Sunday, June 22, 2008

Salad with Grilled Fruit , Bacon, and Feta

I am getting so lazy about this blog. I have been cooking. Not as much as usual, but I have. I have a few recipes to catch up on, so hopefully any of you readers out there haven't given up on me yet.So for the Grilled Peach Salad. I am a huge fan of grilled peaches, starting this summer. I have always loved the idea of grilling fruit making the natural sugars of the fruit so delicious and caramelized, but I haven't really experimented much with peaches until now. I got the idea for this salad from Cooking Light Magazine. It was originally Grilled Peaches over Arugula with Goat Cheese and Prosciutto. Sounds so delicious, but the store where I was shopping didn't quite have all those things, so I improvised. I used romaine and spinach in place of the arugula, feta in place of the goat cheese, bacon instead of prosciutto, and added grilled pineapple to the mix. Very simple changes. Although, I'd love to try our the other version sometime. It seems weird to make a recipe for a salad, since they can be made so many different ways. Things can be added and omitted with out changing the overall purpose of the salad, so please, alter as you wish. Dressings are a fun way to experiment with salads. I did use the Magazines recipe for the dressing. It's so simple and seemed perfect since there were a lot of flavors already going on. Here's what I did:

Bring 1/4 c balsamic vinegar to boil over medium high heat. Simmer until reduced to two tablespoons. Remove from heat and stir in 2 T honey. Let cool to room temp.

Crisp up a few slices of bacon in a skillet. Drain and crumble.

Cut the peaches and pineapple in wedges (big enough to not slip through the cracks) and place them on a hot grill. Leave them on just until that have formed nice grill marks on each side. 30 seconds or a minute per side. You don't really want to cook them, but sear them. Set aside.

Combine 1 T Olive Oil and a dash of salt and pepper in a large bowl. Add your 10 cups of greens and toss to coat. Arrange the greens on individual plates or on a large platter. Top with grilled fruit, bacon, and feta cheese. Drizzle with the balsamic syrup and serve immediately.

You probably already know this, but this was our Father's Day dinner.

1 comments:

Cami said...

This was very yummy!!