Super Chef Salad


     As the temperature continues to hold at around 105 degrees, my thoughts are turning to a nice, cool salad. Today's Daily Plate features a chef salad made from fresh Romaine lettuce, cucumber, hard boiled egg, sliced scallions, red and yellow tomatoes, shredded carrots, diced nitrite-free ham and gruyere cheese. It was a delicious and cool supper for the mid summer heat.
 Super Chef Salad

     On the photography front, tonight's photo, in my humble opinion, is getting closer to the quality I'm looking for. I used a large mirror to bounce light back in to the right side of the photo. This removed the heavy shadows from an 8 p.m. harsh sun. The learning and practicing continues.

Comments

  1. UnknownJuly 18, 2011 at 9:30 PM

    I will agree salad is a good choice when it is very hot during the summer. But, I have a question. What is gruyere cheese and what does it taste like? Is it a healthier choice than other cheeses?
    very nice photo!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. KeithJuly 20, 2011 at 11:15 AM

    Thanks for your comment and question. Gruyere is a soft, yellow-white cheese that has a bit of a nutty flavor in my opinion. The kind I use most often is a smoked cheese, so it also adds smokey flavor to a dish. If by "healthy" you mean lower calorie or lower fat, no it is not. But, because it has such a nice smokey flavor, a little bit goes a long way. I find that less than an ounce of cheese is plenty for a salad, so I use less cheese and have fewer calories that way.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

FRYday Night!

Image
We practically never fry in this family. Every now and then, though, we pull out all the stops and have a fry night. Since today was Friday, seemed only natural we would have a FRYday night daily plate. For this meal we had steak fingers made from thinly sliced round steak pounded even thinner, jalitos (deep fried jalapeno pepper slices), hush puppies and french fries. I'm pretty sure I've had my fry fix for a good long time. It was delicious, though.
Read more

Fourth of July Faux Pas

Image
The Austin brother-in-law was all set to bring Rudy's barbecue for our Fourth of July family celebration. The economic outlook being what it is, I suggested that I should smoke a brisket on my gas grill to save a boatload of cash while feeding the dozen folks expected for our celebration. Now, I have smoked brisket on my grill precisely one other time, with lessons learned. Still, the family was amenable and so at 6 a.m. sharp, I put a dry rub seasoned brisket on the grill to smoke using mesquite wood chips.     Mesquite chips smoking In my research and limited experience, six hours ought to be long enough to smoke a brisket. The last time I tried it, six hours was not enough, so I decided this time to turn up the burner a bit. Cooking brisket on a gas grill requires the "indirect" method of cooking. One of the four grill burners was turned on. The remaining three were off. The brisket cooks over the off burners by indirect heat. The wood chips are placed over the on...
Read more

Sausage and Pasta Bake

Image
Today's Daily Plate is a combination of several comfort foods. It pairs jalapeno pork sausage (what can be more comforting than that?) with whole wheat pasta and adds three different types of cheese in a homemade cheese sauce. Just talking about it makes me comfortable all over again! Oh, and don't forget homemade whole wheat bread on the side. The pasta was made up of odds and ends of packages and boxes I had on the shelf. Mostly it is penne and shells, but there are also some bow ties. The sausage was a local store brand of link sausages filled with jalapeno and a bit spicy.  To this I added onions, bell peppers and a couple of fresh jalapeno peppers and sauteed the lot up in a skillet. Meanwhile, I boiled the pasta until al dente, and combined the two in a large casserole dish. Then, I made a roux of equal parts flour and butter (I was making an extra large batch, so I used 6 tablespoons of each which made 4 1/2 cups of final sauce and would have been better with five cup...
Read more