions + egg + balsamic vinegar + olive oil

The previous recipes I've made involve frying the crab cakes, but this one has you bake them. The bread crumbs are tossed with the butter so they're still crisp. I finished mine in the toasted oven for a few more minutes to get a nicer crust.

Citrus Salad

I ate at Chez Panisse Cafe in February, using my sister's birthday as an excuse to eat here :) I called to make reservations exactly 2 months before, although they also take them through Open Table. It is not cheap, but it was worth it. The food was delicious and the staff was attentive. The prices... well it's not an everyday place (for me at least).

the Chez Panisse Cafe salad

I ordered their citrus salad with crab toasts. I've never been a big fan of citrus in salad, but this seemed so right. The crab on little toasts didn't hurt either. The combination of creamy avocado and sweet citrus stayed with me after the dinner, so I set out to make a version at home. I added arugula for some spiciness and heft so it could be a meal.

I used organic baby arugula, blood oranges, oranges, grapefruits, avocado, extra virgin olive oil and sea salt. That's it. Just supreme the fruit or slice horizontally (this is how chez panisse did it, but it was easier to for me to eat the supremes). I liked how the pieces of avocado weren't sliced into neat shapes, but in sort of organic shapes, like they just happened to fall off the pit onto my plate so I tried to do the same with a spoon.

How to supreme:
(btw I can't stop cutting fruit like this! I usually peel grapefruits section by section, but this is so much faster)

Slice off the top and bottom. (I use a ralphs bag for trash so the juice doesn't drip everywhere)

The slice vertically, going with the curve of the fruit. You can do small sections at once as long as you get the white pith off.



The third part I don't have a picture of because my hands were dripping with fruit juice at this point, but you will have a big naked ball of grapefruit. Hold the fruit in one hand and the knife in the other and cut each section out, leaving the bits of skin behind. That probably didn't help, so watch this video instead. Don't worry about wasting fruit, you'll be squeezing what's left into the salad.

Here I just sliced the fruit horizontally, instead of with the sections.

I used about a handful of arugula to half an orange, half a grapefruit, a whole blood orange (mine were small), half an avocado, all the fruit juice I could squeeze out, a pinch of salt and a heavy dosing of extra virgin olive oil.

Potato Salad

I love potato salad, with mayonnaise and without (ie german potato salad). This is a recipe with mayonnaise, but there's not that much. This is a different potato salad than the one you're used to. There's a time and a place for mayonnaise-y potato salad with peas and some celery, but this is not one of those times. You need to try this version because:

a) it's not covered in mayonnaise
b) there's bacon
c) there's smoked salt
d) there are fresh herbs (thyme and parsley, although is substituted chives for parsley)


ahhh smoked salt. I got mine from Whole Foods. It's a good investment- it's kinda pricey, but you use it sparingly and it adds a good amount of smokiness to your dish.

This recipe is very easy and I added some of the bacon grease to mine to make it even more bacon-y. I think it tastes better the next day- a great make ahead recipe. Although next time I'm going to cut the potato into thinner pieces so it can soak up more of the onion, bacon, smokey, herb-y flavors.

Summer food

I hate cooking over a hot stove in the summer so my go-to recipe on hot days (Even though I still have to boil water for eggs and pasta...) is a pasta salad, more filling then just a salad. I add whatever vegetables I have on hand. For this batch it was celery, red bell peppers, cucumbers and some red onion. I also added some boiled eggs- I use a 2:1 ratio for just egg whites to whole eggs because I don't really like egg yolks, but it adds some creaminess to the pasta, otherwise it's just cold and crunchy. I added some diced pepperoni as well so it's a little spicy and a bit more flavorful. Then a healthy splash of extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice and sea salt to top it off. It tastes even better the day after.


Lately I've been buying a lot of rotisserie chickens from Ralphs or Costco. They're pretty cheap and you can use it for so many things! Plus you don't have to touch a whole raw chicken. I used mine for chicken tacos this time. Again, no slaving over a hot stove! Just shred the chicken and cut up: onions, cilanto, green onions, avocado. Get some corn tortillas, some sour cream and cheese and, if you can handle spicy, you MUST throw on some Trade Joe's roasted green chiles (they come in a small can so it's worth a try). Squeeze some lime over it and you're done!


And with the leftover bones/scraps of meat, you can make really delicious chicken stock. Just throw the bones into a pot with water (and any scrap of vegetables you have lying around) and let it simmer for a few hours. Freeze it for later use in soups, sauces, anything... I used my stock for a simple broth with somen noodles and green onions.