Name: Easy Caesar Dressing
Prep time: 10 min
Yield: 12 servings
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon anchovy paste (or 3-4 flat or rolled anchovy fillets); 2 cloves garlic; 1 teaspoon dijon mustard; 1/3 cup red wine vinegar; juice of 1/2 lemon; 2/3 cups neutral-flavored oil (I use grapeseed, but canola, safflower, or vegetable oil will work as well); salt and pepper (to taste)

Easy Caesar Dressing (No-Egg Recipe) + Video

September 21, 2017

This easy Caesar dressing is easy to make in your blender or food processor and requires no eggs, so it lasts a long time. And it’s SO tasty! Scroll down for video.

Essentially, Caesar salad came into my life when Philip Haymaker came into my life. Well, when he came into my life full-time, anyway (since we knew each other for four years before we started dating).

I remember what he ordered on our first date: angel hair pasta with tomato-basil sauce and a Caesar salad. That was on a Tuesday night. We went out again on Friday…I don’t remember what entrée he ordered, but I remember this: he ordered a Caesar salad. And almost ever restaurant salad that he has ordered in the last fourteen and a half (!) years has been the same.

I don’t mean to imply that I had never encountered (or eaten) a Caesar salad before that first date. I recall a Caesar salad at a Red Lobster in California when I was visiting my aunt the summer before eighth grade. I also remember telling my mom about it and her saying, “Do you like Caesar salad?” in a shocked sort of way. It’s just that my family didn’t eat too many Caesar salads back then….most of our salads were of the iceberg variety, with tomatoes and maybe some green peppers or avocado mixed in, usually with a creamy ranch or blue cheese dressing. It’s actually funny to think about that now because my mom and my sister are pretty much completely enamored with Caesar salad these days and the four of us threaten each other with steak knives to see who’s going to get the last of the salad (not really but almost).

Caesar dressing is an enigma of sorts and there are all types of stories about what Caesar salad is supposed to be. You know what I say? Caesar salad is supposed to be good. I don’t think when Caesar Cardini threw together the first Caesar salad in his Tijuana hotel kitchen that he swore then and there under his breath to seek revenge on anyone that dared to change the recipe.

So here’s how it goes…you can put eggs in….or leave them out. You can use anchovies, or maybe you prefer paste (I do) or maybe you’d rather just use Worcestershire sauce (which contains anchovies)? Okay. Maybe you like your cheese shredded, or maybe you like it grated. Whatevs. Do you like to rub the bowl with garlic or do you like to crush the garlic into your dressing? Have it your way. Would you rather make a pourable dressing or would you rather assemble the salad in the bowl then make the dressing right there on the lettuce (as I did in this post)? The world is your oyster.

I’ve been doing it that way for a while: lettuce in the bowl, then egg yolks, garlic, cheese, lemon juice/vinegar, olive oil, and cheese plus croutons. I like it that way….but here’s what I don’t like: one-day salad. Make that one-hour salad. We all know that once you dress lettuce it’s done for….so I was happy when my aunt gave me her easy Caesar dressing recipe (which I used to have before the blog but lost). It doesn’t contain eggs so it’s got a relatively long shelf-life (I’ve kept it for up to four days in my fridge) and it emulsifies beautifully if you blend it just fast enough, and you just use what you need.

As you can see, this is not a very “traditional” salad I’ve photographed for you here….I didn’t have bread to make croutons so I crushed up some Stacy’s Simply Naked pita chips. They were perfect. And while I prefer shredded cheese on my salads because it coats the leaves oh so perfectly, cheese (Grana Padano in this case but usually Parmigiano Reggiano) shaved with a vegetable peeler makes a nicer visual impact for photos. My easy Caesar dressing pairs perfectly with this fresh salad.

This easy Caesar dressing is quick enough that you can keep it in the fridge all the time. Which you’ll want to do.

