Spring Cranberry Salad

Want to impress your friends?  Want to say, "Yo, check out this complicated and fancy lookin' salad?"  I mean, who doesn't want to say that, really.  This is your salad.  It's deceivingly simple, but your friends will think you're a bona fide Martha Stewart.

You'll need:

- 1 head of romaine, or a spring greens mix
- a handful of dried cranberries
- some chopped up celery, about 1 or 2 stalks
- 2 shallots
- some crumbled goat cheese
- poppy seed dressing, the creamier, the better

First, wash and tear up your romaine into bite sized pieces.  Or dump a bag of spring mix in a bowl.  Do you enjoy how I give you options?

Now we want to caramelize the shallots to make them really sweet.  Saute them up into smallish pieces, and put them in a saute pan over medium heat.  They don't need any oil or anything, their natural sugars will start to sweat out and make everything realll tasty like.

While those are browning up nicely, we can start assembling the salad.  You'll want to add the celery, and the goat cheese for some tang.

Couple of handfuls of cranberries right on top...

And now add the caramelized shallots...

If you want at this point you can add some DELICIOUS candied walnuts or pecans, but who has time to candy their own pecans?  Plus, those suckers are EXPENSIVE.

Pour on some scrumptious poppy seed dressing...

And bada boom bada bing you're in business.  Not too shabby for about 10 minutes work, eh?

Enjoy!

<3 Courtzilla

Greek Panzanella

So... this name is a bit misleading. Greek panzanella. Panzanella is traditionally an Italian bread salad - usually made with croutons and various Italian veggies. I had a bag of Stacy's pita chips on hand that I stole from after hours at a wedding I was at... (thanks Josh!) and decided to go Greek! This is super delicious and refreshing. Great for a light dinner.

You'll need:
- chips or croutons
- tomatoes
- cucumbers
- red onions
- salt and pepper
- extra virgin olive oil
- balsamic vinegar
- parmesan cheese (feta would be luffly too.)

First, dump the chips in the bottom of a bowl. This recipe is easy to make for 1, or for 100, so I didn't provide measurements...seeing as I didn't actually take any while making it.


Then, chop up your veggies into bite-sized chunks. Add your cucumbers....



Tomatoes....


And red onions. Feel free to add the red onions just raw as they are... or use this trick. I personally don't like the taste of raw onions. It's way too strong for me. What you can do is give the onions an ice bath. I'm not even kidding.


Let them sit there while you're putting together the salad. It helps take the bite out of the onion. Sounds weird, but it works!

Go ahead and add the cheese at this point too.


I use fresh grated parmesan...but that's because I'm a snob.

While your onions are bathing, we can get the "dressing" ready. I use dressing in quotation marks because I hesitate to call it anything, since it's so easy.

So here's what you do. Pour extra virgin olive oil in a bowl. Add balsamic vinegar. It's about a 3:1 ratio.



Isn't that a sweet picture?

After you're done admiring (take your time), stir.



Now, add your onions, salt and pepper, and stir in dressing.


Cover and let sit in the fridge for a half hour. When you bring it out, it'll look like this!


All the dressing and tomato juices soak into the chips. It's so good. The chips are hearty enough that they don't get all soggy. Make sure you eat it that day though... once it's sat over night it definitely gets that gross mushy quality. I was very upset at lunch the next day.

That's it! Enjoy!

<3 Courtzilla

Dill Chicken Salad

Ok, when you think of the words "chicken salad" what do you think of? I think of crappy restaurant choices and disappointments. Depressing, I realize. THAT NEEDED TO CHANGE. Whenever I order chicken salad, I'm always thinking eh...it's ok. Unless I'm at Penn Station, but I'm fairly certain they put some sort of crack in their recipe.

Chicken salad is one of those classic lunch recipes that can be so individualized, that everyone has a "chicken salad, my way" recipe. Well, you do if you're me. And here's mine.

You'll need:
- A cut up whole chicken. I believe they're called "fryer chicken".
- 1/3 cup low fat mayo
- 1/3 cup light sour cream
- handful of fresh dill
- pinch 'o paprika
- juice from 1 lemon
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- salt and pepper
- 2-3 stalks of chopped up celery
- couple handfuls of halved grapes
- green onions if you've got any (oh wait, I didn't)

Ok! First - the chicken. The main component. The heart of the meal.

Rinse off the raw chicken, and place it in a pot of water. A BIG pot.

Put the pot on the stove, and bring to a boil. Once it hits the boil point for around 5 minutes, bring the heat down to a simmer. You'll want to let it sit and cook for about 40 minutes.


