Caesar Chicken and Pasta Salad

 

Adding pasta to a Caesar Salad! And then adding Chicken! Delicious! 

The chicken was a Rostierie Chicken from Fresh Market. On Thursdays they sell the whole roasted chicken for $5.00. That was until this week. Now a Rostierie Chicken is $6.00. Still not a bad deal. We had meat from it tonight and on Sunday I will be using some in a recipe, stay tuned, and we use the carcass for broth. 

I made the pasta on Sunday and had it in the fridge. The dressing was a revision of Lidia's Caesar Salad dressing.

Caesar Salad Dressing-
Using an Immersion Blender mix 2 Tbsp Red Wine Vinegar, 2 Tbsp Fresh Lemon Juice an 1/3 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Add one Hard Boiled Egg Yolk, 1 Tbsp Dijon Mustard, 1/2 Tsp. Worcestershire Sauce and Salt and Pepper to taste. Blend until smooth.

Toss with the cleaned and chopped lettuce, I used a mixture of Romaine and Red Leaf. Toss the dressed salad with 1/2 cup Grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.

This is my favorite summer dinner

Do you remember the Meat Pies I made at Easter? Well, we had 1/2 a pie in the freezer.  It was as delicious now as it was at Easter. We ate the whole 1/2! We had a Caesar Salad too. We were hungry! The dressing recipe is further down the page.

The dressing recipe we use is from Lidia Italian-American Kitchen.

I do make a couple of edits to the original recipe.

Ingredients-
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
4 cloves of garlic
4 anchovy fillets
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 hard-boiled egg yolk
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
fresh ground black pepper
Romaine lettuce, or anything you prefer

Method-
Combine the vinegar, lemon juice, garlic, and anchovies in a blender or work bowl of a food processor. Blend until smooth, adding some of the 1/3 cup olive oil if there is not enough liquid to move the mixture around the blender jar. Add the mustard, hard-boiled egg yolk, salt, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, and remaining olive oil if any.  Blend until smooth and creamy. Taste the dressing; if it's a little too tangy, pour in a splash or two of olive oil and blend until it's incorporated. Pour over greens and toss to cover the lettuce.

 

The Last Friday of Lent

A repeat appearance of Caesar Salad with Shrimp. The salad dressing was Lidia Bastianich's.

Romaine Lettuce tossed with Caesar Salad Dressing and topped with homemade croutons and boiled shrimp.

The Shrimp was placed in a pan with 2 cups of cold water and lemon juice from 1/2 a lemon, along with the lemon half and 1/2 tsp of whole black pepper and 1/2 tsp of sugar. The pan was heated over medium heat to a boil and let simmer for about 5 minutes until the shrimp was cooked.

Caesar Salad Dressing
Ingredients-
2 Hard Cooked Egg Yolks
2 Tbsp Red Wine Vinegar
Juice of one Lemon
1 Tbsp Dijon Mustard
½ Tsp Kosher Salt
6 Tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Black Pepper to Taste

Method-
In a mini–food processor, combine the egg yolks, vinegar, lemon juice, mustard, and ½ teaspoon salt. Process until smooth. With the machine running, add the olive oil in a steady stream to make a smooth dressing. 
The recipe suggests dressing the entire bowl of greens. We prefer to dress our own plates. We can never finish the whole bowl of greens. Not mixing the dressing on the entire salad means we can use the greens for another meal... Stay tuned!

First Friday of Lent

This is our second Lenten meal and again I combined Three Girls Vegan Creamery with Lidia Bastianich. Lasagna by Three Girls Vegan Creamery. Caesar Salad is from Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen. It was nice getting home for work and preparing the salad. But it was really nice having the prepared Lasagna that just needed to be heated up.

Caesar Salad Dressing from Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen-

Ingredients-
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
4 cloves of garlic 
4 anchovy fillets
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 hard-boiled egg yolk
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
fresh ground black pepper 
Romaine lettuce, or anything you prefer

Method-
Combine the vinegar, lemon juice, garlic, and anchovies in a blender or work bowl of a food processor. Blend until smooth, adding some of the 1/3 cup olive oil if there is not enough liquid to move the mixture around the blender jar. Add the mustard, hard-boiled egg yolk, salt, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, and remaining olive oil if any.  Blend until smooth and creamy. Taste the dressing; if it's a little too tangy, pour in a splash or two of olive oil and blend until it's incorporated. Pour over greens and toss to cover the lettuce.

One Chicken. Two Dinners. Maybe Three.

