Weekly Dish

See, I knew it was a bad idea to post a menu with designated days. I never seem to stick to the chronology of a meal plan. Here’s how the switcheroo starts: I decided I wanted to have my friend Casey over for dinner one night this week because her husband is in New Orleans working on a movie for the month of May and she’s all alone. If she’d come last night, the paneed catfish would have been perfect food for company, and all would have been well. But, we didn’t catch up with one another until last night was out of the question, so at the last minute, I had to postpone the paneeing and opt for something else. Something quick too because I wanted it to be ready before the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy began (our guilty television pleasure).

Thursday’s meal slides into Monday’s spot, Monday gets bumped to Tuesday, and well, who knows what the rest of the week holds.

At any rate, the salad was simple and delicious–the pepper jelly added just the right sweet-spicy kick to a basic vinaigrette, and the combination of bacon, strawberries, and goat cheese is really hard to beat in my opinion.

I wanted to toast the goat cheese, you know, like they do in restaurants sometimes, where the top is all brown and crispy and the inside is perfectly creamy? Can someone please tell me how they do that? I tried to stick mine under the broiler (a bad idea), and I ended up with puddles, which I then had to reform into balls. They tasted good, but were not exactly what I had in mine. Next time, I’ll stick with the un-toasted cheese. And I’m sure there’s a more complicated version of Pepper Jelly Vinaigrette out there, but this simple one did the trick for this salad, and it comes together in a snap.

Strawberry Salad with Pepper Jelly Vinaigrette

For the dressing:
2 T. hot pepper jelly
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
1 t. coarse salt

Whisk the vinegar, jelly, and salt together in a bowl. Whisk in the oil, a drop at a time, until the dressing comes together.

Salad for 2:
Enough garden greens to cover two dinner plates
4 slices bacon, cooked and cut into slivers
Half pint of strawberries, washed and sliced
1/4 cup (2 ounces) goat cheese

Top the greens with the sliced strawberries, slivers of bacon, and mounds of goat cheese. Drizzle with vinaigrette and serve.

As strawberries, peppers, and greens are all rich in vitamins and anti-oxidants, this salad makes a great contribution to ARF Tuesdays at Sweetnicks.

Notes: Pepper jelly is a quintessential southern condiment. Made from the many varieties of hot peppers that grow down here, pepper jelly is served on everything from black-eyed peas to biscuits to ham. I’ve never been a huge black-eyed pea fan, but I love pepper jelly, so I was happy to find this alternate use for it. The jelly I used is made by one of the farmer’s wives at the Saturday market, but you can sometimes find commercially made pepper jelly in the condiment section of a grocery store (at least in this part of the world).

In other news: Today has been designated Save the Internet day by Chez Pim. You can read more about the threat to internet democracy here or on Pim’s site; she has a list of great resources. Instead of writing a long involved post about it, I plan to do some more research and write my congressman.

Posted: Tuesday, May 16th, 2006 at 2:08 pm Filed under: Main Dish, Weekly Menu, Salad. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.