The weather has been too hot and humid lately to cook anything for dinner, inside the house or out. In fact, warm food isn’t even appealing in this type of weather. But a plain old salad thrown together with whatever we have in the fridge isn’t very appealing either. In weather like this, you have to plan your salad wisely; it has to be scrumptious enough to draw you in, yet simple enough to not feel too fussy or require too much work.
Enter The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond, who is the queen of unfussy, amazingly delicious food, to whose most recent cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Dinnertime, I turned to help get us out of this humidity-induced food rut.
The book is full of classic comfort food. Drummond is masterful in the kitchen; she’s able to elevate basic ingredients and common dishes with just a tweak here or there, making them worthy of repeat appearances on your weekly meal plan.
This week we tried her Cobb Salad, though I’ll admit I made it even less fussy than she does by choosing to use a store-bought rotisserie chicken rather than grilling my own chicken breast and by just piling bowls of the ingredients onto the table and allowing everyone to build their own salad with whatever flavors they like rather than making a lovely presentation on a platter.
The real star here – what takes this salad from plain old Cobb to something far more special – is the dressing. It goes together in seconds and is built with the simplest of ingredients, but the taste is so far removed from anything you’ll ever find in a bottle on the grocery store shelf that you’ll make it once and then swear you’ll never buy store-bought again. I chose to hit mine with the immersion blender for a bit after the ingredients were mixed just to thicken it up a bit by creaming some of the blue cheese. However you make it, you’ll love it, and you’ll find plenty of ways to use up any leftovers. It’s great as a dip for cucumbers or over a salad topped with leftover grilled steak.
For the dressing:
1 cup mayonnaise
½ cup sour cream
½ cup buttermilk (see notes)
4 ounces bleu cheese ( about ½ cup)
2 tablespoons chopped chives
3 dashes Worcestershire sauce
pinch of kosher salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
For the salad:
2 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, sliced in half down the middle (you’ll be left with four very thin, breast-shaped chicken pieces)
olive oil for drizzling
kosher salt and black pepper to taste
2 romaine lettuce heads, chopped
1 iceberg lettuce heat, cut into chunks
2 Bibb lettuce heads, cored and leaves separated
6 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and sliced
2 avocados, pitted, peeled and diced
1 pound thin bacon, fried until crisp and then chopped (see notes)
2 cups red grape tomatoes, halved
½ cup bleu cheese crumbles
black pepper to taste
To make the dressing: In a medium bowl, mix together the mayonnaise, sour cream and buttermilk until smooth.
Add the bleu cheese, chives, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper. Stir to combine.
To cook the chicken, heat a grill pan or skillet over medium-high heat and drizzle with olive oil.
Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper and cook until done in the middle, about three minutes per side.
Let the chicken cool, then dice it up and set it aside.
To assemble the salad, arrange the three lettuces on a large platter in separate piles. In separate strips across the platter, lay on the chicken, hard-boiled eggs, avocado, bacon, tomato, leaving room in the center of the platter for a pile of bleu cheese crumbles.
Sprinkle the whole platter with a little black pepper and serve with bleu cheese dressing on the side.
NOTE: To make your own buttermilk, combine ½ cup milk with 1 tablespoon white vinegar and let sit for three minutes.
As for the bacon, I baked mine in the oven on a foil-lined baking sheet at 350 degrees for about half an hour. It’s easier and facilitates simpler cleanup, but it doesn’t get quite as nicely crisp as it does from frying.