Lithuanian Salad

While I am running unsuccessful bus tracking experiments, I will write down one more food experiment here. I am sure all Lithuanians know how to do Lithuanian salad, but the others don't. They don't even know it is Lithuanian salad, and for some strange reasons call it Russian salad. And for Lithuanians, there is a home-made mayonaise recipe, which did not work very well this time :)

This salad is a MUST for all family parties, as well as all other parties where people eat. And we eat in almost all parties :) The quantities give enough for a decent Lithuanian party (keeping in mind you have 10 more salads and hot dishes :D)

Ingredients

8 big boiled potatoes
4 boiled carrots
half glass of pickles
2 cans of grean peas (sometimes I used frozen, and also add beans)
4 hard-boiled eggs
small onion (spring onions are good as well)
salt, dills

mayonaise:
2 raw egg yolks
mustard (optional)
a spoon of lemon juice
half cup, or as much as you like olive oil
salt, pepper

Preparation

Cut all ingredients to small pieces and mix together. Potatoes and carros should not be overboiled, and some people say, that less carrots - more tasty salad, but don't reduce to 0:)

As supermarket mayonaise is out of scope of my healthy cooking vision, I decided to make it myself, with olive oil, and without hundreds of E-s. Scramble everything except oil together. Then, start VERY SLOWLY adding oil, drop by drop, and scrambling all the time. Your mayonaise should "emulsify" and become harder. At the end, you can add water, if it is too hard.

Experiences

Our traditional salad must be respected and not messed up with experiments :) So, the only chance for a mess is mayonaise.

I do not like mustard, so I did not use it. Also, I wanted to make it less fat, but I ended up having almost pure lemon juice, as I used the whole lemon. At the end, I had to heat it up to make it harder, but it still stayed extremely sour. Conclusion: limit yourself with a spoon of lemon, and sufficiently olive oil. Although, next time I will just make a simple oil-and-lemon souce.

Peruvian rice salad

I will start with a recipe which I did not have chance to mess up yet. It was my favourite dish in salsa dinner party. Thank's to DaliaV, now I know the ingredients. This one is for sure healthy, and easy for experimenting - it seems you can change almost any ingredients (at least try to keep rice and beans, otherwise it is a question how much peruvian and ricy it stays). The amounts are for a HUGE pot of salad, and proportios are very approximate.

Ingredients:

1 kg of non-sticky white rice
3 cans of different kinds of beans
1 can of sweat corn
1 can of grean peas
250g of cherry tomatoes (for my taste, could be more)
1 big avocado
1 big turkey breast (almost 1 kg)
1 paprika
A few red onions
Cucumber
Salt, peper, spices for turkey
Olive oil for turkey
Salad sauce (e.g., olive oil with lemon; optional)

Preparation:

Boil the rice and cool them down. Cut the turkey to small cubes, prepare with spices, and fry in small amount of olive oil. Cool it down as well. Cut onions to thin slices. Cut avodado, paprika and cucumber to small cubes, open the cans, and mix everything together. Add sauce if you want. That's it!

My experiences

I did not have them yet with cooking, but tasting was really pleasant :) That version was without onion, paprika, cucumber, little salt, and without any sauce. When I try out mine, I will let you know!