Starting a New Year Off Right

This past weekend was Rosh Hashanah. The Pedant and I were going to TP's parents for services and meals. TP's mom asked us to bring 2 salads, one for a meat meal and one for a dairy meal (since most of our family keeps kosher). Last week had been really busy, so while I was at work, TP researched salads that would be easy to make, delicious and fitting in with our religious obligations. We chose 2 orzo salads and they were both a hit.

First, the "meat" salad. It was a Bon Appetite recipe that we found on Epicurus. The Orzo, Green Bean, and Fennel salad with Dill Pesto was a HIT. The fennel gave it a really lovely flavor and worked really well with the dill pesto. It was fresh, colorful and fairly healthy - not too much pasta (which is one of the lovely things of orzo - a little goes a long way).

The "dairy" salad was from the monastery salad cookbook, which is always so good to us. We had made it before. It is orzo, olives, green peas, red pepper and red onion in a mayonnaise sauce with dijon mustard and lemon juice dressing. The problem we had the first time we made it was that the onion (1 red onion, thinly sliced) was SO sharp it rendered the salad inedible. All you tasted was ONION. (For leftovers, we added more mayo and mustard and an avocado and it was still ONION!) This time, we tasted the onion first and instead of using the entire thing in slices, we use 1/5 of it chopped very fine, which gave it the flavor but did not overpower it. (We also used more may this time since it wasn't just us eating the salad.) And it was perfect. Refreshing, sweet (the peas) and tangy (the onions - even just the few tablespoons!) it was a great lunch dish.