Chicken And Strawberry Salad With Pecans And Creamy Goat Cheese

Inspiration for a meal can happen anywhere and recently it happened at my favorite place to buy artisanal cheese, Farmstead. I stopped by a few weeks ago for lunch and some cheese. Dinner that night was going to be just a snack of assorted cheese, cured meats, fruit and bread, so I thought.  

To help me decide on my selections, they offered me a taste of their featured goat cheese. It was amazing! From the label on their container, they think so too! The cheese was creamy, soft, and just wonderful.

After I gathered a bunch of goodies, I ordered a black bean fillet sandwich for lunch. While waiting, I poked around the store and picked up very nice looking cookbook, What's Cooking In New England. Flipping through the beautifully photographed pages of food and places in New England, I noticed a recipe for a chicken and strawberry salad with goat cheese. There wasn't a photo of the salad, but a beautiful photo of the docks in Newport where the recipe comes from. I started thinking about what we had at home . . . chicken, strawberries, plenty of lettuce and nuts, and now goat cheese. Well, that was that - dinner was decided and I was going home with a new cookbook with wonderful New England recipes that I'm looking forward to making. 

The recipe was simple, like so many other strawberry salads I've prepared. Just a few changes were made so I could use what I had at home, like red lettuce and plain pecans in place of mesclun greens and caramelized pecans.

An interesting idea in the recipe was marinating the strawberries in balsamic vinegar overnight. It was too late for that so I marinated the strawberries for a few hours. They were different and nice. But why mask the wonderful flavor of strawberries? I would probably use plain strawberries next time.

The recipe didn't have instructions for the chicken. So I simply marinated some chicken breasts for a few hours. Sauteed them. Then sliced them up.

To finish, the salad was dressed with homemade balsamic vinaigrette.

Chicken and Strawberry Salad
Inspired by What's Cooking In New England

Here is my ingredient list to make four salads:

Salad
1 head red lettuce
1/2 cup Balsamic vinegar (if marinating)
1 pint chopped strawberries
1 cup coarsely chopped pecans (or walnuts)
Goat cheese

Chicken from your own recipe.

Marinate chopped strawberries in vinegar while preparing the salad or use plain strawberries since they'll be dressed with balsamic vinaigrette anyway. The choice is yours. Coarsely chop pecans or break up by hand. Wash, dry, and tear lettuce. Put it all together with the chicken and vinaigrette. Top with crumbled goat cheese.

Balsamic Vinaigrette

Generally, a vinaigrette has 1 part vinegar to three parts oil. So I used 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar, 3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil then added about 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard. Salt and pepper to taste. It makes a lot but we use it up fast.

Add all ingredients in a bowl and whisk vigorously.  Or, add all ingredients in a salad dressing vessel, cover and shake.

Sweet Potato And Apple Soup Garnished With Sage Goat Cheese For Meatless Monday

Add to that title . . . And With A Maple Syrup Swirl!

Sounds delicious, but this post isn't so much about sharing a great recipe as it is about how I saved a botched dish.

The Mistake

This was the first dish I had made with the sweet potatoes. It was a gratin of sorts.

It looked great. But like I said, it tasted bland, bland, bland. So the pretty looking but pretty bland dish was wrapped and stayed in the fridge for a day until I decided to turn it into soup.

The Fix
To make the soup, I sauteed a large shallot and a celery stalk in a little oil olive. When tender, I added the rest of the botched baked sweet potato and apple dish (omitting the oranges), some vegetable broth, and simmered with a cover for 30 minutes.

After simmering for 30 minutes, I pureed the soup with an immersion blender. Seasoned to taste with salt and pepper. The soup seemed a little watery, so I simmered it uncovered until it reduced a little.

Sage Goat Cheese  

I minced two large leaves of fresh sage and mixed them with 2 ounces of softened goat cheese (the cheese softened while I prepared the soup). I spread some over toasted sourdough bread. 

Done!

Before serving, I swirled in a little maple syrup. 

 My son didn't like the soup. Well, three out of four isn't bad!

Ingredients and Method
Because of what happened here, it's hard to put an actual recipe together.  But these are the ingredients and this is probably the method I'd use to make this soup.  And it's really a lot easier than it looks!

1 large sweet potato, or 2 regular size,
    mine was a Jewel and was really large
1 or 2 apples
    I used 2 med golden delicious apples, with skins, because
    the sweet potato was so large
Olive oil,
    enough to coat so apples and sweet potatoes won't stick to pan
1/8 ts coriander,
    I chose coriander because of it's hint of sage, but why not try
    cinnamon, nutmeg or your favorites
1 large sage leave, minced, or 1/8 ts of ground sage
1 medium shallot, diced
1 celery stalk, diced
32 oz. vegetable stock (could use less since I had to simmer it longer to reduce)

Peel and coarsely chop sweet potatoes and apples into similar size pieces. Toss with olive oil to coat. Spread over pre-heated baking sheet and bake until tender, 350 degrees for about 30-45 minutes. Check to make sure bottoms are not burning, maybe give them a toss. Meanwhile, saute in medium sauce pan diced shallot and celery in olive oil (or butter) until tender. Add sweet potatoes and apples, vegetable stock and simmer in covered pot for 30 minutes. Puree with immersion blender (or pour into food processor), if consistency is too watery, simmer until reduced to desired consistency. Or, if it's too thick, add more stock or water. Makes 4+ servings.

This recipe gave me the idea to use celery and onion (I prefer shallots):  http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/roasted-sweet-potato-apple-soup-00000000006606/index.html