Friday, April 13, 2007

A Caesar Salad Gone Awry

I can never bring myself to eat a salad for dinner that doesn't actually resemble some other meal on a bed of leafy greens, it just seems that for every inch of plate-space taken by lettuce or the like, I'm losing valuable calories. And to some extent, isn't cooking always a balance between how much energy you can consume for a given amount of prep time, while maximizing enjoyment?
The following recipe is the butchering of a fairly standard caesar salad, adding sautéed mushrooms and onions, and steaming spinach (lettuce is all crunch, no substance - I can't stand it). I found thin-sliced chicken cutlets because they were on sale. I imagine thicker breasts would have worked, or tenderloins, but thicker chicken would be more difficult to cook through in a frying pan. Bacon was added for substance and absurdity. If I can ever combine two or more meats in a single dish, I try to.

So here goes:
1 package of chicken cutlets
8 oz bacon
1 onion
4-5 mushrooms
1/2 bag baby leaf spinach
Croutons, caesar dressing, and parmesan cheese are optional

Wrap the chicken in bacon, overlapping strips so the whole thing stays in one piece.
I lay these in a walled frying pan, put a lid over to control splattering, and cooked them over medium heat until the bacon was crispy. The chicken, thinly sliced, was done before the bacon, and I turned the heat up to make sure it was crisp.

Here's one of the chicken and bacon, just about done.














Meanwhile, slice onions and mushrooms, and sauté them in butter, tossing in a little salt. I would have preferred olive oil, but I'd run out, and my arteries have only me to blame. I mentioned we wrapped the chicken in bacon, right? Butter is the least of our problems.
Chop the spinach and lay it in another frying pan, with a little water to steam it. You can also toss the mushroom and onion mixture in. It should only take a minute or two for the spinach to turn bright green. For me, that's done.

Here we are plated, unadulterated.















I added croutons and parmesan cheese to make this in some way resemble the salad that was originally planned, and tossed some Newman's Own caesar dressing on top.
Here's the final product, probably seconds before I ate it. I think the white background, especially with the clear plates, looks better. I'll have to work on that.















Follow up - Although delicious, this gave me abominable onion breath for at least a couple hours. I think I undercooked the onions, if you try this, toss them in before the mushrooms with a little brown sugar, and caramelize them. That usually mellows them out quite a bit.

4 comments:

Megan/Yuping said...

Please update this every day.

b's mom said...

Clearly this blog is not politically correct in that you are not concerned about fat content. Bacon? Butter? This is not California cuisine. But, croutons notwithstanding, there are no carbs, so is this Atkins friendly?

b's mom said...

you misspelled porn.
Thor

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