CEimB: Buffalo Chicken Salad with Homemade Blue Cheese Dressing

It’s that time again! The time we have all been anxiously awaiting. Thursday’s episode of Craving Ellie.  We have a creative group of cooks who enjoy cooking together in “blog land” once a week using the same recipe from Ellie Krieger’s book “The Food You Crave”.

  This week’s recipe was chosen by AJM of You Eat Now.  What a great choice she made. Both of us here at Apple Crumbles thoroughly enjoyed our meal.  For the complete recipe, go to AJM’s blog, linked above and find out exactly how to create this tasty dish. But… don’t go away… since you’re here, please see what happened in our kitchen from chopping block, to oven, to mouth.

Step 1:  Make the Blue Cheese Dressing.

The dressing was made Wednesday morning. One less item to prepare at dinner time.  It was very easy to make. The ingredients used were:

1/4 cup nonfat, plain yogurt – allowed to drain on paper towel in fridge for one hour.
1/4 cup soy milk with 1 tsp lemon juice (no buttermilk)
1 TBS white wine vinegar
1/4 tsp sugar (recipe called for 1/2)
3 1/2 oz Gorgonzola cheese (recipe called for 1/3 cup Blue Cheese however, Gorgonzola was what we had in the fridge.)
Salt and pepper to taste.

The mayonnaise was omitted. It didn’t seem necessary.  More Gorgonzola was added because, upon tasting, the cheese flavor was hardly detectable. 

Step 2:  The Salad

1 heart of romaine lettuce
4 stalks celery
Enough baby carrots to grate and finish with 1 cup.  Note to Self… BUY grated carrots next time! Hate grating ANYTHING! Can’t stand cleaning the grater.  Ted said “What do you mean?! I clean the grater!”
1/2 each green and red bell peppers, chopped (needed some color in the salad)
2 scallions – using only the green part.  Save the lower end for another use. Don’t be wasteful!

You are reading the post of the world’s most renowned salad Queen. I love salad.    This meal had a place in my heart just because of that wonderful word in the title.  In order to make the salad a little more colorful, a green and red pepper were added. They provided a little extra flavor as well.

Step 3:  The Chicken and the “Quorn” (Quorn is a meatless, soyless protein source).

1 1/2 lb chicken breasts (skinned and boned)
VEGETARIAN:  1 bag of “Quorn” Chik’n Tenders.
1 TBS Frank’s Red Hot – Xtra Hot Sauce for Ted’s chicken
1 1/2 TBS Frank’s Red Hot – Xtra Hot Sauce for Joanne’s Quorn
2 tsp Olive oil to each hot sauce portion.

Ted pounded his own chicken.  The Quorn simply needed to be mixed up with the sauce and oil as it came cubed.  Ted wanted his picture taken while pounding the chicken.  I refused.  It just wasn’t time for him to make stardom.

Step 4:  Putting it all together.

The salad was easy to prepare.  The chicken cooked in the time specified – to perfection.  We plated the salad, topped the greens with our proteins, drizzled some Blue Cheese Dressing on the meat (and the “meatless”), put some on the side with extra celery, and served our meals with squash patties (see last nights post).   It was excellent. Ted’s words were “Fun to eat. It has lots of crunch and lots of flavor”. 

Thanks AJM for a great choice.

Posted in Life Tagged: Buffalo Chicken Salad, Ellie Krieger, Homemade Blue Cheese Dressing, Quorn