The weather yesterday was awful! Cold and damp. It rained like crazy in afternoon. Luckily I went to my sister Lenore's house before work to pick up her cookies for the Reunion Tea tomorrow. On the way home I stopped at the store to pick up a couple of things and got a roasting chicken for last night's dinner. I was thinking of doing the Bundt Pan Chicken or Julia Child's recipe. But it was Friday and I was working from home and I was not sure how busy the day would be. I decided to set it and forget it. Yeah, that Slow Cooker Lemon Pepper Chicken is so damn easy. And delicious. I made mashed potatoes because the gravy required them. The photos? Funny but they did not come out good at all. But the ones of Archie, the chicken cat, were purrfect.

Of course, there was leftover chicken. I had planned for that to happen. Today was super busy. I knew I would not want to cook dinner. So we had Caesar Salad with Chicken! For the dressing, I use a variation of the Lidia Bastianich recipe.

Caesar Salad Dressing-
Using an Immersion Blender mix 2 Tbsp Red Wine Vinegar, 2 Tbsp Fresh Lemon Juice and 1/3 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Add one Hard Boiled Egg Yolk, 1 Tbsp Dijon Mustard, 1/2 Tsp. Worcestershire Sauce and Salt and Pepper to taste. Blend until smooth.

And I have enough chicken to put in the freezer for yes a third dinner! And the bones have been frozen for upcoming broth.

Grilled Shrimp Caesar Salad

Remember that Grill Pan I won a couple of weeks ago?

I used it tonight for the Grilled Shrimp Caesar Salad. I saw a recipe a while ago. I worked from home today so I was able to make it for dinner. I used the recipe for cooking the shrimp from Cooking Light, but we like the Caesar Dressing from Lidia Italian-American Kitchen.

Caesar Salad Dressing from Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen-

Ingredients-
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
4 cloves of garlic
4 anchovy fillets
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 hard-boiled egg yolk
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
fresh ground black pepper
Romaine lettuce, or anything you prefer

Method-
Combine the vinegar, lemon juice, garlic, and anchovies in a blender or work bowl of a food processor. Blend until smooth, adding some of the 1/3 cup olive oil if there is not enough liquid to move the mixture around the blender jar. Add the mustard, hard-boiled egg yolk, salt, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, and remaining olive oil if any.  Blend until smooth and creamy. Taste the dressing; if it's a little too tangy, pour in a splash or two of olive oil and blend until it's incorporated. Pour over greens and toss to cover the lettuce.

The Grilled Shrimp-

Ingredients-

2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil

Cooking spray

1 pound peeled and deveined extra-large shrimp
Method-
Combine shrimp and 2 teaspoons oil in a large bowl; toss to coat. Add shrimp to pan; cook 2 1/2 minutes on each side or until well marked and done. Remove shrimp from pan.

Toss the grilled shrimp with the salad.

I also made croutons to go with the salad.

Let Them Eat Meat Pie

Funny thing when you have a cat, I was working on this post the other night. I did not finish it and was planning on working on it in the morning. Well Archie, decided to walk across the keyboard and published this post. I did not realize it until I was at work the next day and received the post in my email. I read the title and thought, "What?" And it gets better, someone commented on the post. Lucky Archie is so cute!

Anyway here is the blog post -

Tonight we finally ate the Pizzagaina. Oh it is so worth the work and money. The crust, fugettaboutit. Spot on is what I would call it. The filling did not disappoint. I added some Sweet Capicola just because.

 

And I could not serve just Pizzagaina. I made a Caesar Salad using Romaine and Radicchio. The dressing was a variation of Lidia Bastianich's recipe. I left out the anchovies and the garlic.

Caesar Salad Dressing from Lidia's Italian American Kitchen-

Ingredients-
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
4 cloves of garlic
4 anchovy fillets
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 hard-boiled egg yolk
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
fresh ground black pepper

Method-
Combine the vinegar, lemon juice, garlic, and anchovies in a blender or work bowl of a food processor. Blend until smooth, adding some of the 1/3 cup olive oil if there is not enough liquid to move the mixture around the blender jar. Add the mustard, hard-boiled egg yolk, salt, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, and remaining olive oil if any.  Blend until smooth and creamy. Taste the dressing; if it's a little too tangy, pour in a splash or two of olive oil and blend until it's incorporated.

Grilled Veggie Caesar Salad

Oh this was good. 

But much left for lunch tomorrow  : (

We added some rotissarie chicken and someone 

added some olive oil to the dressing... 

no harm done it was still quite good.  

Click here for the recipe.