Put an Egg on It: BLT Salad Edition

Today is a really exciting day. I'm kicking off my "Put an Egg on It" series here on Dishes! Inspired by the Portlandia sketch "Put a Bird on It," this recipe series will celebrate my relatively newfound love of fried eggs. They're cheap, delicious, full of protein, most vegetarians eat them...and did I mention they're cheap?


 Runny egg yolks used to gross me out. Now I love them. Why the change of heart? One word--bacon. When I was in France a few years ago, I went out to lunch with a fellow American on the trip (hi Alix!), her student host, and the host student's father. Ordering in French was fine--I saw "Frisee aux Lardons," or curly bitter salad greens with porcine yumminess on the menu, and I felt set. Imagine my horror when my lunch arrived with two jiggly eggs on top! I had just started picking around them when Alix's father gave me an accusing look--"That's obviously the best part, and you're not going to EAT it?"--that I couldn't ignore. So I sighed, and pricked the eggs with my fork until the yolk began to drip down the salad. Taking an apprehensive bite, I was ready to hate it.


Wrong. So, so wrong.


The silky yolks were the perfect complement to the crispy bitter tangles of endive, chunks of crunchy bacon, and vinegary bite of the warm dressing.  This is by far my favorite salad, and it's pretty easy to recreate without fancy ingredients and with minimal effort. I ate it as brunch, but it's another one of those dishes that you will love anytime...including right now!! Put an egg on it!

Spiced Kale Chips

As some of you may know, my lovely roommate Carson is here!! She really likes kale chips. Kale is one of those vegetables that is pretty much always around in huge, cheap bunches, and we had about 3 pounds sitting in the fridge. To celebrate her arrival, we turned 'em into kale chips! Together! Now, kale chips are delicious with just a little olive oil, salt, and time in the oven--but my mother had other (brilliant) ideas, and spiced kale chips were born. We made two varieties: Chili Garlic and Tandoori Spiced. 

The Perfect Burger

It's grilling season. And you know what that means: fried tomatoes. No, just kidding. It means burgers! It is, of course, also high season for grill-mands (like gourmands? See what I did there?) to get all fancy and grill up watermelon, pizza, and even truly "grilled" cheese. But the most basic of all backyard BBQ staples is the humble burger.

There are a couple of tricks to making the perfect burger. First, you need a meat with a good meat-to-fat ratio like 80/20 or 85/15. This ensures that you'll have a moist (sorry! juicy) burger. I also add some onions for flavor and additional juice (more on that below). Second, you need some good seasonings. Mustard for kick, Worcestershire to enhance that beefy flavor, garlic because garlic should be in everything, and of course salt and pepper to round everything out. Third, you need to shape the patties so they don't dome in the middle, which a) makes them cook unevenly b) makes your toppings slip off and c) increases the likelihood that you'll be tempted to press down on the burger while cooking, thereby pushing out all the juices and losing the tasty fruits (or burgers) of your labors! This list is getting pretty long, so let's just make 'em and you can see how it's done.

Celery Soda

It's hot out today. Like, tear-all-your-clothes-off-and-go-running-through-the-sprinkler hot. Or do-nothing-but-nap-in-an-air-conditioned-library hot. If neither of these options are available, I highly suggest making a cool and refreshing drink--celery soda.


I had my first celery soda along with my first pastrami on rye many many years ago. And while Dr. Brown's Cel-ray is still my drink of choice with mustard, pickles, and copious amounts of smoked meat, it's pretty darn excellent any time, any where. A lot of the Jewish delis by me have stopped stocking the celery variety, which makes me bat-knish crazy. So a few years ago I started to make my own...now you can, too!

Flourless Chocolate Cake

Please find it in your hearts to forgive the lack of posts over the last few days. I think I can make it up to you though... with a post about chocolate. Because who doesn't like that? The whole choco-extravaganza you see below took place at my friend Addie's house. I love love love her kitchen. Many a scrumptious (and ambitious) New Year's dinner has been cooked there, and (as you'll see below) I always learn or find something new. 


We made this cake to celebrate our friend Sarah's belated birthday. Sarah really loves chocolate, and is gluten-free. Hence a flourless chocolate cake!  Read on for a real live double boiler from the 1940s, a new trick for buttering and "flouring" cake pans, recycling brooms as baking items, and 167 things (okay, just 2 things) to do with leftover melted chocolate. 

Chicken Saltimbocca

Sometimes, you just have to put your head out the window and feel the wind on your face. Other times, you just have to make America's Test Kitchen's Chicken Saltimbocca because you want to know if their recipes really are the best.

I won't doubt it again.

Italian Mini Frittatas

I woke up starving this morning. Stumbling downstairs to the kitchen, I had a couple of options. There's cereal--minimal effort. There's scrambling an egg--still minimal effort. 


But no.


I had a sudden, uncontrollable urge to make quiche. I am a quiche master. Also, quiche is undeniably delicious at any time of the day. But there was one problem--I didn't have a pie shell. I could either make one (even though it was already going on 11.30) or I could adapt. So I made miniature frittatas instead! 

Chocolate Tofu Pudding

I was feeling kind of fancy. So I made three kinds of Chocolate Tofu Pudding--one with ginger, one with mint, and one with coconut. While this pudding is amazing by itself, I felt like trying something new. Out of the three new varieties, the coconut was definitely my favorite. I can also see a salted caramel version...a nutella version...a Mexican chocolate version...the possibilities are endless! The basic recipe is below, along with a whole bunch of suggestions for different flavors!

