Not too long ago, I did a sponsored post for Cut 'n Clean Greens, which fulfilled my obligation to them. It didn't however, take care of the vast amount of greens they sent me. I'm beginning to turn a little bit green here.
But it's oh-so-healthy, right?
I grabbed a container that was labeled spinach and beet green salad, but I wasn't planning on using it as salad. I love spinach - but mostly I love it cooked. Much of the time, it's just spinach and lemon, but another one of my favorites is spinach with hot bacon dressing.
That recipe dates back to when my mom used to gather dandelion greens in the early spring, and she'd make hot bacon dressing. Since the dandelions needed to be picked before they flowered, we usually only had them once a year. And that's about the only time we had the hot bacon dressing.
Once in a while, though, we'd have spinach with hot bacon dressing. While I don't go picking dandelions in the spring like my mom did, I make spinach salad once in a while.
This is similar to that salad, but instead of bacon, I used butter for the richness. And, well, to cook the onions. The flavor in his dish is cleaner and crisper because it doesn't have the smoke flavor from the bacon.
The wine vinegar gives it a nice sharpness, and the sugar counters it with a little bit of sweet. If you want to veer into sweet-sour flavor, you can add more sugar.
It also has interesting color from the beet greens,which turned the onions a pretty pink. It's not just a bowl of green.
While the original dish was called a salad, it was really more of a side dish. You'd serve it with a meal, and not ahead of it.
Tarted Up Spinach and Beet Greens
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Several grinds black pepper
Pinch of sugar
2 tablespoons wine vinegar
1 onion, diced
1/2 teaspoons salt
1 8-ounce package Cut 'n Clean Greens spinach and beet green salad
Melt the butter on medium heat in a saute pan. Add the onion and salt. Cook, stirring, until the onions soften.
Add the greens, pepper, sugar, and wine vinegar.
Cook, turning the greens with tongs, until they wilt evenly. Taste and add more salt, sugar, or pepper, if desired.
This is done as soon as the greens are wilted, but if you prefer, you can continue cooking until the greens soften even more - it's up to you.
Serve hot.
I received the greens from Cut 'n Clean Greens at no cost to me for use in a previous post. I was not expected or required to write about them again.
My mom used to make a hot bacon dressing that she's serve over baby dandelion greens. The greens would wilt to a half-cooked state and it was tart and savory and wonderful.
That salad was memorable because it was a once-a-year treat, since the dandelions had to be harvested before they flowered and before my dad went rampaging through the lawn with weed killer.
Once the dandelions flowered, mom said they were bitter and inedible. But they never really got that far because dad had plenty of weed killer and garden tools for digging.
Some years, he brought out the weed killer before mom made her request for the dandelion greens, and she'd ask friends about the state of their lawns. They were more than happy to let her pull some weeds. Probably very puzzled at her request.
Years later, I found out that hot bacon dressing is commonly used on spinach salads. Or other hearty greens. So you don't actually need to wait until that perfect moment for dandelion picking. Then again, these days I've seen dandelion greens at the store on occasion. Not that I've been tempted to buy them. For me, it's all about the dressing.
Meanwhile, a new store opened up here in Longmont called Frontiere Natural Meats. They sell all sorts of organic and natural meats, including bison, elk, beef, chicken, and pork. I might have missed something, but that seems like most of it.
Like a good food blogger, I stopped in, peered around, and had a chat. I might be doing some regular recipes for them, in exchange for some meat products. Sounds like a fair deal, right? We eat meat.
For the first recipe, they asked if I could come up with a salad recipe with meat served on top, and the first thing I thought of was spinach salad with hot bacon dressing. And the second thing I thought of was not-bacon dressing. Since bison is so lean, I decided to omit the bacon and use olive oil instead. It's still a very tasty salad with a warm dressing. And with some added ingredients that weren't in the original. Because where's the fun in that?
Bison Ribeye with Hot Spinach Salad Depending on your appetite, this salad will serve one or two. French fries or boiled baby potatoes make a nice accompaniment to this salad.
