This week's meal includes a Cobb Salad, Mini Sourdough Baguettes, and Sprinkle Sugar Cookies.
Cobb Salad is one of my favorite dinners. There are so many flavors, textures, and colors. It's as beautiful as it is delicious. My rendition of a cobb salad includes cherry tomatoes, a hard-boiled egg, oven-roasted chicken, avocado, Maytag Blue Cheese, chives, and of course, bacon. The cherry tomatoes add a beautiful acidic component to the salad. The hard-boiled egg adds a rich and creamy element. The oven-roasted chicken is a lean source of protein and savory component. The avocado adds another creamy piece. The Maytag Blue Cheese adds a little funk. And last but certainly not least, the bacon brings a salty smokey element. The dressing I use for the salad is a red-wine vinaigrette with shallot, olive oil, and bacon fat. It's the perfect hit of acid with all the creamy and rich elements of the salad.
The Mini Sourdough Baguettes are homemade with my sourdough starter, Alice. I started her last August and have been maintaining her ever since. She makes excellent bread! These loaves are personal-sized and have a crispy crust and a soft inside.
The Sprinkle Sugar Cookies are Sarah Keiffer's Pan-Banging Sugar Cookies from her 100 Cookies cookbook. They. Are. So. Good. The cookie dough is a pretty standard sugar cookie. The magic happens in the method. Once you bake the cookies about halfway, you take the pan out of the oven and drop it down on your stovetop. You repeat this process every two minutes until the cookies are finish baking. Banging the pan causes the cookies to deflate and creates these little crinkly ripples around the edge. So, the edges are crispy; the center is soft. They are heaven.
I hope you enjoy this week's meal as much as I do!