This is a great salad that is sure to delight your dinner guests. There are a lot of variations on this, but here is a super-Quik ‘n’ EZ way to do it. This, to me, feeds two, with a disk or two for the Ravenous hound, but I cannot get enough goat cheese. This is simplified from an old, old Food & Wine recipe.
1 log of goat cheese, no less than 8 oz. but preferably more like 10. Don’t buy a block or a tub of goat cheese spread, it must come in log form.
A little olive oil
Some dry breadcrumbs, just plain ones
Some seasoning if you want for the breadcrumbs, even a little black pepper or a shake from your canister of Herbes de Provence
Leafy salad greens
Vinaigrette
Remove the goat cheese from the fridge. Slice it into 1/2″ disks. Ina Garten has taught me so much and here’s a really helpful tip I never would have thought of: do this using a length of dental floss. Yes! Genius. Put your disks in a dish and drizzle with olive oil. Coat both sides and put the dish with the oil and the disks back in the fridge, covered, for an hour or so. Food & Wine says to do this overnight but I’m not really sure why.
Preheat an oven to 350 degrees. Take out the coated goat cheese disks and dredge in breadcrumbs, to which you’ve added some seasoning if using. Arrange these on a baking sheet and put them in the oven for about 10 minutes, maybe less, you don’t want them to melt, you just want them to brown and warm through.
The leafy salad greens portion is up to you. I usually just go with a bag of greens. I was served a variant of this once that was served over leafy spinach, which I thought was not enough. Plate some, them top with however many goat cheese disks you’re up for once they’re done. Top all this with a little vinaigrette but not too much, because you don’t want to drown everything. You can make your own easily enough by combining red wine vinegar and olive oil, but here again there are many, many recipes for this too. You also probably have some hanging out in your fridge.
That’s all there is to this, but you’d be amazed at the enthusiastic reception this receives when I trot it out.
When we had a Much Bigger Garden, we lived across the street from a chef who owned his own restaurant and he would buy produce from us. We’d go there on Sundays because he had the best brunch spread anywhere. One of the items available on the buffet (I should stop here and note that the buffet was on the counter where the open kitchen was, so kitchen people were making sure everything was fresh all the time) were these exquisite fried balls of goat cheese sitting on a bed of spring mix. Mrs. Butcher and I used to grab tons of those things.
@butcherbakertoiletrymaker Wait, you once had a BIGGER garden?
@Hannibal it was huge, by suburban standards. Probably 20 x 40 feet, and packed with so much stuff that we were able to supply ourselves, that restaurant, and even have a little honor-system vegetable stand at the end of the driveway.
Although, now that I think about it, we weren’t canning or preserving anything at the time. Now we preserve almost everything that we can for the off season.
You’re a professional
Ha! If I were a professional, I’d be making a lot less money:)
Mmmmm. Adding goat cheese to next week’s grocery list. Perfect, Cousin M. Looks fancy, is actually simple, and tastes great I am sure!
The time is coming for a complete curated menu with appetizer, salad, veggie, pasta, main, dessert and drinks. Also recommended place settings, numbers and types of people to invite, service time….
The word count would end up 5,000+ but people would read it.
Oh, when I get in the mood 5,000 words would just be the introduction!