Mary
2 tablespoons
Easy Caesar Dressing
10 minPrep Time:
10 minTotal Time:

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Ingredients
1 tablespoon anchovy paste (or 3-4 flat or rolled anchovy fillets)
2 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
juice of 1/2 lemon
2/3 cups neutral-flavored oil (I use grapeseed, but canola, safflower, or vegetable oil will work as well)
salt and pepper (to taste)
Instructions
Press the garlic through a garlic press or grate on a Microplane or fine grater. Place in a food processor or blender or a container you can fit your immersion blender into (like my homemade mayonnaise, a pint-sized Mason jar works well here) along with all of the other ingredients except the oil and vinegar.
Mix well, carefully breaking up/mashing the anchovy fillets if you are using them.
Add the oil and vinegar and blend on the highest speed that your machine allows until completely smooth and emulsified. Use a leaf of the lettuce you will be using to make your salad to taste; adjust seasonings. Store in the refrigerator.
Recipe Type: salads, dressings
7.6.4
433
http://chattavore.com/easy-caesar-dressing/

Shared on Meal Plan Monday on Southern Plate.

Cobb Salad Meal Prep

March 31, 2017

This Cobb salad meal prep tutorial will help you prep ingredients for a week’s worth of delicious salads in an hour or less, including homemade dressing!

What’s your lunch situation? Mine is pretty abysmal, I have to admit. And that’s really sad, because you guys, I’m a food blogger. Everything I eat is supposed to be delicious, gourmet, and totally Instagrammable, right? This is not the case.

What’s funny is that when I was a teacher, I used to think that people who worked outside of schools pretty much had it made. I mean, I always ate lunch with my kids (not required, but preschool teachers know this is best practice) so lunch usually meant scarfing whatever I was eating while simultaneously opening yogurt pouches and milk cartons, refereeing arguments, and making sure everyone stayed in their seat. Oh, wait, don’t forget the time I was told I was a terrible human being for not sharing my cheese dip with a kid from another class because he “liked cheese dip too” and “adults are supposed to share their food with kids”. Never mind that he had a full lunch in front of him and I had two tablespoons of cheese dip. Anyway…

Fast forward to today. There are many great things about my job, but the lunch arrangement is not one of them. I never thought that eating at a table would feel like a treat. Seriously. There are weeks that it doesn’t happen at all. I frequently eat in my car…it’s been a while since I’ve had to eat while driving, but there was definitely a period of time when everything had to be able to be consumed with one hand and no utensils. I have an office, but it is very rare that I’m there at lunch time (or at all). I’ve started forcing myself to frequently pack a lunch that requires utensils so I am forced to at least eat my lunch while not driving. Microwave access is definitely an issue, so it’s either got to be cold or able to go into a Thermos unless I know that I’ll be able to use a microwave, which is rare.

Plus, I’m terrible at packing my lunch. I do best when I plan ahead (big surprise there). I am not a person who can eat a PB&J every single day, but if I plan something really good I can eat it for a week without feeling like I’m gonna lose my mind. Turkey & cheese croissants, soup in a Thermos, and a really good salad are some of my faves. I’ve decided to really make an effort to spend the time prepping everything on Sundays so I don’t have to stress over it on weeknights.

One thing…I don’t really like the whole “put everything in the containers on Sunday night and just grab them as you need them” idea, at least not for salads. There’s too much danger of things getting soggy or rotty and I’m not down with that. So, I prep everything ahead like a little mini salad bar and then assemble the salad the night before so I can pick out any unsavory bits.

This Cobb salad is super simple. It took me about an hour from start to finish, including making the dressing, roasting the chickpeas, boiling the eggs, and chopping the lettuce, cheese, and cucumbers. Cobb salad usually has chicken, but I really, really dislike chicken that’s been sitting in the fridge, so I subbed in the crispy roasted chickpeas. Also, Cobb salad is traditionally served with a vinaigrette, but I made my own ranch using the recipe from the BTC Old-Fashioned Grocery cookbook (affiliate link)(and here’s my own ranch dressing recipe). Everything gets its own container and I assemble it in my Systema salad container the night before. This salad will get me through the week, and I’ll start over again next Sunday!

