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.

Resetting the blog...

Since I seem to be petering out on writing solely about brewing (and I'm concerned about the consequences to my liver if I threw myself wholeheartedly into beer), I'm going to refocus my blog. Instead of writing only about beer, I'm going to add food to my list of subjects.
I've long loved to cook, and hopefully this is a chance for me to share my interest in something that I care deeply about.

Gone too long...

Wow, hard to believe it's been well over a month since my last post.
In the intervening time, I've done what seems like a lot of stuff (went skiing, my parents came to visit, etc), but what I haven't done is anything beer related.
As a matter of fact, I quit drinking for the month of January(!).
Sadly, my last batch of beer still sits in my closet, waiting for me to get around to bottling it.
My beer goal this week will be very modest, and is only to get my current batch bottled. Once I get that done, I will set another goal, and go from there.