DIY salad bar

When I was working at the farm stand, I often found myself so inspired by the local veg, but having a difficult time making it into a meatless “main”. Simultaneously, my mom and I had a growing love for the salad bar at Whole Foods. Enter: DIY salad bar. A bunch of yummy little side salads that you pile onto your plate (and forget that you don’t like your foods to touch, because who cares at a salad bar?!) and together, they form a complete and delicious meal. If you, too, are feeling overwhelmed by the abundance of yum at your farmers market right now, I encourage you to pick up a bunch of things that look beautiful to you, and pull them together to make your own salad bar. Here are two places to start.

Not exactly veg inspiration, but this is what’s looking oh-so-beautiful to me at the market this week: the sweet and short time where all THREE berries are in season.

Cold & Crunchy Green Beans with Garlicky Pistachio Vinaigrette

The 411: Molly Baz’s recipe for green beans absolutely takes the cake in green bean land. Cook the green beans in heavily salted boiling water until they’re bright green, dunk them in a bath of ice water and toss them with chopped pistachios, garlic, parm, lemon, and olive oil. They’re snappy, flavorful, garlicky, cheesy, and just delicious.

Zoe’s Tips: This is a great recipe for putting your food processor to use to speed up the prep process. I’d recommend chopping your pistachios in the food processor, as well as grating your parm (refresher on how to do that lives here).

Taste-to-Time Ratio¹: 9:7 (unclear to me why the recipe says the green beans take 6 hours to prep, so know that this is not true!)

Charlie Bird's Farro Salad

The 411: Ina Garten’s recipe for farro salad has so much flavor, as the farro is cooked in apple cider, then mixed in with thinly sliced radishes, shaved parm, chopped pistachios (see a theme here?), cherry tomatoes and arugula.

Zoe’s Tips: It felt sacrilegious to me to be buying apple cider in the summer, but the friend who recommended this recipe told me it was a step that was not to be skipped. Don’t skip it! And if you’re prepping this salad in advance, wait and add the arugula just before serving.

Taste-to-Time Ratio: 8:7

One important programming note:

The original intent of this newsletter was to inspire you to get into the kitchen, and serve as a creative outlet for me. In order to keep my creative juices flowing, I’ve decided that, rather than sending this newsletter every week, I’m going to instead land in your inbox every other week (a fortnight, thank you, Taylor Swift). In between weeks, I always encourage you to go back to the IZK archives and cook some favorites.

1. The Taste-to-Time Ratio is a ratio that evaluates flavor on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the highest) with time on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the fastest). For example, our family favorite mac and cheese that requires 2 types of cheese, toasted baguette breadcrumbs, approximately all your kitchen pans, and 2 hours of baking is a 10:3 - insanely delicious, but not a quick weeknight meal.