Shared on Weekend Potluck on The Country Cook!

Recommended for this recipe:

Mary

Yield: 5 salads

Cobb Salad Meal Prep

30 minPrep Time:

30 minTotal Time:

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Ingredients

2-3 hearts of romaine
1 cucumber, seeded and diced
1 package grape tomatoes
2 avocados
5 ounces cheddar cheese, cubed, or crumbled blue cheese
5 strips bacon, cooked
5 eggs, boiled
your choice of dressing
your choice of crunchy toppings - I used roasted chickpeas, sesame sticks, and roasted, salted pistachios

Instructions

Chop the romaine into bite-sized pieces. Place in a salad spinner and fill with water then drain and spin, or place in a colander and rinse thoroughly then shake the colander. Spread the lettuce down the center of a strip of 4 or 5 paper towels then roll the lettuce up. Place the lettuce in a gallon-sized zipper bag and refrigerate.
Store the cucumbers in a covered bowl. Store the cheese in a sandwich bag or a covered bowl. Store the bacon in whole strips in a sandwich bag and the eggs in an egg carton, unpeeled.
To assemble the salad, place a few handfuls of lettuce (about 1 1/2 to 2 cups), a couple of spoonfuls of cucumber, 3 or 4 tomatoes, 1/4 avocado (I leave it in the peel then just scoop it out before I eat), and a diced egg in a covered bowl. In a separate container (or a separate section of a salad container), place a piece of bacon, chopped, an ounce (about 1/4 cup) of cheese, your choice of crunchy toppings, and a small container of dressing. Refrigerate until ready to serve or carry in a bag with ice packs.

Recipe Type: main dishes, salads, lunch

Notes

You can add chopped chicken, turkey, or ham to this salad if you would like.

http://chattavore.com/cobb-salad-meal-prep/

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Creamy Honey Lime Dressing with Ginger

August 1, 2016

This honey lime dressing is sweet and creamy with a spicy hit of ginger (completely optional!). It’s perfect for your summer (or winter) salads!

Writing a food blog is an interesting dichotomy. My life is filled with food – cookbooks, cooking magazines, blogs, lists of recipes to make, food photos, and all the rich food that you could ever hope to try. Problem is that I think about food so much that a lot of times when it comes time to make the food I can’t bring myself to. We end up eating way too much indulgent food because that’s what we have around, and my mindful eating is shot (eating cuz you ate is strong around here).

One of my constant goals is to fit more fruits and vegetables into our diet. As much as I would love to be one of those organized ladies who keeps perfectly chopped up salad greens (I even have a tutorial about that), fruits, and other tasty veggies stored flawlessly in my fridge, ready to be grabbed at a moment’s notice, the reality is quite the opposite. I love fruits and vegetables – salad especially – but even when I take the time to pre-prep my salad greens I usually end up forgetting about them. Getting time to prep them is a rare occurrence; I work two jobs (ahem, behavior analyst and blogger) in addition to trying to enjoy my family, so I try to carve out time that I’m not busy each week. Heck, after making bread by hand for a good long while then buying bakery loaves for the past year, I caved this week and bought a bread maker. I am not too proud to use a machine.

One of the things that helps me remember to eat my greens is having some sort of fabulous dressing in the fridge. Homemade ranch and green goddess are two of my go-tos, but during the summer I want something to go with fruity salads. To me, spinach, arugula, and tender mixed greens pair perfectly with berries and peaches, and the whole combination needs a sweet and light dressing to complement it. Enter this creamy honey lime dressing. I didn’t want my honey lime dressing to be a vinaigrette; as much as I love vinaigrettes, sometimes I think the acid from the vinegar is a little much, and I wanted a creamy, not oil-based, dressing.

