Dinner Salad

Sometimes I don't remember to take the photo until it's too late. Which is a good sign since it means we couldn't stop eating.

Doesn't it look like it was good?

Back in my bachelorette days I still cooked, but more in a subsistence way. My favorite thing to make was a dinner salad--a green salad topped with some kind of hot meat. And truthfully, it's still really damn good and simple and healthy. I made this one with chicken, but any thing would work.

Here's the general framework:

1. Hot meat (chicken, flank steak, salmon, bacon, sausage)
2. Salad base (mixed greens or my favorite--arugula)
3. Dressing (you could adapt this depending on the other ingredients)
4. Cheese (goat cheese is my favorite, feta, blue cheese, or parmigiano reggiano all also work well)
5. Fresh fruit (this adds a brightness....green apple slice thin, ripe pear, grapefruit, persimmon)
6. Other toppings: fresh herbs, chopped roasted nuts

I'll give you the recipe for the one I made the other night, but I'm telling you. Be creative.

Dinner Salad

2 breasts chicken
spice rub (your choice)
arugula
butter lettuce
olive oil (the good stuff)
balsamic vinegar (even more important that it be the good stuff! Use aged balsamic. You need it for this.)
honey mustard
salt and pepper
feta cheese
fresh grapefruit segments (for directions see here)


Wash greens very well, and spin dry, then dry with paper towels. Put in a salad bowl.

Make dressing, mixing 1/3 vinegar to 2/3 olive oil in a small bowl (really you can eyeball this, you can always keep tasting and add one or the other as needed). Mix in 1 tsp honey mustard, and whisk to blend.

Rub chicken breasts with spice rub. Heat up a pan on the stove and brown a few minutes on each side until golden. Put in low oven (200 degrees) and cook until interior temperature is 160. Cut up into small slices.

Dress salad with dressing and mix to taste (only use as much dressing as you need to just coat the leaves, it's less than you think. Put remaining dressing in small bowl and put in chicken to coat.

Put dressed salad on a plate, top with hot meat that's been coated with the dressing. Top with feta cheese crumbles and surround with grapefruit segments. Salt and pepper to taste.

Chicken salad with cilantro and grapefruit

Another saturday, another afternoon waking up starving. Our fridge is full of food we can't eat these days. Cookie dough. The makings for my christmas pork and pear stew. Umeboshi.

Then I spied that rotisserie chicken from the other night. I started pulling things out of the fridge. Cilantro. Grapefruit. A hachiya persimmon.

The roasted chicken has an earthiness that's set off by the balsamic, and made fresher with the cilantro and grapefruit. The persimmon adds a slight cinnamon taste with apricot texture and vivid color.

Beautiful.


Chicken Salad with Cilantro and Grapefruit

~1 cup chopped roasted chicken, roughly chopped
1/4 cup olive oil
2 T balsamic
1/2 tsp honey mustard
salt
pepper
a few T chopped cilantro, roughly minced
Pink grapefruit, peeled, pithed and cut into segments (see pictures here for how to), then chopped into 1/2 inch pieces


Mix olive oil with balsamic and mustard and whisk. Adjust to taste (will depend on how strong your mustard or balsamic are....this will be worlds better with some top notch olive oil and balsamic). Mix with chopped chicken. Add in grapefruit and cilantro. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve (can put chopped persimmon on the side if you like).

Breakaway Chicken

Every few months I break down and buy a new cookbook. It's a bad habit (as evidenced by my groaning bookshelves) but I can't help myself. I have this idea that just around the corner is some new recipe that will change the way I cook. It's what makes cooking fun.

"The Breakaway Cook" is my new obsession. It's written by Eric Gowers who spent several years in Japan and plucked up all these flavors like yuzu, umeboshi and maccha.....then added them to western recipes. The results are incredibly simple, most are 4-5 ingredients, and yet profoundly original.

* Persimmon salad with ginger, maple syrup and mint
* Galangal-brown sugar ice cream
* Mashed potatoes with miso gravy
* Spicy shrimp with pomegrante molasses

Last night I decided to make star anise chicken.

