Enjoy It Raw While It Lasts

Soon the days of easy prep meals will be over, when you could walk into a kitchen, slice a tomato, wash some greens and be eating in 5 minutes.

Instead, we’ll be forced to wait an hour as thick winter squash bakes to tenderness in a hot oven. In winter it’s easier to wait for dinner, as the cold air doesn’t tempt for evening walks and late-night drinks on a rooftop.

But while it’s still lovely outside, and the season’s produce remains quick to prepare, remember that a raw salad is pretty rad.

Raw Summer Salad with Smoked Whitefish

This salad is ripe for flexibility, so throw in what you’ve got in the fridge. The taste of raw vegetables are much different than their cooked counterpart, so it’s fun to remember the snap of a bell pepper and the nose-tingle of a raw onion. With produce so fresh I didn’t even need a dressing, especially as the fatty whitefish salad complemented the clean vegetables.

I sliced up a yellow roma tomato, half a cucumber (peeled), half of a mutli-colored bell pepper and one tiny, tiny onion. I heavily seasoned all of the cut pieces with kosher salt and pepper and then quickly charred a corn tortilla on the burner. I lumped a few spoonfuls of smoked whitefish on top and called it finito.