A New Project!

I have a new project!  Check out A Guy and His Oven (not exactly creative, but going for continuity) if you need something manlier than grilling.  Meanwhile, back to grilling.

Well, not exactly.  This last weekend I smoked a couple of chickens for a BBQ, and remembered that I had come across a salad recipe that used leftover chicken a while back, and after already having the leftovers once, I needed something different.  With that in mind, I prepared the Chicken and Snow Pea Salad With Spicy Peanut Dressing on page 362.

As you can see, I don't have the usual compilation of ingredients as the first picture.  To make a long story short, I deleted it on accident.  I'm sure that at this point in time, you find yourself already over it.  So, you have to boil the snow peas for a minute, and then (as you see below) shock them in ice water.  This makes them nice and crispy.

I then shredded the leftover chicken.

The rest of the salad was prepped as well.  It contained the snow peas, red bell pepper, the chicken, cucumbers, and green onions.

The dressing was obviously peanut butter based, but also contained chicken stock (to help thin it out), red wine vinegar, sesame oil, and chile oil.

A quick visit from Mr. Immersion Blender helped pull the dressing together.

Sesame seeds were toasted for five minutes before being added to the salad, and while not pictured, some fresh cilantro was also finely chopped and added to the salad.

I tossed everything together, and I had a salad!

I liked this salad for two reasons.  First, it was a complete departure from my usual salads.  Second, it provided an outlet for leftover chicken that I had clearly become tired of and needed something new with which to do.  Having said that, the peanut dressing is very flavorful and tasty, but misappropriated in this salad.  It honestly belongs with a noodle dish.  In fact, with the addition of some fish sauce, it would make a nice Pad Thai dressing.  Meanwhile, I will file this recipe under the category of "Good, Happy I Made It, But Probably Won't Ever Make Again."

189 recipes complete

184 recipes to go!

Halfway Done!!!!!!!

Seven more days to vote on what I should do next!

Although I cannot come up with a good reason why, it seems fitting that I breach the 50% mark on the Fourth of July.  I'm glad that it happened on a holiday and that I could celebrate it with red meat.  Very little is more American than a grill out with hamburgers and hot dogs, so The Bride and I invited a few family members over and fired up the grill.  As I had a bunch of heirloom tomatoes ready for consumption, I started with the Fresh Tomato Salsa on page 49 as an appetizer.

The recipe calls for one and a half cups of chopped tomato, so I set my adjustable measuring cup to that mark and began processing the tomatoes.

I cored the tomatoes, squeezed out excess juice and seeds, and diced the flesh.  I made sure to use a little of each type of my heirlooms.

There's not too much more to say...it's salsa.  Everything got chopped up and mixed together.

The Bride and I figured that burgers would be a simple way to go with the family, as they tend to eat less eccentrically than we do.  There were only a couple of burger recipes left, and the closest one to being "American" was The Ultimate Bacon-Mushroom Cheeseburger on page 90.  

When working with portabellas, the first thing to do is to rock the stem back and forth until it breaks off.

Those gills turn black and mushy when cooked, and can visually wreck a meal, so it is best to remove them.  I like to use the side of a spoon to scrape them off the underside.

Instead of just using salt and pepper to season the burger, I had some leftover Holy Smoke Seasoning from Colonel De Ray's at Findlay which also had onion and garlic.  How could that be bad for the burger?

I cooked the bacon and saved the grease to oil the caps for the grill.  This seemed very American to me.

Three of the burgers I made as prescribed, but the other two I stuffed with cheese to create an inside-out burger.  What can I say, I was bored.

The burgers and caps cook for the same amount of time, which was convenient.  Everything looked great!

Burger, bacon, mushroom, cheese...awesome!  

The salsa was good, but needed more heat.  To be honest, I completely omitted the jalapeno from the recipe as my in-laws tend to be very plain about their food.  Thus, I cannot accurately describe what was intended.  Otherwise, it seemed like pretty good salsa.  The freshness of the tomatoes makes a big difference, and by using four types of tomatoes I had a very broad flavor spectrum.  

The burger was highly recommendable.  I liked the inside-out technique as it added an extra layer to the variety of textures this burger contains.  The bacon was crispy, the portabella was spongy, the burger was crunchy on the outside, chewy underneath, and filled with gooey cheese.  The garlic and onion were nice additions, and I also threw on an onion for good measure.  Go America!

188 recipes complete

185 recipes to go!