I had leftover arugula and baby spinach leaves so that was the base of my salad. I had used the greens for a salad a few days ago and it still had a few carrot and radish slices in it. But I didn't want to add more or anything else because I didn't know how it would all come together with the dressing.
Side note: I used my awesome-tastical food processor to slice the carrots and it was easy and perfect! I highly recommend purchasing (or asking for as a present) a good food processor. I've had bad/cheap ones for years that never worked well. This one wasn't that much money but is much better quality and does everything I ask it to do. Stay tuned, it makes another appearance later in this post.
For the dressing I used a recipe from my fav recipe site eatingwell.com. Rather than repeating it, you can find it here. I did modify it a little. I used red wine vinegar because that's what I had on hand and it worked very well. I also used about 1 T of chopped green garlic since it is season right now rather than the typical clove it calls for. Also, I would recommend cutting down the amount of oil just a little. It was a bit too oily for me, so I added more of the rest of the ingredients and it tasted better. If you do not have a good smoked paprika, I highly recommend it. You never want to use too much, but it can add some great flavor to dressings, sauces, rubs, etc.
I put all the ingredients in my processor and let it go for awhile to make sure it was smooth.
After the dressing was done I added it to the greens in a large bowl (I don't have a salad bowl yet but it'll be on the registry!) and tossed it together to coat.
I served it onto the dinner plates and then topped it with a bit of smoked chevre I just got at the farmer's market. Goat's cheese was perfect and the smoky flavor augmented the taste of the paprika in the dressing.
To go with the salad we grilled slices of eggplant, zucchini and (for the meat eaters) steak. For the veggies we cut them, salted them to tenderize, let them sit for about 10 minutes, sprayed them with olive oil and then grilled them for about 10 minutes.
For the steak we used a homemade concoction of a rub using paprika, red pepper flakes and various seasonings we had on hand. We grilled it until it was medium rare or so and then let it sit, covered, for 5 minutes to avoid losing much juice.
All of the components of the dinner went well together and were quite tasty. The zucchini was purchased and used because it was on discount and the steak was on sale. Overall the dinner cost a little more than we usually spend, but still only cost less than $20 for three people including the steak, veggies, cheese (which we still have over half of), and greens.
Do you have a good recipe that uses paprika?
How about a fun salad recipe?
Would you like to learn more about preparing eggplant and some good recipes?
yummy! see everytime I read your blog with recipes, or even lookup some up online,I get really excited about the food and how simple/fast/easy it is. Then 7pm rolls around and we finally get home from work and even the easiest meal seems like a pain and not what I want to spend my time on LOL.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you want to spend your time on? How do you spend your time?
ReplyDeleteI would say just start small and slowly and try to plan ahead as much as you can.
I would also recommend a 5pm snack if you know you won't be eating until 7:30 or so. The other day I had to work until after 7pm. So I ate a snack at 5. I had a bag of 100 calorie popcorn and a fruit snack (grown up fruit roll up with only 50 calories and no additives). When I got home at 7:30 I actually had more energy than usual and was able to go for a run with the dogs. Then I made a quick dinner of ramen and veggies. It ended up being a very nice evening and a nice change from the tv watching habit we all fall into.