Lemony Greens Vichyssoise

The first chilled soup I made turned out so well that I just had to make another! Now for all of you smart-alecks out there, no, this is not really a vichyssoise. A true Vichy is a leek and potato soup with tons of cream. But to me the term implies a chilled potato soup, which is at its core what this soup is. Because I had a feeling that I would miss green things for the few days after wisdom teeth surgery, I added zucchini and a whole bunch of spinach. Instead of cream, I used lemon to really take it to the next level. It's pretty much the same process as the Carrot Ginger soup, except for the last few minutes of cooking. 

Chilled Carrot Apple Ginger Soup

In two days I am getting my wisdom teeth out. All four of them. I had an inkling that it wouldn't be a picnic, but I was definitely not prepared to hear that I would not be attending picnics of any kind for a week--my cheeks would be swollen and bruised, and I wouldn't be able to chew (or suck through a straw!) for about 5 days. Needless to say, I did some serious panic grocery shopping. Inspired by Mark Bittman's timely column from last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, I decided to make a cold soup that would be both tasty and healthy--and that I could drink from a mug. Here is Chilled Carrot Apple Ginger Soup!

Original Feature: Seed Saving

This is my first long-food piece, written in the Spring of 2012. It explores genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the influence of agricultural biotechnology companies on our food system, and seed saving through the words of farmers in Massachusett's Pioneer Valley.

Seed saving is a lost art…or is it?

By Dara Kagan

Suzanne Webber surveyed her dancing greens. We stood at the edge of her small vegetable plot, no larger than a patch of dry ground that had been covered by a car during a rainstorm.  Beyond stood the rest of her Montague, Massachusetts farm, Brooks Bend; sheep dotting the parched New England grass across the road from the 1751 farmhouse, shepherded by two talkative dogs, Gemma and Ray. Webber loves the diversity of color and pattern in the sheep she breeds. The farmhouse was red, with a bright blue door.

Her concern on this chilly Tuesday in February lay at her feet in the cool, porous loam: her dancing greens. She is one of several farmers who are growing three kinds of greens together in order to increase the seed gene pool and enhance a desired trait. “You choose the ones you like,” she said, pointing out differences in color, texture, stem, shininess, and leaf shape between the ten new greens. “By taste, by vigor, by beauty, by how well it does in the cold.” She will selectively breed her favorites, that is, save their seeds and create new gene pools by growing them out.

I ordered a salad at lunch at the nearby Book Mill. Its arrival stole my attention from reviewing my notes of Brooks Bend, the varied greens variegated with purple and glistening with oil like fish scales. Everything on my plate was thanks to the efforts of selective breeding—in a manner of speaking. The seeds that grew this lunch may have come from Webber’s farm; as the sheepdogs nuzzled her hand, she had removed from the shelf a lidless white cardboard box with neatly labeled paper packets of tiny seeds, seeds that she has saved from her own garden or received at exchanges. But they just as easily could have been grown from patented, genetically modified seed sold by a multinational corporation.  Which salad lay on my plate? More importantly, why does it matter?

Quinoa Salad with Mushrooms, Sausage, and Arugula

For months I had been hearing a good friend rave about this salad. A mutual friend had whipped it up for her last summer, and while we had promised to make it there just wasn't time during the insanity of graduation. It sounded pretty ideal--healthy quinoa, spicy arugula, and the best meat of all time? What could be better? So for the first dinner I cooked at home, I knew I had to try it out. 

Longfood

Long-form journalism about food (or "longfood," a ridiculous term I coined two seconds ago) is one of my favorite things to read, and to humbly try my hand at. Under "Longfood" you'll find some of my attempts, along with food news and great examples about anything from the Fruit Detective to an inside look at the now-defunct H&H Bagels. Happy longfood-ing!

Da Radishes

Welcome to Dara's Dish! I've wanted to start a food blog for about a million years now, and since I just graduated college I've been feeling a lot of (self-inflicted) pressure to make some real-life resolutions and start carrying them out. So here goes.

My mom is a fantastic cook, and pretty much as soon as I could eat solid foods I took an interest in whatever she was standing over at the stove. While I was in high school, this interest got a little more fanatical as I started reading M.F.K. Fisher, Anthony Bourdain, Julia Child, and Ruth Reichl, and apprenticed in a catering kitchen. The summer after my first year of college I lived alone for the first time, and spent almost as much money on food as I did on rent (well, maybe not that much. But I did learn the dangers of having a supermarket in walking distance!). As cliché as it sounds, good food and fresh ingredients are what I'm all about. This blog will have a lot of both, and maybe someone will even read it.

I want this blog to be a place for pretty photos, occasionally witty writing, and lots and lots of comments--a place where we can all figure things out about food together. I am so glad to be back in a real kitchen after four years on a meal plan [insert fist pump here]. Hopefully I will focus on just plain ol' good food--the kinds of things I like to make and eat. When I'm feeling fancy, I might dip a toe into reviewing restaurants, asking and answering esoteric food questions (SAT vocab alert!), and writing long-form. Of course, I hope this will also be fun--for me to write and for you to read!

Oh, and as to the title of this post--once I made the URL I realized it could be read as either "Dara Dishes" or "Da Radishes." While we will be eating some of da radishes soon, I would love if you read the URL as "Dara Dishes" in your head. If you don't, I'll know about it.  Okee-dokee! Let's put this blog in the oven and hope it doesn't burn!