The Best Salad I Ever Had

It's been a week of salads.  I guess it's that I'm so tired of winter, and in so being, craving fresh vegetables.  I can't explain it any other way.  Unfortunately, this also lines up with the dirth of fresh vegetables that are available locally, unless  you count all of the stuff being flown in from South America.  I guess we should be glad for it, or we'd all be stuck eating canned and frozen stuff.  Trying to escape the snow,  I had a great salad this weekend at a sweet  place in Cleveland.  Tommy's, in Coventry, just outside of Cleveland, is awesome.  A diner of sorts, mostly vegetarian, and all the way funky.  Fantastic milk shakes and fries, of course, which should define a great diner.  But beyond that, a highly creative, funkified menu...some hits and some misses to be sure, but you have to give them credit for inventive.  I tucked into mulligatawny soup and an iceberg salad with tuna and loved every bite (sorry that sounds so ordinary, but it hit the spot).  What made the salad over-the-top was  not just the raisins and sunflower seeds mixed in with the ice cold veggies, but the coup de gras, the Louie dressing.  I've not seen it offered before as a dressing choice, so I jumped right on it.  Good call.  I wish I lived right next door to Tommy's sometimes.

But I digress.  Even with the great salad I had this past weekend, it still barely holds a candle to The Best Salad I Ever Had.  You may remember this reference from an earlier post, and I've been holding out on you.  I truly intended to bestow this little gem to the world at large for Valentine's Day, just in time for you to share it with your sweetheart.  But I blew it.  Maybe you can surprise them with a lovely salad for St. Patti's day, which is right around the corner.  May I introduce you to Salad de Chevre Chaud (Hot Goat Cheese Salad).   The hardest part about making this salad is finding the right cheese.  So, my tactic is that when I stumble on the right cheese, I go home and make this salad.  Tah Dah.  Problem solved.  You won't find a log-shaped, gooey outer ringed, ashy middled, moderately aged, goat cheese on every street corner.  You will need to go to a specialty cheese shop for this one.  Ask for Bucheron.  Or something quite like it, as their are several possiblities that will work just fine.  I guess if you were desperate, you could stick with a log of fresh goat cheese, but you will lose a lot in the translation.

I found this salad when I was headed to Belgium last summer.   My friend Jenny, who formerly lived in Belgium, told me to look out for this classic dish.  I found it in the old town of Brugge, and promptly ordered up.  It was good, but not quite fantastic.  Surprisingly, a small cafe in the Netherlands changed my mind.  When their version arrived to the table, it was a jaw-dropper.  And it all had to do with the cheese, really.  After complimenting the chef, my challenge was to recreate it at home.  With the help of the cheese lady at Penn Mac (DearHeart), I was able to find a great goat cheese.  The rest is now history, and you are witness.  Buckle the seatbelt, you're gonna need it.

Salad de Chevre Chaud


high quality fresh mixed salad greens (red or green leaf lettuce, spring mix, butter lettuce, etc)
tomatoes
cucumbers
toasted walnuts or pecans
red onions (optional)
fresh made croutons (optional)
Simple olive oil and vinegar dressing (see below)


Bucheron goat cheese sliced into 1/2 inch thick rounds.
Honey, for drizzling


Lay out salad greens and veggies. Dress lightly with high end extra virgin olive oil.  Sprinkle with high quality sherry vinegar (or sub with champagne vinegar, or white wine vinegar).  Sprinke salad lightly with fresh ground salt and pepper.
Place cheese rounds on lightly sprayed aluminum foil.  Place in oven at 300 degrees for approx. 5 minutes.  Keep your eye on this.  You want it to start to slump, but not to melt, so watch carefully.
Scrape the goat cheese round onto the center of the salad. Lastly, drizzle both greens and cheese with a local raw honey (in the picture, I am using a local lavender honey).  Enjoy immensely.

Ahhhh, Snow Day!!!

Actually, make that 3.  In a row.  So the title should be more like, "Arrrrrgghhh, Snow Day".  I mean, one is really good.  Exciting.  Fun.  Necessary.  Restful.  Relaxing.  Recharging.

By the time we hit two, the walls start to close in.  The snow starts to get a little too white and a little too cold.  Shoveling gets a bit more strenuous. The world starts to feel very far away.

But today is day 3.  I have run out of "things I've been waiting for a snow day to cook".  I actually do have that category, by the way.  I start saving those recipes up when fall hits.  They are often more time consuming than a simple dinner usually allows.  Maybe more ambitious, maybe more risky.  Sometimes they even involve...... gasp.......YEAST.  ***Shhhhhh.......if truth be told, I'm still saving a yeast recipe, even after 3 snow days in a row and major cabin fever.  I even have collected all of the ingredients just in case I decide to brave it.  But I haven't gotten there yet.  


However, yesterday did involve making bread.  A flat bread, otherwise known as a Tortilla!!!  It was an exciting snow day for sure.  I've never done this before, and really, it wasn't all that complicated.  The end result felt a bit luxurious and indulgent.  Definitely worth the extra effort, but I can guarantee that will likely wait for another snow day (not that I'm asking for one at this point).   It is a little labor intensive for this gringo.   (By the way, I used the recipe I found on this site).

The other recipe I'd been waiting to make is a New Mexican Chile Verde.  Homemade, sultry, spicy - but with a low, smooth heat that warms your toes very nicely.  Just perfect on a cold, snowy day.  I can thank my Uncle Ralph for inspiring this dish.  Although it is a modified version than he provided me with, it was his suggestion that got it started.  What made it really come together was a stash of roasted poblano peppers that I had secreted away in the freezer after a glut of them arrived at the local farmer's market in the fall.  My mom and I bought a big basket of them, roasted them on the grill, then peeled away the charred skin and froze them in little bags.  A couple of those bags went right in this lovely stew, and the rest is photographic history.  Now to put another log on the fire.....

New Mexican Chile Verde


3 T rendered bacon fat  (from about 3 slices of bacon)
1 chopped onion
2 cloves minced garlic
1 tsp ancho chile powder
2 T cornmeal
1 tsp salt
2 lbs boneless pork, trimmed of fat and cut into 1/2 inch chunks
3-4 cups chicken stock (start with 3, add more as needed)
approx. 2 cups of chopped roasted poblano (from 10 fresh poblano peppers)
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 tsp ground cumin


Fry onion and garlic in bacon fat over medium high heat, until onion starts to brown in spots.  Mix chile powder, cornmeal and salt in separate bowl and toss pork cubes with this mixture.  Push aside onions in pan and add pork.  Saute, turning every few minutes, until pork is browned on all sides.  Add chicken stock and stir, scraping bottom of pan to release browned bits.  Stir in poblano peppers.  Lower heat to simmer, put on lid, and cook over low heat for about 2 hours, until pork is very tender.  Salt, pepper and cumin can be added to taste at end.  Serve with hot tortillas, cheese and sour cream.