The Bowdoin Gourmet

I couldn’t decide what to put in my salad, so I just included everything that looked tasty:

The Thorne dining hall has a particularly bountiful salad bar. Some of my favorites from among the offerings are the green peas and the ‘3 bean salad’ of marinated chickpeas, kidney beans, and string beans. These items might not be typical for salads, but I can assure you that they make for a delicious combination. A final thought: the crumbled feta cheese pairs very well with the ‘light caesar’ dressing.

I continue to enjoy the delicious variety of specialty salads prepared at both Moulton and Throne.  This “fruity rice salad” is yet another example:

Its loaded with an eclectic variety of fruit including tomatoes, Granny Smith apples, dried cherries, and slices of some sort of diminutive citrus fruit. You might suspect that the sweet fruit and the savory rice would make for awkward taste,  but I can assure that, to the contrary, the two blend together to form surprisingly tasty salad.

The beautiful colors in this Asian noodle salad caught my eye as soon as I stepped in the dining hall.  The bright red tomatoes, the fresh broccoli florets, and the sprinkling of white and black sesame seeds made for a truly artful dish.  Best of all, it tasted as good as it looks.

In all honesty, this grilled veggie sandwich tasted better than most beef burgers that I’ve eaten.  The combination of veggies gave it a deep, complex flavor that I really enjoyed.

I thought it would pretty hard to make a dish based on spaghetti and tofu taste good, but the Moulton cooks did it today.  The red peppers were nice, but I think that the key was the roasted sesame oil that flavored the whole dish.

The “spinach love salad”; a savory juxtaposition of rice, spinach, celery, onion, raisins, and little chow mien bits(!):

And the not-to-be-outdone “Armenian bulgar salad”; light, fresh, and honest to its simple ingredients:

Bowdoin does a great job providing a variety of healthy vegetarian options. For example, yesterday at Thorne I had:

This was a veggie soft taco with a sauteed onion, black bean, and corn filling, topped with fresh lettuce and tomatoes, a sprinkling of cheese, some spicy salsa, and a rich, cooling dollop of guacamole. It definitely tasted as good as it looks.

I was honestly surprised by this “eggplant Parmesan” dish – I didn’t know that anyone, even Bowdoin, could make eggplant so delicious. It was even better than the chicken Parmesan that they often serve here, which just goes to show how accommodating the college’s food is of vegetarians.

I saw this beautiful salad in Moulton today and I had to try it. It tasted as good as it looks; I especially liked the substantial texture of the wheat berries, the crisp peas, and the accents provided by the green onions and red peppers.
While I liked that the salad was very light and honest to its ingredients, I’d also like to try it tossed with a more substantial dressing. If the rather disparate flavors of the salad got to mellow for a while in the oil and acid of a dressing, the salad would probably taste even better.

Apparently it can.

This first dish is a tofu and vegetable ravioli. This is the single best use of tofu that I have ever come across, beating even my much-loved miso soup. Who would have guessed, but the saltiness, texture, and flavor of tofu are all actually very similar to ricotta cheese, the main filling in traditional ravioli. In addition to the tofu filling, I really enjoyed all of the colorful vegetables that were included in the sauce.

Look at this “southwestern mesquite salad” – ow could that not taste good? The crunchiness of the celery and carrots, the sweetness of the corn and peppers, the richness of the olives, and the meatiness of the tofu, all tossed in a savory and spicy dressing. The tofu doesn’t substitute as well for chicken here as it did for ricotta in the ravioli dish, but it was nonetheless very tasty.

The dish is essentially curried vegetables baked in flaky wrapping:

It tasted good – pastry dough tends to do that to a dish. I would have liked to see more vegetables in the filling; for example, peas would have given the turnover some contrasting color and fresher flavor.

I’m really busy here at Bowdoin with exams and final projects coming up, so I’ve been getting quick meals from the Polar Express quite often lately. Today I got a classic dish that Bowdoin makes all the time: penne pasta with vegetables.

I especially liked the big chunks of tomatoes mixed in with the pasta. The asparagus was a nice thought but there were only a few pieces and they were pretty badly overcooked. Putting that minor quibble aside, I was very happy with my express lunch.

Yet another unique and delicious creation from Bowdoin’s salad bar. The green beans, red peppers, and onions all contrast beautifully in flavor, texture, and color. This is exactly the kind of healthy and tasty dish that makes our salad bar so great.

I often get kidney beans, black beans, and chickpeas individually at the salad bar, so tonight I was excited to see them prepared together in a mixed bean salad.

The beans themselves were very good, but my favorite part of the salad was actually the little pieces of celery. Their crisp, bright, fresh flavor contrasted perfectly with the meaty beans and helped to lighten up what would otherwise have been too heavy a salad. Bowdoin’s chefs have shown again they really know what they’re doing.