#rice-salad

#rice-salad

Food trends have never moved faster than they do now. With the power of social media, and particularly short-form video, a food can go from a concept in a lone creator's mind to an absolute phenomenon in a matter of hours.

Greek salads are incredibly underrated, whether you're making them at home for yourself or ordering one from your favorite local Greek spot alongside your favorite Greek dishes. A Greek-style salad is usually packed with fresh ingredients - think lettuce, red onion, Kalamata olives, cucumbers, a basic vinaigrette - and topped with the one ingredient that makes Greek salad, well, Greek salad: feta cheese. It's fatty, milky, salty, and flavorful, elevating the entire mouthfeel and giving you reason to order yours with extra on top.

These Roll-Ups are held together with heavy cream and cream cheese mixed with crab and pistachios. It almost has a sweet flavor and is the perfect contrast with the savory ham. The filling adds tons of flavor and gives the roll-ups a little texture. A delicious bite-size appetizer that can be dressed up on a nice platter or served as a snack on a paper plate.

The shape and size of mini bell peppers make them the perfect vessel for this handheld party snack. The filling for these vegan poppers is sweet, crunchy and a little juicy, with a hint of spice from Tajin seasoning-an addictive Mexican-style blend of chili, salt, and dehydrated lime juice. You can assemble these poppers a day ahead of time and store them in the fridge until ready to serve.

There's something about those heads of butter lettuce at the store or spring farmer's market: the bright green always looks so enticing! I'm one of those people who can't resist buying them, even if I don't have a plan yet. So here's a simple recipe I created to make it taste amazing: my butter lettuce salad!

Soaked and blended, cashews become a stand-in for heavy cream, keeping stuffed shells, soups, pasta sauces, and desserts luxuriously dairy-free. Toasted and roughly chopped, they add crunch to salads, curries, stir-fries, and more. There are so many reasons to love cooking with these seeds-that's right, "cashew nut" is technically a misnomer, since they grow outside the fruit rather than inside a hard shell like true nuts.

Jasmine rice gets toasted until fragrant and lightly golden, then it's cooked with coconut milk to yield a supremely nutty base for the salad. Fluffy toasted rice meets crunchy slaw and seared tofu in my gingery, toasted rice salad. When you toast grains of rice until fragrant and golden, it takes on this nutty flavor that adds complexity to whatever you're making.

These Middle Eastern chickpea balls are so meaty and satisfying, I feel like I could eat them every day! One of my favorite ideas for how to eat them is this falafel salad. Make a batch of my baked falafel, then layer them with crunchy veggies and top with a creamy, zingy tahini dressing. You can also use purchased frozen falafel, or even repurpose takeout leftovers! This one is a massive hit with my family.

The star of the show, the meatballs, get seasoned with a mix of crumbled feta, smoked paprika, and cumin, resulting in a tender, flavorful meatball that tastes far more complex than its trim ingredient list might suggest. The rice underneath is just as fun. Speckled with salty pistachios and plump golden raisins, and perfumed by a cardamom pod and a stray cinnamon stick, it strikes the ideal ratio of salty to sweet, contrasting with the savory meatballs.

Dynamic duo beans and greens come together again in this pantry-friendly soup. Toasted garlic, tomato paste, and smoked paprika boost store-bought vegetable stock (use a base like Better Than Bouillon for superior potency) into a rich broth. Chickpeas and Swiss chard hang on to their texture in the brew, but use whichever white beans and hearty greens speak to you.

Because my mom mainly learned to cook from my grandma Tina, I grew up eating renditions of Tina's recipes quite frequently. A Tina classic that always made the weekly rotation at our house was cauliflower and rice. It was a very simple soupy, porridge-y mix of cauliflower and rice cooked down in chicken stock. There wasn't much to it, but it always provided a homey sense of comfort.

We're making a cherry tomato dip with some labneh. In this small pot, I'm covering my tomato, garlic, salt and herbs with olive oil. All right. We've got oil bubblage, so I'm going to kill the heat. Pop this lid on top. I want to make sure it's sealed really tightly. Put a pan underneath it to catch any potential drips.

Utica greens is a classic Italian American dish that goes by that name everywhere except Utica itself. Said to originate in Chesterfield Restaurant in central New York, Utica greens typically features escarole or another bitter green, hot pickled chiles, cheese, breadcrumbs, and a cured meat like prosciutto. This is a fairly faithful rendition of the original, with bushy broccoli rabe as the bitter green of choice.

Need an easy lunch or dinner idea? Try brown lentils! Alex and I love eating lentils for lunches or dinners, since they're full of plant-based protein and keep us full for hours afterwards. This brown lentils recipe results in perfectly seasoned, tender lentils. You can eat them as-is, or add them as a component to tacos, salads, and more. They're a simple protein that makes an easy vegan recipe or healthy dinner!