For the steak:
1 bison ribeye steak
Salt and pepper, to taste
Olive oil, as needed
For the spinach salad:
1 tablespoon olive oil
8 ounces fresh mushrooms, sliced
1/2 red bell pepper, cut in bite-sized chunks
1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon sugar (optional)
Pinch of red pepper flakes (optional)
10 ounces baby spinach
Salt and pepper the ribeye, then heat a cast iron frying pan on medium-high heat. Drizzle a little olive oil on the steak, then place it in the hot pan. Sear on the first side, then flip and sear on the second side. Continue cooking until the steak is done to your liking - but remember that it will cook just a little more as it rests.
When the meat is done, transfer to a plate and cover loosely while you prepare the salad.
Heat a saute pan on medium heat. Add the olive oil, then the mushrooms, bell pepper, and lemon juice. Add salt and pepper, to taste. If you're not sure, a pinch of each would be fine. Cook, stirring as needed until the mushrooms loose their liquid and then it disappears again and the vegetables are in a mostly-dry pan.
Meanwhile, combine the wine vinegar, olive oil, and sugar (if you want a less-tart dressing) in a small bowl.
Add the spinach to the pan followed by the oil and vinegar mixture. Add the red pepper flakes, if desired. Use tongs to turn the spinach over a few times, just until it is wilted, but still bright green.
Arrange the spinach salad on a large plate, then slice the steak and serve it on top of the salad.
Frontiere Natural Meats provided me with meat so I could develop this recipe.
Have you ever been to a Teppanyaki restaurant? One of the signature dishes is shrimp with a secret egg yolk sauce. It almost seems like cheese - but it's not. instead, it's a relative of mayonnaise. Or, technically, I guess it's a type of mayonnaise, since it's essentially emulsified egg yolks and oil.
Here, I decided to veer away from the Teppanyaki serving style and served the shrimp on a bed of spinach. Then I drizzled the whole thing with some extra lemon juice - lemon goes perfectly with both shrimp and spinach - and it was a very simple meal.
The secret sauce can be made in advance and refrigerated until needed, and you can peel and clean and butterfly the shrimp ahead of time, too. So when you're ready to cook, it's really fast.
To make the portioning of the sauce a little easier, I used a pastry bag, but you can dollop it on with a spoon, if you like. The sauce is really rich, so don't get carried away. Or, just eat more spinach to compensate.
Annato seeds can be found at specialty spice shops and at some ethnic markets or in the ethnic section of your grocery store. You might find the labeled at achiote seeds. Make sure you get the actual seeds and not the powder or paste. They look like little brick-red rocks and turn the oil a bright yellow-orange color.
Be careful - the oil will stain.
As far as the spinach, as much as I'm a fan of using fresh vegetables as much as possible, sometimes frozen spinach makes more sense. A bunch of spinach at the grocery store or farmer's market cooks down to nothing. A pound of frozen spinach is relatively substantial. And, it's already clean, so you don't need to deal with washing the grit off the spinach leaves. One of my least favorite kitchen tasks.
This post is sponsored by OXO and the NFI Shrimp Council. For my participation, I received a selection of OXO tools and enough shrimp for several different recipes. There's a list of participating bloggers after the recipe, and a chance to win some amazing goodies for yourself, including the same tools I received, and a $100 gift card.
Shrimp with Egg yolk Sauce
For the sauce:
1 cup mild-flavored vegetable oil
2 tablespoons annato seeds
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
Pinch of salt
2 egg yolks For the shrimp:
12 extra-large shrimp, peeled, deveined, and butterflied
1 tablespoon olive oil
For serving:
1 pound frozen chopped spinach, cooked
Lemon juice, as needed
Lemon wedges, for serving
To make the annatto oil:
The first step of this process is to make the annatto oil. You probably won't use the full cup of oil, but once you have it, you can use it for other purposes, so there's no problem with having extra on hand. If you don't want any extra, you can halve it - use 1/2 cup of oil and 1 tablespoon of seeds, and if you need more oil, use plain vegetable oil.
