Meat salad

Meat salad -- mmm.

Doesn't that just sound good? Well, it is. One of our family favorites is this recipe that I got out of Bruce Aidells' excellent Complete Meat Cookbook. If you're in the market for a meat cookbook and you don't seriously consider this one, you're missing out. I bought this book ten years ago (or thereabouts) when I lived in California, and I can honestly say it's one of the 5 best cookbooks I own. None of the recipes have been duds, and a good number have been flat out winners, like this recipe for "Tostada Salad", which in our house just gets called "Meat Salad".

Our version is slightly different from the version in the cookbook (I use less avocado and tomato, mostly because avocados are a little pricey, and often neither the avocados or the tomatoes are worth the gamble, and you're supposed to add green chiles, but I always forget to buy them at the store)
I made it tonight with some left over top round that I grilled over the weekend, along with:

• 2 heads of lettuce (1 green-leaf, 1 red-leaf)


• 1 bunch cilantro


• 1 yellow pepper


• 2 tomatoes


• 1/2 red onion


• 1 avocado

After washing all the salad ingredients, I tore up the lettuce and the cilantro, tossing it together in a bowl like so:

Then I cut up the pepper:


The tomatoes:

The onion:

and then I sliced the meat, and put it over the salad.

I then moved on to the dressing, which goes like:

• 2 tbsp cider vinegar


• 1 tbsp tarragon wine vinegar


• 2 tsp salt


• 1 tsp paprika


• 1 tsp dry mustard


• 1 tbsp sugar


• 3/4 c olive oil

I combined the dry ingredients:


And then the vinegars:


and finally the oil, whisked together in an emulsion.

And in the end, what you end up with is....

Darn fine salad.
Like I said in the beginning, you owe to yourself to check out Bruce Aidells' Complete Meat Cookbook.