While the chicken is bubbling away in it's hot bath, I start the sauce! Basically, you'll want to combine your sour cream, mayo, salt, pepper, paprika, lemon juice, brown sugar, and whatever else floats your boat into a small bowl. Pretty sure I added some other stuff, but I'm so behind on posting I can't be bothered to remember.


Just mix that all together! You can also chop up your dill and add it to the sauce at this point.


Have you ever had fresh dill? It adds a distinctly pickle-y flavor, and I don't have to add weird pickle texture. It's the best compromise ever.

Okie dokie. When your chicken is done, take it outta the pot.



At this point you can do one of two things. I like my chicken salad chunky, so i rip the meat off the bone and chop it into cute chunks. Some people like their chicken salad all one texture - if that's your preference, go ahead and shred up all the chicken with two forks at this point.

Then, add the chicken to a bowl with your chopped up veggies, like so!



COLORS.

Guess what the last step is.

Dump in your sauce, and MIX!!



Yummo! Put it on a bun, or on some lettuce with some cute cherry tomatoes! Go crazy and TOAST the bun. I know, I know, I push you too far.



Hello, lover. Slash lunch for the next 4 days.

Enjoy!

<3 Courtzilla

Cold Green Bean Salad

Ahhh, the glories of summer. All I want to do is eat cold salads with lots of in season veggies. What's in season now you ask? Green beans! They're are on sale and super cheap...and I'm obsessed with them. It's the perfect combination.

This salad is a refreshing green bean and tomato salad, with a light vinegrette. It's great for a side dish next to something straight off the grill. To make it, you'll need...


- Couple hand fulls of green beans
- A pint or so of grape or cherry tomatoes
- A sprinkle of feta cheese
- About 1 tsp of garlic
- 1/3 cup of olive oil
- 2 tbsp of red wine vinegar
- 1 tsp oregano
- salt and pepper

To start, you'll want to boil some salted water. Once the water is at a rolling boil, throw your green beans (make sure you trim off the tough ends) in the water for about 5 - 7 minutes, until they're tender but still have a bite to them. Drain and cool the green beans.


You'll also want to halve some tomatoes, and throw them in a clean bowl. Or... a cake pan. I haven't done dishes in a while, step off.


At this point you can throw the cooled green beans in the bowl, and sprinkle some feta over it.

Mmmk... the dressing!

Add your olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, garlic, and oregano in a small bowl.


At this point you can throw some chopped shallots in there too if you fancy.... but raw onions make me smell bad so I leave them out.

Whisk it together until everybody gets to know one another reallll well.


Now drizzle the dressing over your veggies.


Now just toss it all together... and savor the deliciousness that is summer.


Yum! The dressing is really what makes this POP!

Enjoy!

<3 Courtzilla

Lazy Man's Chicken

You know when you get home from work, want a cooked meal, but you have about 4 ingredients and no time? That's where this dish comes in. It's totally a lazy weekday meal. Take a mediocre amount of planning, and some thievery, but we'll get to that in a second. It's....

BBQ Citrus Chicken.

This is seriously a great summer dish, and would be awesome on the grill. And... it's so simple!! Probably one of the simplest dishes in my head, but oh so good. I don't even remember where I got this... and I don't exactly take measurements. Onto the food!

You will need:
- some sort of citrus-y juice
- BBQ sauce
- whatever part of the chicken you heart best (i used chicken boob)
- salt, pepper
- a bit of oil for the pan/grill
- oranges (optional)

The thing that makes this dish great is that it's so easy, and yet the chicken comes out juicy and flavorful every time. The trick is in the marinade. It's all about marinade, baby.

To start, you'll need... this!


Start by putting the chicken in a ziplock bag. I used 2 chicken breasts so I can have leftovers for lunch.


Then, add about 1/2 - 1 cup of orange juice. Now, I didn't have any orange juice. So if you're like me, you'll steal your roommates orange pineapple juice. Stealing is good for the soul, and makes a hell of a marinade.


After that's done, put in around 1/2 - 1 cup of BBQ sauce.



Squish everything together, so that the chicken is evenly coated. Throw it in the fridge and forgeddabouddit. I would suggest at least an hour. What I did was put this all together the night before (takes about 4 minutes) and ate my cake and went to bed. When I got home from work today, these babies were defrosted, super flavorful, and ready to go on the grill.


So when you're ready to grill these, take them out of the bag and get rid of the marinade. You don't want to use it for basting or anything because it's got all the raw chicken juices in there. Yechhhh. Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper on each side.

Now, at this point it's really cool if you don't live in a basement, and you have a grill. However, for us poor suckers who live in tiny basement apartments, I can't tell you how much I love my new grill pan (thanks mom)! It gets beautiful char marks on the food and almost makes me think I'm outside. If you have a grill pan (just a skillet would work fine too), pour just a bit of olive oil on it and spread it around. This will make the chicken not stick to the pan.


