Little Gem Salad with Buttermilk-Feta Dressing
A cookbook sneak peek!
As promised, today I’m sharing a little sneak peek of what I’ve been working on. My next book is all about vegetables (and some fruit too!). The focus for the book is about cooking in sync with the seasons. If you shop at a farmer’s market or get a CSA box, I hope to help you figure out what to do with some of the more befuddling ingredients. Like kohlrabi. Or daikon. Or Jerusalem artichokes. But mostly I’m featuring the vegetables we all know and love and are sometimes inundated with, like tomatoes and zucchini.
The recipes make creative use of everyday ingredients, and will also walk you deliciously through the less familiar ones. We all should be eating more vegetables—for our health and for the collective good it can do for our planet.
I spent the past year cooking with exactly what was in season, creating recipes, and even photographing the book myself (on my phone!), all in real time. This is not the usual process for producing a cookbook. Generally you spend however much time you are given between when your publisher pulls the trigger and the date your manuscript is due. Then, in most cases, a team is hired to do a photo shoot, usually in about 10 frantic days.
I wanted this book to be really personal and a bit diaristic, so it was important to me that I shoot it in real time while whatever produce I was working with was at its peak. It’s been a really enjoyable process as I got into a rhythm of cooking and creating like never before. This past year, I’ve devoted myself almost exclusively to working on the book, and, of course, this newsletter! I’m excited to share it with you, almost exactly a year from now if all goes as planned (which is not always the case these days). In case you missed this news from January, anything can happen!
In the meantime, I wanted to share one of the simpler recipes in the book. Those tend to be salads, which you’re going to find plenty of. This one uses little gem lettuce, which I’m happy to report is being sold in supermarkets now (yours, I hope!). Mine sells them three to a bag. They do need to be washed (as opposed to ready-to-eat washed greens), but if you like crunchy lettuce like me, you will love little gems. Baby romaine or just romaine hearts work too—or whatever crunchy lettuce you can find in your local farmer’s market. If you find small heads, cut them in half lengthwise, leaving a little bit of the root intact, which gives the effect of a wedge salad that begs to be eaten with a knife and fork.
As for the radishes, I’ve used watermelon (or a very similar variety) and purple daikon here, but any kind of radish will do. Technically the larger and more colorful varieties of radishes are available later in the summer or in the fall. But, as someone in my line of work is wont to do, I stockpile watermelon radishes (knowing they’ll keep for months), for photography—and of course to enjoy in recipes—year round. You’d be surprised at how long they last when stored properly (more on that later, if you’re interested!).
Finally, the dressing here is killer, and you can use it on almost anything! I hope you’ll try this salad!
Little Gem and Radish Salad with Buttermilk-Feta Dressing
Serves 4