First had to stop at Uwajimaya to buy some of this crazy stuff that he talks about in the book. I found some yuzu peel, but couldn't bring myself to buy the paste as it was a funky green color. Wandered around aimlessly looking for pomegrante molasses. Not in the gigantic aisle of sauces (after I tried to read every japanese label). Not near the plain old "brer rabbit" molasses. I asked one of the employees and he looked sheepish and then I realized he didn't speak english. I held up a pomegrante hopefully. We finally found it catty corner from the molasses.

This stuff ROCKS. Sweet and sour all in one bite, like tamarind but better.

Then home with the star anise and chicken thighs. Ground up the star anise and coated the thighs with olive oil, salt, pepper and the anise. Heavy on the anise (per his instructions). Threw the whole thing in a 400 degree oven with some quartered meyer lemon. Also added a few fingerling potatoes. Cooked it for 40 minutes, turning once.



Not bad. I was worried the star anise would be too much, but Chris didn't blink an eye. "This is your best dinner yet!" He said, licking his fingers. Of course he always says that.

Made some delicata squash using what we had left over from this summer's CSA and it turned out beautifully. A little butter and just the faintest sprinkle of brown sugar. No other way to describe the flavor except "delicate."




And then a salad, my own invention. Fennel, persimmon and pomegrante with an orange/lemon vinegarette. Kind of amazing. The Fuyu persimmons have this subtle flavor, like an apricot but with a touch of spiciness. And the pomegrante pops in your mouth.


Spicy Star Anise Chicken (From "Breakaway Cook," by Eric Gowers)

15 boneless chicken thighs (with skin)
1 T olive oil
pepper & salt
6T ground star anise
1 lemon, preferably meyer

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Line baking sheet with foil. Coat both sides of chicken with olive oil, then sprinkle liberally with salt, pepper and anise. Quarter the lemon and spread on the pan with the chicken. Cook 30 minutes, flip and cook 30 minutes more or until done (180 degrees).

Roasted Delicata Squash

2-3 delicata squash (can use other varietals, but these are pretty cool)
butter
salt
brown sugar

Halve squash and remove seeds. Place in a roasting pan with ~1/2 inch of water. Sprinkle with salt and place small amounts butter in each squash half, then lightly sprinkle with brown sugar.
Cook at 350 degrees x 1 hour or until done (the temperature's pretty flexible, just check on them if you use a higher or lower temperature).

Fennel, persimmon and pomegrante salad

1 bulb fennel, sliced thinly (mandoline works great)
1 fuyu persimmon, firm, cut into thin strips
1 pomegrante, broken into seeds
1/2 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
2 T olive oil
Squeeze of lemon
salt&pepper

Mix orange juice, olive oil and lemon with salt and pepper. Taste and see if you want more oil or more lemon, it's to your taste (I confess that I don't really measure these things as I think it's better to just mix and add until it tastes right). Add fennel and mix. Then add persimmon and pomegrante. Chill before serving.

Cheating with PCC

Another tuesday night, another dinner with Chris. Tonight I just couldn't do it. So I decided on rotisserie chicken from PCC. I mean hell, it's damn good. No nitrates.

But I had to make something.

I threw together some mashed potatoes, these still-covered-with-dirt little guys that have been sitting in our cellar from Helsing Juntion. I love the way our masher makes these twisty doodles when you mash, it makes me want to keep mashing.

I added some caramelized shallots along with the salt and pepper. Damn good.



Picked up a chicken.
And some arugula.And of course some wine.Okay so really that bottle was almost gone, I just drank a half glass. But it was so good. Very slightly buttery and yet with this cleanness, like a wooded stream. From Garagiste (very cool, this wine email list...garagistewine.com)


And now it becomes a meal! I did the simple lemon juice + olive oil dressing for the arugula with a little reggiano. And whipped together some gravy using wine and the drippings from the chicken. Who knew you could make gravy from a grocery store rotisserie chicken?

Rock rock on.