Palatine cook puts her own spin on salads
If fear of failure makes you freeze up in the kitchen, worry no more.
The secret to stress-free cooking is salads, says Judy Pinson.
Nothing has to rise just right. No worrying about whether the dish is done in the middle or overdone at the edges.
"Just make sure you have good ingredients, use your imagination and voila! There it is," says Judy, a teachers' aide for 11 years at Kirk School, a center for special needs students in Palatine.
Salads were a favorite of her uncle who owned a fine dining restaurant in St. Louis when Judy was growing up. From age of 5 to 11 Judy and her parents lived above the restaurant on 20 acres in the country.
Dad took care of the grounds, mom waited tables and young Judy did odd jobs, including washing pots and pans.
"When my uncle went to bed at night he'd wake up and say, 'I thought of something in my sleep and I have to make it,'" says Judy. "He wouldn't eat breakfast, he would work for two hours and say, 'This is it!'"
"I'm like that."
After working all day Judy often shops after dinner when she's itching for something to do.
"When television is not good, I go out and get ingredients; cooking is fun."
Judy may stay up until midnight inventing a new salad, adding last-minute items in the morning just before packing it up to share with co-workers or office mates of Jim, her husband.
Speaking of Jim, ahem, he won't eat salads, hence the sharing.
"I'm always begging someone to come over and eat them," says Judy.
The Pinsons moved to Palatine in the late 1960s. Judy worked for a pasta restaurant and caterer in Barrington for eight years, learning how to please discerning palates of moneyed clients.
Influenced by that and her uncle, Judy became a stickler for choosing the finest, seasonal ingredients.
"I'm goofy with that," she says. "Literally I will go to four stores to get the right something. Is that nuts with the price of gas?"
Maybe. But when the results are good who can complain?
Judy puts together salads in her mind based on what's fresh at the market. Pasta often is a key ingredient, as in two of the three recipes she shares this week.
Rotini adds heft to a BLT Chicken Club Salad; the mayo-based dressing is enriched with bacon drippings.
Bow-tie pasta works with feta and olives in a Greek salad simplified with store-bought dressing. Of course you could add your own red-wine vinaigrette.
Tarragon flavors a sour cream and mayonnaise dressing for chicken salad with fresh vegetables and almonds.
Toss them together as is, or spin them any direction you like.
Just don't worry about it.
<div class="infoBox"> <h1>Make it yourself</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Recipes</h2> <ul class="links"> <li><a href="/story/?id=228352">Bowtie Greek pasta salad </a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=228353">Tarragon chicken salad </a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=228354">BLT chicken salad </a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>