Thai Steak Salad with Fresh Herbs

        This salad looks a picture of Spring.  And it’s as tasty as it is beautiful to look at.  And healthy too!  It gives you half your daily servings of fruits and vegetables, the tomato being the fruit.  It’s also low in both calories and fat.  I adapted it from a recipe in Everyday Food so it’s quick and easy.  Good grief, never mind cooking it, we should canonize it!

Chicken Paillards with Lemon Caper Sauce and Orzo with Spinach and Hazlenuts

        For one of the easiest dishes on this entire website, this one certainly has the longest name.  It is simplicity itself and I go to this dish every time I’m really pressed for time.  It’s amazingly flexible. If you're not a fan of capers, use garlic.  Or just make the lemon sauce all by itself.  You can choose to embellish the Orzo with cheese, parsley, fresh oregano, peas--it's amazingly adaptable.  In this case, I had some spinach and hazlenuts which I threw in with the orzo and then brightened with some freshly-squeezed Lemon juice.  The chicken is ‘marinated’ for all of 10-30 minutes in some garlic, lemon and oregano, then sautéed for all of about 4 minutes, then the capers, a little butter and some more lemon juice are added and the whole thing is on the plate in no time. 

Coriander Dusted Roast Beef

When I was growing up in Canada, Sunday was almost invariably the day when a giant roast beef would appear at the dinner table surrounded by crisp, brown roasted potatoes.  My personal preference was to eat as much rare roast beef as my father would give me.  And I also loved to consume the crisp layer of fat on the roast. Heavily salt and peppered, it was among my favorite things to eat.  How my arteries survived the amazing amounts of beef fat I consumed before I left home, is likely some kind of medical miracle.  But once out of the house, a roast the size of the one consumed by my family, was relegated to major holidays, Christmas in particular.  This was nothing about eating healthier, it was much more a matter of economics.  It was just too rich for my blood.  Then along came this recipe from Grace Parisi.