Crafterateur

I’m currently in love with serving salads on rectangular plates. The fiancé, Jason, purchased a couple of these plates for my birthday last year and I had been using them for my craft set ups. Now that my winter shows are over, these plates are back in the kitchen. Oh, what fun!

Since we had been traveling, we decided to have a quiet New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day back in our apartment. We cooked some nice meals together and served them up on our fancy plates. What do you think? Restaurant quality? Almost?

For New Year’s Eve dinner we had potato bean soup, warm kale salad with a sweet onion balsamic dressing, and brandy milk punch. The potato bean soup recipe came from The Vegan Road., except ours wasn’t vegan because we added beef broth. Some other substitutions: celery seed instead of celery, Italian spices instead of Italian sausage, and dried beans instead of canned (If you do it this way, make sure to cook the beans first, then add the potatoes for the last 30ish minutes.). We also added some red bell peppers for added flavor and color. This is a hearty soup and was perfect for the chilly evening. The warm kale recipe was courtesy of Veggie and the Beast. Yum! This was the perfect salad for our soup. Instead of pine nuts we used pumpkin seeds, and instead of massaging the kale with the dressing, we wilted it in the pan with the dressing. Also, since we had sun dried tomato goat cheese our salad had some sour notes. The brandy milk punch recipe came from Martha. (I like to think we’d be on a first name basis if she knew me.) It tasted like a grown up boba milk tea.

For New Year’s Day brunch, we had second helpings of the soup and tried out a satsuma vinaigrette recipe from Whole Foods. We didn’t have adzuki beans and I’m not a fan of raw onions in my salads, so we didn’t include either of these ingredients. We did, however, double the dressing recipe so I could whip up a quick salad later on in the week. This dressing was so easy to make, and I love the acidity. Geoffrey Zakarian would probably say my salad was overdressed, but that’s how I like it, especially when the dressing has tangy Dijon mustard. Mmm.

I can’t wait to discover more salad recipes and work on my plating technique. Share your favorite dish (of the recipe or food platter variety) below!