Fancy Salad

I think it's hard to name salads. Either there's a perfect word or phrase that encompasses the essence of the salad, or you list every ingredient you can taste in the salad. That's why I'm calling this "fancy salad."

Fancy Salad

Ingredients
romaine lettuce
chevre (goat cheese crumbles)
chopped walnuts
apple
onion
balsamic vinegar
honey

Equipment
pan, stove

Instructions
Dice the onion and saute it with some oil or butter (I, of course, used butter) until golden brown. In the meantime, wash and dry your lettuce and distribute into bowls or plates, and dice the apple. Build the salads out of all the solid ingredients. Drizzle with balsamic vinegar and honey to taste.

Yields
As many as you make.

Total time
About 20 minutes

Cleanup rating 3/10
There are lots of separate ingredients, so if you don't use them all up or you leave them strewn all over the counter, you have to devote a little time to putting everything away, plus you have the onion pan (which, I've cleaned far more difficult pans, so that's not a big deal).

Flavor rating 8/10
This would have been a very different rating if we hadn't adjusted the salad as we ate. First, I completely forgot the dressing. So we added a little balsamic vinegar. Then Birk said it needed something sweet. So we added a little honey. Perfection! It has a good mix of textures, too.

Difficulty rating 2/10
It's a salad; how hard could it possibly be?

Adjustability: high
Salads are made of adjustability. If you don't like romaine, use spinach or arugula or iceberg or whatever you want. If you don't like chevre, use a different cheese. Same goes for literally every ingredient. Granted, you wind up with a different salad, but that's the fun of salad.

Make it with...
As you can see in the photo, I browned some beer brats to go with this salad, and I would very highly recommend it. Anything meaty and salty would be delicious with this salad. I had originally planned on searing and slicing some sirloin (alliteration!) to put on top of the salad, but then I thought, "Mmm, beer brats."

Caesar Salad

You may be saying, "Alex, you haven't posted in a couple weeks, and here you bring us a salad? That's not cooking." To that, I say: I can't hear you, and calm your face, because this salad was delicious.

Birk picked up Ken's Steakhouse creamy caesar dressing a while back, and it's now my favorite Caesar dressing in a bottle. (The best Caesar anywhere is the one at The Melting Pot, but I don't dare try to copy it... I just eat it once a year and love it.) It's a pretty big bottle, so you might see Caesar show up again sometime on here.

Caesar Salad

Ingredients
romaine lettuce
croutons (ours are Parmesan Caesar)
bacon
chicken (got a rotisserie chicken, rosemary & garlic)
Parmesan cheese
Caesar dressing

Equipment
colander or salad spinner, cutting board and knife, microwave if your bacon isn't cooked, bowls

Instructions
You've made a salad before, right? Wash and pat dry your lettuce (I hate a watery Caesar, and it can make your croutons soggy, which is just the worst) and divide it into bowls. Cut up your chicken into bite-size pieces. Microwave your bacon according to package instructions. Assemble salads. Smile.

Yields
Depends on how much of each ingredient you use, of course.

Total time
10 minutes

Cleanup rating 1/5
You aren't even cooking. Absolute maximum of dishes to clean is your colander or salad spinner, cutting board, knife, maybe a plate you cooked bacon on, and your bowls/forks.

Difficulty rating 1/10
Even with the required skill of knowing how to efficiently dissect a rotisserie chicken (which I left up to Birk while I did the other prep), it doesn't get much easier than this.

Flavor rating 7/10
It's a classic dish. Chicken Caesar salad. Can't go wrong.

Adjustability: high
Use steak, shrimp, turkey, tofu, or nothing instead of chicken and bacon. Use a different type of lettuce. Instead of croutons, use nuts or Parmesan crisps or some other crunchy little thing. Try different dressings (although then I guess it's not so much a Caesar...)

Make it with...
Everything. With the chicken in it, it's a fine entree on its own. If it hadn't been so quick and I hadn't been so hungry, I would have roasted some potatoes and onions with it, or sauteed chicken breasts to go alongside it instead of cutting up rotisserie chicken to put on top of it. Go nuts.