I Want To Cook

Spring has officially sprung, and in the cooking world that means out with warm and hearty soups and in with cool and fresh salads.

So go ahead, conjure up the image of a wonderful salad.

Did something with lettuce come to mind — a side of ranch, perhaps? Very likely so.

Yet a salad needn’t suffer from being the same old wilted field of greens slathered in heavy buttermilk dressing.

In fact, one of my favorite salads doesn’t involve even a shred of lettuce.

No, this salad’s base is pasta, the same stuff we often drown in marinara sauce. Well, it makes a wonderful partner for salad, too, and I find it much more filling for a lunch than those of the lettuce variety.

Of course, pasta alone a salad does not make, and I’d shutter at the thought of using plain old macaroni that is only a shade lighter than cardboard. Enter tri-colored pasta, a much more colorful affair, accompanied by wonderful additions such as tomatoes, cheese, olives and onions, all splashed lightly in the easiest herb vinaigrette you’ll ever make.

Get ready to wow your friends and be the star of the next picnic with a healthful, flavorful salad that only costs a few dollars to make. All it takes is half an hour and a little shaking and chopping. Let’s get to it.

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After reading this, you may never buy a bottle of salsa again. That’s my hope, anyway.

Here’s the deal: Salsa is ridiculously easy to make. It’s also a lot cheaper to make yourself, and best of all tastes way better than that bottled stuff, even the ones not made in New York City.

By making your own salsa, you’ll also be able to tailor it exactly to your taste. Prefer it mild? It’s easy to tame. Rather have fire coming out of your ears? No problemo.

There are, of course, myriad varieties of salsas based on different peppers, but most of us know it as the tomato-based derivative that regularly battles ketchup as America’s most loved condiment, and that’s the type I’m going to show you how to make.

To make salsa in its most basic form, you’ll only need four main ingredients and a blender. Si, I’m serious.

Tomatoes, onions, jalapeño peppers and a squeeze of lime juice are the foundation, and once you start making your own salsa, you’ll have a taste-bud blast varying the quantities to your liking and then even adding a few extra herbs and spices. For now, let’s start with the basics.

Here’s how to make it happen.

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Seldom do you find a recipe with so few ingredients and such awesome results as the humble johnnycake. What’s a johnnycake, you ask?

Think of it as a pancake made with cornmeal instead of wheat flour. That’s the simplest way of putting it, but like any old recipe, the johnnycake has as many interpretations as it does spellings. (You might also see it as “Johnny cake,” “jonnycakes” or even “journey cake,” an apparent variation for when these were eaten by travelers long before their cross-country trips were in vehicles running on gasoline.)

In their purest form, johnnycakes are made with just four things: cornmeal, salt, sugar and water. That’s it.

Unlike muffins or even the good ol’ pancake, johnnycakes require no leavening agent — that’s a fancy way of saying stuff like baking powder or yeast, which makes baked goods puff and rise.

No, johnnycakes come alive with just a few ingredients mixed together and then cooked in a skillet — you don’t even need an oven, for crying out loud! What you’ll end up with is a delicious, hearty oval similar to cornbread that’s crunchy on the outside and moist within.

Now that I’ve hopefully sold you on the merits of johnnycakes, you might be wondering when to eat them. I think the more appropriate question is, When can’t you eat them? Johnnycakes have the unique characteristic of being great eaten as either a savory food or as a sweet one.

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