Put the oil and seeds in a small saucepan and heat gently. You don't need to boil the oil, and above all, you don't want those seeds to blacken. Just get the oil hot, stir once in a while, then turn off the heat and let the seeds steep until the oil has cooled. Strain the seeds out and keep the oil.
To make the egg yolk sauce:
Whisk the egg yolks in a medium bowl until they lighten in color. This step might seem frivolous, since you're not adding anything to the eggs. But trust me, if you don't beat the oil well, the oil will never emulsify. You can do this with an electric mixer or stick blender if you like.
Add the oil, a little bit at a time, whisking like crazy as you go. The oil should incorporate into the yolks and you should see it thicken.
If you add the oil too fast and the mixture separates, you can beat one more yolk separately and then add the broken mixture to the new yolk, slowly.
When you've got about 1/2 cup of oil beaten into the yolks, add the lemon juice and salt and continue whisking (at this point, I think the whisk is a better tool, so even if you started with an electric mixer, I suggest you finish by hand.
Keep whisking, and the mixture will thicken until it's almost the consistency of Velveeta. You can continue adding oil, if you like, but I preferred the higher yolk-to-egg ratio. Taste and add more salt or lemon juice, as desired.
If you're not cooking the shrimp right away, refrigerate this until needed.
The great thing about shrimp is that even if it's frozen, you're not too far away from cooking. If you didn't think about putting some in the refrigerator to thaw, just let it thaw in cold water. The bowl and strainer OXO provided was perfect for this. For a smaller amount of shrimp, the silicone steamer in any handy bowl or container works just as well. Since it's flexible, you can make it fit into whatever containers you have handy.
To finish the dish:
For a quick video on how to clean shrimp using the OXO shrimp cleaning tool, click here. Once the shrimp is deveined and peeled, butterfly them by cutting through the top side of the shrimp (the top of the curve, opposite the legs) almost all the way through, then flatten them out.
Heat the olive oil on medium heat in a saute pan that has a cover. (Meanwhile, cook the spinach, as desired. I microwaved mine until just cooked through and still bright green.)
Have the egg yolk sauce ready, along with your lemon juice (OXO provided a wooden reamer to make this task easy). Have a cup or small container on hand, with about 1/4 cup of water. You could also mix half water and half white wine, for a little extra flavor.
When the oil is hot, place the shrimp, cut-side up, in the pan, then top each with a small dollop of the egg yolk sauce (or pipe a line down the center using a pastry bag). Pour 1/4 of water into the pan and cover. Cook until the shrimp are cooked through - check after about 30 seconds - and cook just as long as you need to.
Some (or all) of the shrimp might curl a bit as they cook.
Place the shrimp on top of the spinach and drizzle with lemon juice. Serve warm with extra slices of lemon.
Want more shrimp in your life?
The following bloggers all have shrimp recipes, sponsored by OXO:
All of the #ShrimpShowdown posts will be featured on a shared Pinterest board on both the OXO and Eat Shrimp Pinterest pages - be sure to check them out! Also, each post will be added to a photo album on the OXO Facebook Page and the Eat Shrimp Facebook Page.
Go check them out and share your favorites with your friends and fans!
Want to enter to win?
The photo shows the tools I received, which are the same ones YOU CAN WIN. The bowl and colander set at the back comes with a lid for the bowl that's not shown in the picture.
AND - there's also a gift card, for a total value of $180. Here's the list:
Shrimp Cleaner
Flexible Kitchen & Herb Snips
Silicone Steamer
Wooden Lemon Reamer
3 Piece Bowl and Colander Set
12" Tongs with Silicone Heads
$100 Visa Gift Card from the NFI Shrimp Council
Enter with the widget below.
If it doesn't load immediately, give it it a few seconds.
Not too long ago, I did a sponsored post for Cut 'n Clean Greens, which fulfilled my obligation to them. It didn't however, take care of the vast amount of greens they sent me. I'm beginning to turn a little bit green here.
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