Throw those suckers on there and let 'em have it. My stove was on medium heat. They were probably on the grill about 5-6 minutes each side, since I'm paranoid about chicken not being fully cooked.

I didn't get a picture of it, but I basted each side with just the plain BBQ sauce, just for some more flavor. If you want to get really fancy schmancy you can cut up an orange and grill those too for presentation - the char of the grill will make all the natural sugars carmelize. However, being as the title of this post is lazy man's chicken, I decided to go with the spirit of the post and not do it.

One thing I did realize was that man cannot eat chicken alone. I made a quick salad! I used these ingredients, since I thought they would be nice with the pineapple-orange flavors of the chicken.


If you can't tell, that's grapes, romaine, pineapple chunks, blueberries, a golden delicious apple, and feta cheese. You can basically throw in any fruit you've got and it would be fine. This would be devine with strawberries, maybe with pecans or almonds for some crunch.

In a perfect world, I would have poppyseed dressing to throw on top of this. However, Courtzilla is not perfect, and I think I ate it all in a drunk stupor. So, I had to substitute with some raspberry pecan dressing, which was still scrumptious. I mean, just look at it.


Once your chicken is done, throw that on the side, and VOILA! Lazy man's dinner.



This is kind of a crappy shot, but I was too busy eating to get another one. I had some leftover corn bread that I had on the side with a bit of butter. It was delicious, and took about 15 minutes to throw together. How's that for a meal?

<3 Courtzilla

It's sweet. It's tangy. It's Creamy Macaroni...er.. Bowtie Salad.

Ah ha! The first recipe, and one that I just got done making. In the future I'll be taking step by step photos, because it is my feeling that you can never have enough food photos on your blog. Plus, I secretly want to be Ree Drummond from The Pioneer Woman Cooks.

So. It's a summer staple. Macaroni salad. I'm always tempted to buy those tubs of macaroni salad at the supermarket, but then I look at the fat content and a part of my insides dies a little. Not that I'm normally preoccupied with such things as fat content... but I like to pretend I am when I'm being judged by fellow grocery shoppers.

Anyway. Why buy store bought when it's so easy to make yourself? Like seriously, I had the dressing for this done in the time it took to boil the pasta. No big deal. I also tweaked the recipe a bit... one of the major problems being I had no elbow macaroni. So.... bowtie pasta it is!

What you'll need... (this is what I used for a 4 serving recipe, just FYI)

- 1 and a 1/2 cups of uncooked pasta
- 1/3 a cup of mayo - I used light mayo. It's all about fat content.
- 1/4 a cup of sugar
- 1 tablespoon of distilled white vinegar
- teaspoon or so of yellow mustard - I used spicy brown, because I'm a rebel.
- pinch of salt
- pinch of pepper
- 1/4 of a sweet onion, finely diced
- 1 stalk of celery, finely diced
- some diced carrot... I legitimately used 4 baby carrots. I have issues.
- bout a 1/3 cup of frozen peas

Ok so the original recipe called for green pepper, and didn't have peas in it at all. It also listed the carrots as optional, along with pimentos. I have never bought pimentos, so those were out, and I went to chop up some green pepper, only to find it was mushy. Does this happen to anyone else, or is that just me? How did I go grocery shopping today, then go to cook only to find out I'm out of elbow macaroni and I only have one squishy pepper. Epic fail Courtzilla, epic fail.

Anyway.

- Now. Boil the pasta in salted water. Cook until just tender.
- Meanwhile, combine all of your dressing ingredients in a pretty big bowl. Add in all the chopped veggies into the dressing... clearly just put in whatever veggies you've got on hand. I chop everything really fine because big chunks of texture creeps me out.
- Fold that all together. Once the pasta is finished, drain it. I ran mine through with cold water so it wouldn't be hot when you added it to the mayo... icky.
- Throw the pasta in with the dressing and mix.

At this point if you're me, you decided you wanted to add peas because it's not green enough and you've got authority problems. I just put the frozen peas in a coliander and ran them under hot water until they thawed out, and tossed 'em in the pasta.

Cover with cling wrap or whatever, and throw into the fridge! Let it mingle there for like an hour or so, although overnight is best. This just gives everyone in the bowl a chance to get to know each other and start making friends.

Devour.

If you wanted to reduce the calories even more, use a multigrain or wheat pasta, and you can switch out the sugar with splenda. Actually the sugar could be toned down a bit too, this is a pretty sweet dressing.

It's that easy, folks. This is so easy, I almost feel bad posting it. Definitely not enough disaster or destruction going on.

<3 Courtzilla