What’s for Dinner, August 2010

Martha Stewart’s Living magazine has a “What’s for Dinner?” column that appears monthly suggesting four different dishes to put together into one meal. Many times there is a main dish, a side or two, and a dessert. I decided it would be fun to start making these meals to gauge how difficult and expensive they are to make. Here is the salad and main dish for August 2010.

Iceberg Lettuce with Blue Cheese Vinaigrette:

I’ve seen “The Wedge” salad in several restaurants for a decade in our area. It’s basically 1/4 of a head of iceberg lettuce with dressing and croutons. In my opinion a salad lacking in nutritional value and a scam since iceberg lettuce is extremely cheap to buy and on a restaurant menu somehow warrants a $6 or more pricetag. Egads! This was a disappointment to me since I don’t like blue cheese and therefore skipped making the suggested blue cheese vinaigrette and went with caesar dressing and parm cheese.

The recipe is as follows:
3 tbsp. white-wine vinegar
1 small shallot, finely chopped
1 tsp dijon mustard
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup crumbled blue cheese (1 oz)
1 head iceberg lettuce, quartered into wedges

1. Whisk together vinegar, shallot, and mustard. Pour in oil in a slow, steady stream, whisking constantly until emulsified. Whisk in half the blue cheese. Season with salt.
2. Arrange lettuce wedges on a platter. Drizzle with vinaigrette. Sprinkle with remaining blue cheese, and season with pepper.

The one good thing about this salad is that it is easy to prepare!

The main dish for August 2010 is a Bacon, Avocado and Tomato Sandwich. It gets two-thumbs up from me. The recipe calls for:
12 or 16 slices of pepper-crusted bacon (I used regular b/c I couldn’t find pepper-crusted)
8 slices rustic bread
2 tbsp plus 2 tsp mayonnaise
1 1/3 cups radish sprouts (or any sprouts)
1 Hass avocado, sliced
1 large tomato, sliced
coarse salt

1. Cook half the bacon in a large skillet over medium heat, turning occasionally, until crisp, 7-9 minutes. Transfer to a paper-towel-lined tray to drain. Repeat with remaining bacon. (or microwave the whole pound together like I did)

2. Lightly toast bread, and spread 1 tsp mayonnaise onto 2 side of each slice. Pile on sprouts, avocado, bacon, and tomato. Season with salt, and top with remaining bread.

This sandwich was very good and satisfying. And a cinch to make. It’s a nice change from the typical BLT and fancy enough to serve to serve to friends without going overboard.

The second side dish is a Sweet Corn with Baby Beets and Basil salad that I never was able to find baby beets to go in. I actually never found grown-up beets either. I went to three grocery stores and was shocked to find no one had them. I’ve seen beets in our stores for years so either I was going on too little sleep (a real possibility) or there was a beet shortage this year! However, I will keep looking for them and try to make the recipe later this month.

The dessert was the Plum Skillet Cake I posted last week that got rave reviews from my testers. The recipe is here.

Here is a cost breakdown for what I made. I did not do a cost analysis for the plum skillet cake because I had all the ingredients in my pantry except the two plums.

2.99 for the sourdough bread = 12 slices so 2.99/12 = 0.25/slice
1.99 for organic pea shoots = at least 4 sandwiches so 1.99/4 = 0.50 per sammie
1.00 tomatoes 1/ 3 = 0.33 (for two sammies) (16 per one)
0.88 avocado for two sammies (44/one)
3.98 bacon 16 slices, 4 slices / 4 sammies = 1.00 per sandwich

0.50 +0.50 + .16 + 0.44 + 1 = $2.60 each sandwich

2.58 for organic caesar dressing / .10 per salad
1.18 for iceberg lettuce / 4 = 0.29 per salad
2.18 for parm cheese – generous at 0.21 per salad
could add croutons

0.10+0.29+0.21 = 0.60 each salad

Overall a pretty good price for eating at home instead of going out to lunch. Hope you enjoy giving some of these recipes a try yourself! Tell me what you think.