Salty Salted Salt

Here's something I don't understand about myself: I love salty foods. Chips; anchovies; olives; sardines; Dutch licorice called "DoubleZout" that tastes like salted tar, (no one outside of my family who I've given it to has been able to finish a piece without spitting it out). But I'm not someone who pours a ton of salt on everything I eat. So, I like foods that are salty, but do not make all of my foods salty.

What's that about?

I bring it up because for dinner tonight I had a Caesar salad with an entire can of anchovies AND some boiled shrimps. Really, I could eat anchovies straight out of the can, but that's unseemly, so the salad is just a vehicle for those anchovies to reach my mouth. The dressing was Girard's, which is one of the better bottled Caesar dressings I've had.

Bottom line, a Caesar salad without anchovies is just a damn salad with some Caesar dressing. And if you don't want those anchovies, just give them to me.

Relish It

Don't let the Valentines fool you, this was not my sad Valentine's Day dinner. I had this tonight. It was inspired by a recipe for chicken with tomato relish from Everyday Foods magazine. Very lightly inspired, I should say. First, I used fresh tomatoes instead of the canned the recipe called for because I hate the way canned tomatoes taste when they aren't being used in a cooked sauce. I used everything else in the relish recipe--lemon juice, parsley, capers, olive oil--but it probably would have been better if I let it sit overnight, to turn into more of an actual relish. As it was, it was really just a tomato salad. Which is fine.

As for the chicken portion, I wanted the chicken to be crispy since it was being paired with something kind of mushy, so instead of just pan searing, I decided to coat the chicken in flour, egg white, and Panko, and lightly fry it. ("Lightly frying" sounds like an oxymoron, but I really didn't use that much oil). Pounding out the breasts yielded two pretty big pieces, resulting in the virtual feast you see pictured. I also skipped the spinach portion of the recipe because I thought I didn't have any spinach. (Turns out I did. Derrrrr.)

I forgot to put a lot of salt and pepper in the flour coating, so the chicken was badly in need of some seasoning once on the plate, but other than that, it was really good! I mean, come on. It's basically fried chicken. You can't go wrong!

Big Ass Salad

Tonight I made one of my favorite no-cook meals: a big ass salad. The core ingredients are mixed greens, of course, as well as tomatoes (heirloom if they're available), a hard-boiled egg, kalamatta olives, and canned tuna. That last bit is a crucial ingredient, because it has to be tuna in olive oil, preferably imported. I think regular tuna packed in water is pretty gross unless it's mixed with a ton of mayo, and I've tried some American brands packed in olive oil, and none have tasted as good as Genova Tonno. I could eat it straight out of the can.

But in this case I add it to the salad, along with any leftover vegetables I might have in the fridge, which today was some broccoli (which I blanched in the water the egg was boiling in) and half an avocado. For a dressing, I just make a vinaigrette in the salad bowl by whisking Dijon mustard, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and a little sugar together. If it's too tart, I add a little water to mellow it out, thus lowering the amount of oil you need. Salt isn't needed for this dressing because of all the salt in the tuna and olives, and also because Dijon can be pretty salty in and of itself.

It was soooo good. A lot better than the picture makes it look. (My camera began to screw up after that picture, so I couldn't take another, more appetizing shot. Alas.) A perfect dinner for nights you just can't be bothered to cook.