Salad. It is a topic near and dear to my heart. There are so many kinds to love: pasta, three-bean, vegetable medley, or even with seafood, chicken, or steak added. My favorite kinds include the whole meal all in one place, like with turkey, avocado, egg, and bacon all thrown together on a Cobb, or a Southwestern salad made with zesty chicken and spiced up corn and black beans. But mostly what I love is dressing. Oh yes, the dressing. Ree has taught me how to make amazing versions of so many salads, and they included recipes for my all-time fave, Bleu Cheese dressing, and a truly magnificent Southwest Ranch made with salsa which are now permanently in my repertoire. However, there are a couple salads that have never made my Top 10 list. Still, as I approach the end of the book, I have to suck it up and expand past my much-loved cream-based dressings and dive into…sigh…vinaigrettes. 
As you can see, I was so unenthused about making Greek food that I forgot to even take pictures of the progress in creating Recipe #124: Mediterranean Orzo Salad. This is sad, because Greece is on my bucket list of places to travel (Santorini, anyone??), yet I am singularly unimpressed with Mediterranean flavors. I blame Kalamata olives. They are literally one of only two foods I have ever in my life spit back out after taking a bite. And I AM including all forms of peppers in my reference! So alas, to preserve my commitment to taste a portion of this salad, I subbed in black olives, but I still used minced red onion, feta cheese, and tomatoes along with garbanzo beans (or chickpeas, if you can’t find the other name in your store) to mix in with the orzo pasta. That’s right; pasta. I have heard many people say they thought orzo was a rice product, so they have a hard time finding it at the grocery. Just look next to the spaghetti! The pasta base makes this a very filling recipe, so you could serve this alongside chicken or fish and call it a day. But onto the most important part, the dressing. (Insert heavy sigh here). It was just olive oil and red wine vinegar, along with garlic and some spices. I know, I know…. there are entire cultures where this is the basis for most of their dressings and sauces! I just really think some milk or mayo or sour cream would have livened this up for me, and I might have been all over this recipe. Unfortunately for me, this is one time where Ree went for “light and refreshing”, when I always prefer “heavy and fattening” when it comes to my salad! I personally gave it a 5 out of 10, but I think bringing it to a potluck with people who have a more reasonable relationship with dressing would be a success!
Which brings me to the next salad! Recipe #125: Panzanella, was in fact well-received when I took it to a potluck meal. Again, my bucket list of vacation destinations includes Tuscany, Italy, where this chopped salad originated. I confess to liking this one better, which utterly contradicts several of my food rules. 1) It contains raw red onion slices, which is so overpowering to me that I rarely eat anything with that ingredient, and 2) It features wet bread. Wet. Bread. This would be the other food I literally ejected from my mouth when I sampled it: undercooked bread pudding. Y.U.C.K. (I have since been exposed to tolerable, properly prepared bread pudding, but it will never be a go-to dessert for me!)
What really saves Panzanella from being unpalatable is the fact that you use stale bread to begin with, and then further toast it in chunks in the oven with olive oil, essentially creating croutons. I chose a garlic loaf from the day-old rack at the store, so I didn’t have to worry about it being bland. Not “garlic bread”, like what you would buy in the frozen foods aisle, but an Italian loaf baked with cloves of roasted garlic already inside it! Delish. So the key here is to dry out your bread, then to toss it LIGHTLY with the vinaigrette, not soak it until it’s mooshy. The salad also included seeded cucumber (this is important; not only do the seeds contain a ton of water, contributing to the squish-factor, but they also are the part that gives people gas or indigestion. Just scrape out the offending seeds with a spoon) and tomatoes. The best part of the whole dish however, is the large quantity of fresh, fragrant basil. In this recipe you are using it as a main salad ingredient, not an herby accent. Get this: there is NO other lettuce, spinach, or green of any kind in here! Roll up the basil leaves in a pile, then chiffonade it (a.k.a. slice thin ribbons out of the roll) and sprinkle it over the bread. Finally, add fresh Parmesan shavings to the top and toss it together. Don’t grab that can of Kraft crumbles which makes a visible presence on your plate of spaghetti, yet has no discernable flavor! Spring for the good stuff that comes in little sheets of cheesy goodness, or go one better and use a potato peeler to shave off pieces of fresh Parmigiano-Reggiano! Really, it costs about $3. You’ll thank me later.
Have Book, Will Cook 