Turns out that Greek yogurt is a perfect base for a creamy honey lime dressing. I whisked together Greek yogurt, honey, lime zest and juice, a splash of apple cider vinegar, and a hit of fresh ginger to make this sweet, tangy, and slightly spicy dressing. It is the perfect foil for the earthy flavor of the spinach in this salad (and would perfectly complement a plate of bitter, spicy arugula) and pairs deliciously with the sweet summer fruit. If you don’t want the spice, you could leave out the ginger, but honestly, it’s very understated (Philip would have liked more and I thought it was just perfect).

Try this creamy honey lime dressing on your fresh summery salads!

Mary

Yield: 1 1/4 cups dressing

Creamy Honey Lime Dressing with Ginger

5 minPrep Time:

5 minTotal Time:

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Ingredients

1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt (I used Chobani whole milk Greek yogurt)
1/2 cup honey
zest and juice of 1 lime (be sure to zest it before juicing it!)
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger (about a 2-inch piece, peeled) (optional)

Instructions

Combine all ingredients in a blender and blend until well-combined, or whisk together in a small bowl or jar. Store in a lidded bowl or jar in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

Recipe Type: salad, dressings

http://chattavore.com/creamy-honey-lime-dressing-with-ginger/

This honey lime dressing is sweet and creamy with a spicy hit of ginger (completely optional!). It's perfect for your summer (or winter) salads! | recipe from Chattavore.com

Chop Chop Salad with Creamy Kalamata Dressing

April 25, 2016

Chop chop salad with creamy kalamata dressing is my version of the house salad from Crust Pizza, one of my very favorite restaurant salads.

Chopped salads were a big trend a few years ago. Honestly, I can’t really tell you what sets “chopped” salads apart from “regular salads, because essentially all of the salads that I make are chopped salads. I guess the word “chopped” just refers to having a bunch of ingredients in addition to whatever green you are using that are chopped up with a knife. Am I right or am I wrong? Someone help me here.

I remember when I was a teenager reading somewhere that you shouldn’t use a knife to chop lettuce because it would cause the cut edges to turn brown. While that’s true (it has something to do with how the cutting action damages the cells of the lettuce), unless you are going to serve the lettuce a few days later and/or you are really concerned about a little bit of browning, who cares? Personally, I am not down to tear up a huge pile of lettuce. I have better things to do with my time, and I imagine that you guys do too. I’ll use my knife, thank you.

One of my favorite pizza places in town is Crust Pizza (home of the cracker-thin crust…I thought I loved Pizza Hut’s thin crust the best until I ate at Crust). When you go there for their lunch buffet, you get a salad to go with your pizza. Their house salad is one of the best chopped salads I’ve ever eaten, with iceberg lettuce, romaine, spinach, cucumbers, mushrooms, tomatoes, red onion (you guys know I pick that out), garbanzo beans, sunflower seeds, and mozzarella cheese. I always order mine with their creamy kalamata dressing, which I liked long before I had my olive awakening last year. I guess it helped to ease me in. That salad…that salad is art. For a house salad, it’s pretty huge and served in a cute stainless steel bowl (unfortunately I don’t have one that size).

My chop chop salad is my ode to that amazing salad. I tossed together all of the ingredients except, of course, the onions, and the mushrooms because Philip didn’t realize that cremini mushrooms are the same as baby bellas (that’s my fault because I thought about that and forgot to tell him that they were the same thing…I couldn’t remember how Publix labels their creminis. They label them as baby bellas. Oops. I threw in some kalamata olives on top too, because why not?

To top my chop chop salad, I of course whizzed up a creamy kalamata dressing. All of the recipes I found when I was researching kalamata dressing online were vinaigrettes and I WANTED A CREAMY DRESSING, so I had to make this up on my own. It worked out. I am now officially obsessed with this salad and I want to eat it every day. And this past week, that’s just what I did for lunch.

Make this chop chop salad for lunch or dinner this week!

