Thursday, June 23, 2005

Strawberry Pecorino salad



Another great little salad! Again, a recipe I found at Debbie's blog - she's probably the blogger whose recipes I try out most often! This one charmed me at once - strawberries are everywhere now, and I'm always looking for fun new things to use them in. A pairing with cheese - gimme! And especially since pecorino is one of my latest new food finds. So good - more flavorful than parmesan, but less intense. Different. Salty. Good. I also managed to find sugar snaps for this salad, and I'm glad I did (even though they were criminally expensive!) - their little bursts of sugary goodness was perfect.

So - very simple really - take about 250 g of strawberries, halve them or quarter them depending on size, mix with roughly diced cucumber, freshly blanched (1 minute in boiling water, plunge in ice water, drain, serve) sugar snap peas (about 250 g), as much pecorino as you want, and I tossed in a bunch of toasted pine nuts, too. And a little bit of mint - I have it in my "herb garden" (grand name for a little flowerbed outside my balcony, but still) and it went very well with the other flavors.

And toss with a good vinaigrette. I use about 2 tbsp of white balsamic vinegar, 2 tbsp of olive oil, dash of dijon mustard (I picked up one that's flavored with shallots - very good!), a dash of honey, salt and pepper.

5 comments:

Farmgirl Susan said...

Pecorino is the best! I, too, find it more flavorful than parmesan--and so much less expensive. And of course I have a soft spot for it since it's made from sheep's milk and I raise sheep. So glad you discovered it!

Anne said...

Oh my goodness - you raise sheep?! How exciting! I wish I could come visit some day, I'd love to see a sheep farm up close! :)

Farmgirl Susan said...

Hmmm. . .I am now thinking you never received the email I sent you a few weeks back (when I first discovered your site)--saying I, too, love cats (I have 7) and eating lamb!

Yes, lambing season is over for the year, and the grand total of sheepsies right now is 47. Yikes! Seventeen adorable lambs bouncing around everywhere. Will be posting more sheep photos soon. Baaaaaaaa!

Anne said...

Indeed, I never did get that! Gah! Looking forward to sheep-pics - do you sell wool and skins, too? We have a sheepskin that the cats just adore - some of them, that is. Some are deathly afraid of it, too. :)

Farmgirl Susan said...

Well that's the second time I typed several paragraphs and they evaporated when I went to publish my comment. Think will give up for now! Aaargh! I bet your cats love their sheepskin. How cozy. My Patchy Cat (see Daily Farm Photo 6/17/05 on my site) sleeps most nights in the barn with his sheep on a big pile of wool. I collect (abandoned) bird nests and it's so neat to find one that is lined with wool. Talk about cozy.

I'm so glad I found your site. Really enjoy your posts. Everything always looks and sounds delicious. But I think you'd better watch out or you're going to have a bunch of hungry food bloggers crashing your wedding! :)