Tonight's dinner was a Jamie Oliver recipe. I've missed Jamie and wandered through my app and found this recipe. It was easy to fix. I had to change up the recipe a bit because it was supposed to have bacon and there wasn't any bacon at the farm last night so I had to get a ham steak. The recipe calls for you to slice up chicken breasts into strips and to put them in a bowl with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper. Then you are supposed to cook the chicken and bacon together. Then you cube up a loaf of ciabatta bread and toss those in when the chicken is cooked. The bread is supposed to cook in the bacon fat and get crispy and yummy. I took a tiny bit of bacon grease out of a jar in my fridge (my grandmother always had a jar of bacon fat in her fridge) and put it in my hot pan and then threw the chicken and sliced ham steak in. They cooked slowly for about ten minutes. While the chicken was cooking I cubed up the bread. Then came the hard part, and thankfully Tim took over and helped. I had to put two cloves of garlic along with anchovies into my mortar and pestle with some lemon zest. You have to make it into a paste. Here is where I was wishing that I had replaced my food processor. I couldn't get it to mash into a paste and Tim helped. It took a lot of work and it makes me wonder if my mortar and pestle is more for decoration than use. Anywhoooo, while Tim was working on that I threw the cubed ciabatta bread into the pan of chicken and ham so that they could start getting crispy and then I started the dressing. The dressing was made with the juice of two lemons and then olive oil mixed together. Then I added some creme fraiche. I have never used creme fraiche before and I was thrilled that I was able to find it at the grocery store. I didn't need very much so now I need to figure out what to do with the rest of it. Once that was all mixed together, I added the anchovy paste to the olive oil dressing. By the time the dressing was done, the bread was a beautiful brown crispy color and it was ready to go. I had a big bowl of organic romaine lettuce all cut up in small pieces all ready and I dumped the chicken, ham and croutons into the salad. Then I tossed it all together with the dressing. It is topped with some finely grated Parmesan cheese.
Chicken Caesar Salad
I was a bit skeptical when I was putting this together. I wasn't sure about the whole anchovy thing and again I was worried about the lemon juice/olive oil combo. There was no need for skepticism. Jamie came through again with an amazing recipe. Sadly, the boys didn't like it. Connor took one bite and said he didn't like it. Aidan took a few bites. He wasn't too sure. He said he liked the chicken and he liked the lettuce. Then I think he realized he was eating salad and decided he didn't really like it. Tim and I loved it. We both washed it down with a beer and we both have a container of left over salad for lunch tomorrow. It was a perfect light dinner for and the perfect end to a great day.
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