Mary

Yield: 4 salads

Chop Chop Salad

30 minPrep Time:

30 minTotal Time:

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Ingredients

For the kalamata dressing

1/4 cup Greek yogurt (I like full-fat yogurt)
1/4 cup kalamata olives
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/4 cup olive oil
salt to taste

For the salad

4 cups chopped iceberg lettuce (about 1/3 of a head)
4 cups chopped romaine lettuce (about 1 heart of romaine)
4 cups baby spinach
4 ounces salami, chopped
1 cucumber, peeled and diced
1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
1 14.5 ounce can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 8-ounce package cremini mushrooms, sliced (optional)
1/4 cup chopped kalamata olives
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
4 ounces mozzarella cheese, shredded (freezing the mozzarella for about 30 minutes before shredding makes this much easier)

Instructions

In a food processor, process the Greek yogurt, kalamata olives, white wine vinegar, oregano, and sugar on high until mostly smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl frequently. Add the olive oil slowly through the pour spout with the machine running. Salt to taste. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
Toss the greens together in a large bowl. Divide between 4 salad bowls or plates. Divide the remaining ingredients among the plates. Drizzle each salad with 2 tablespoons of kalamata dressing. Serve immediately.

Recipe Type: salads, main dishes, vegetables

http://chattavore.com/chop-chop-salad/

Chop chop salad with creamy kalamata dressing is my version of the house salad from Crust Pizza, one of my very favorite restaurant salads. | recipe from Chattavore.com

Beet Salad with Goat Cheese

January 22, 2016

This beet salad with goat cheese is fresh and full of vibrant flavors. A homemade green goddess dressing ties the whole thing together!

I have never been an eater of beets. My mom loves pickled beets and there’s an ever-present jar of them in my parents’ fridge. To this day, my 37-year-old self has never eaten a pickled beet. It may never happen.

My problem with beets? They smell like dirt. I mean, they grow underground, submerged in the dirt, so on some level it makes sense. However, once I have scrubbed, cooked, and peeled said beets, I don’t want the dirt smell to linger. But it does. Oh yes, yes it does.

That said, I will eat roasted beets. It’s honestly a little odd that I will eat roasted beets but not pickled, because I love pickles. I think it’s just that cold jar of lip-staining red beets soaking in juice that’s so red that it’s almost black that just turns me off.

Here’s the thing about putting things in a salad: if you mix enough great things into a salad, you don’t really notice the individual pieces but rather the sum of the parts. Boy, I am really not selling you guys at the idea of eating beets right now, am I??? Sorry. What I’m getting at is that salads are a great way to start eating beets, or really just about any other form of plant life that you know you should eat (because it’s good for you) and just can’t quite bring yourself to eat.

Honestly, I’ve never loved goat cheese either. Somehow, though, when I mixed beets with goat cheese, greens, and toasted pecans and dressed the whole thing with an amazing green goddess dressing (I borrowed the idea for this salad from Beast + Barrel), everything worked together beautifully. I think I might start eating more beets and goat cheese, whether they’re in this beet salad with goat cheese goat cheese or not.

Mary

Yield: 4 salads

Beet Salad with Goat Cheese

10 minPrep Time:

45 minCook Time:

55 minTotal Time:

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Ingredients

1 large beet, scrubbed (any color/variety is fine)
1/4 cup chopped pecans.
1 bag mixed greens
1/2 cup green goddess dressing (bottled is fine, but I used Elise Bauer’s recipe from Simply Recipes)
2 ounces goat cheese

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Wrap the beet in foil. Place the beet in the oven and roast for about 45 minutes. Allow to cool for a few minutes then peel the beet (the skin should slip away easily when rubbed with a paper towel). Quarter the beets then thinly slice the quarters. Set aside.
While the beet is roasting, toast the pecans in a dry skillet until lightly browned. Pour into a bowl and set aside.
Divide the greens among 4 bowls. Drizzle each bowl with two tablespoons of dressing.
Crumble the goat cheese and sprinkle the goat cheese over the bowls. Sprinkle each salad with a tablespoon of pecans. Divide the beets among the bowls. Serve immediately.

Recipe Type: salad

http://chattavore.com/beet-salad-with-goat-cheese/

Click here to print the recipe for beet salad with goat cheese!