No, I'm not talking about the musical instrument. I am even less musical than I am a cook.
I'm talking about the slicing device known as the mandolin. Short version: Get one!
Ironically, I was a fantastic baker before low carb. After, I was stuck; I think to make this WOE work, you hafta cook, but I'd never done it. And so the learning curve began.
While I've gotten a lot better with my set of knives, yesterday was a revelation. I put together this cucumber salad in twenty minutes, and I know I'll cut that time down as I go along. And with the mandolin, it's fun to slice up stuff!
Cucumber Salad:
3 large cucumbers
1 small onion
Peel off the cucumber skin with a peeler. If you're really in a hurry, I could see how you could do that with a mandolin, too, but there's more waste. Why peel it at all? Well, if you are willing to get off the wax that are always on supermarket cucumbers, or buy them at farmer's markets, you don't have to do that, either.
Then I cut the cucumbers in half, put the flat side on the mandolin, and slid it back and forth. As soon as I could, I put the holder (a flat thing with spikes on one side and a handle on the other) into the end of the cucumber and then you can really go to town. Safety first.
Throw these in a container with a lid, because you have to marinate in the fridge. You don't have to; it just makes it better. What I love is that the mandolin cut the cucumber thinly and evenly; this makes for fast marinating and an excellent "stacked" flavor. I do it with a knife, and it's never even, and towards the end, it's not even thin.
Then peel the onion, cut it in half, and mandolin that, too. I like onion kinda chunky, so I cut it across the equator, then cut it across the rings, about halfway down. Then put the cut end on the mandolin surface, the safety handle on the rounded side, and slidey slidey (aren't we having fun?)
Throw that in the container. Onions are the only really carby part of this recipe, so adjust as needed for your carb level. You can even skip them and use a teaspoonful of onion powder to get the flavor, but onions also have sulfur compounds that are healthful which is how I justify them
Every google I tried for "cucumber salad dressing" was a sour cream dressing, which sounded awesome, but I didn't have any sour cream! Now, this next part isn't tricky for real cooks; they just make a vinaigrette. So if you're going "Huh?" it goes like this:
3/4 cup olive oil
3/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 bunch fresh dill, stalks totalling the size of my index finger
bit of salt (sea) and pepper (fresh ground)
This is where another new tool came in quite handy; our personal size smoothie blender. We have very little counterspace, and even less for appliances. So this little guy works out great for us, and was only $15 at Amazon.
Put all salad dressing ingredients in the blender and
zang! Alternatively, you can chop up the dill with a knife, but that's not the point of this post.
When it comes to herbs, using dried needs less than fresh, so I just guessed at the amount of herbs, based on the fact that, for me, there is no such thing as "too much dill."
Then pour the dressing over the cucumbers and onions, shake it up, and refrigerate. I lasted an hour, and then had some. Awesome!
I have no problem with meat. Season it, grill/fry/bake it, and go. But I get a little tired of "salad, again?" and have started exploring deli-type salads, only instead of macaroni or potato chunks, it's fresh vegetables. I've also started making my own salad dressings, since so many bottled dressings are based on vegetable oils, and there's better choices to be made. So by creating my own dressings, then soaking fresh vegetables in them, I have either a side salad, or a delicious dressing/topping for my greens. Now that's triple duty cooking!
This combines lot of tastiness, a dash of creativity, and considerable margin for error; it's hard to make these things NOT good. They are excellent candidates for making ahead to sit in the fridge, because sitting makes them better. Then just grab some for any meal where you need a side.
The biggest lesson I learned, learning to cook, is that the tediousness and painful prep, the part I dreaded, can be drastically lowered with just two things: practice, and the proper tools. This is how cooks just run into the kitchen, throw together a great meal, and come right back out again with their hair barely mussed.
Any of us can learn to do that, too.
Recipe Counts: Total is 36 carbs, 7 fiber, 5.74 protein, and 164 grams of fat. But this is highly misleading, since there will be dressing left over after the salad is served. Per serving, I'm thinking, there's probably 8 of them in there, so it would be:
3.6 net carbs, .75 protein, and maybe 4 of fat.
Bear with me on this, never done it much before, and I used my PLAN for it; I did not eat this whole thing yesterday!