Tuesday, August 18, 2009

test run

After having the best salad of the summer at a friend's house, I couldn't wait to recreate it. Here's her recipe:
eggplant: cubed, tossed with garlic, olive oil and salt and roasted at 425 degrees
cucumbers: peeled, de-seeded, sliced
tomatoes: from the farmer's market, chopped
red onion: thinly sliced
fresh field greens
feta
tossed with balsamic vinegar and olive oil

Here were my mods:
Used a fig/walnut balsamic salad dressing because I discovered that I had no balsamic vinegar.
Used a crumbled goat cheese rather than feta because I like goat cheese better and they were sampling a particularly tasty one at the grocery store.
Didn't peel or de-seed the cukes because I'm lazy.

Here's the verdict:
Dressing: I'd use balsamic in the future. The fig/walnut flavor was unnecessary and got lost.
Goat cheese: fantastic.
Cucumbers: being lazy is okay.
Proportions: I definitely didn't master the proportions, and I also ended up making about three times as much salad as I could eat. Next time, I will add more greens and fewer tomatoes/cucumbers. Also, probably less cheese.
Overall: still delicious. The eggplant really makes this special, well worth the roasting time. (However, I think that my roommate might not think that it's well worth heating up our too-hot apartment...)

1 comment:

Elizabeth said...

I can confirm that this is quite delicious; will be making when back home.