Yesterday was NBB’s birthday, and of course I was going to give him a birthday dinner. I offered to take him out to a steakhouse, or make steak at home, or anything he wanted – anything at all. What did he finally request?
Salad.
Blackened chicken salad (with bacon), to be fair. It is probably as unhealthy as one can get while still including uncooked leafy greens – which really just act as a vehicle to get the spices and bacony goodness from plate to mouth.
There are three main parts to this salad: the chicken, the “salad” proper, and the dressing. Bacon, naturally, appears in all three. Because blackened chicken is an adventure unto itself, I will address it in a seperate entry following:
BLACKENED CHICKEN SALAD (with BACON), aka “birthday salad”
- 2 blackened chicken breasts (see following recipe)
- 10 oz fresh leafy greens of the lettuce variety (excluding iceberg – use romaine, butter lettuce, red or green leaf lettuce, bib lettuce, etc. No strong-tasting greens, though spinach would probably be fine…)
- 4 strips cooked bacon, crumbled to bits.
For the dressing:
- 4 tablespoons bacon fat
- 3 medium-sized cloves garlic, minced very fine
- around 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- around 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
Wash and dry the lettuce and tear into bite-sized pieces and divide onto two dinner plates, then sprinkle it with the bacon, ALL the bacon or as much as you can stand.
For the dressing, melt the bacon fat in a small saucepan. Remove from heat and add the minced garlic, stirring a bit. Allow this to sit for a few minutes, garlic permeating the bacon fat, and then add the brown sugar and stir until it dissolves. Then pour in the balsamic vinegar and stir or whisk it vigorously and taste it with a clean spoon. It should be deliciously balanced between sweet, sour, bacony and garlicy – if it is too sweet, add a little more vinegar; if too sour, add more brown sugar.
Let the dressing cool a little – you don’t want to cook the salad when you dress it – but you don’t want the bacon fat to solidify. Be sure to stir it up well before it goes on the salad, because of course the fat and the vinegar will want to seperate. Don’t let them!
When you apply it to the salad, drizzle it around the outside – leave an undressed (naked) spot in the center. That is where the chicken goes.
Then, yes! You put the chicken breast in the space you left for it, and – ? You have a birthday salad, fit EVEN for a person of the non-vegetablearian persuasion. Serve it with nice warm bread and a nice red wine, if that is the kind of thing you enjoy – we had it with Erath’s pinot noir, which is nicey spicey and not too pricey.
