This is a tale of culinary transformation.
A couple of years ago, we had friends over to make pizza. I wanted something other than just a red sauce pizza. I had some salted capers on hand. I figured I could saute them with some scallions and a little red pepper flakes and then add some pre-cooked chicken. It turned out pretty tasty so I put it on the pizza with a combination of cheeses to make a sort of white, chicken pizza. The whole package was pretty tasty.
Over the ensuing years, I've gotten this little flavor mixture down pat. I've done it with regular capers and it comes out just as well and with fresh chicken instead of pre-cooked as well. I had whipped up a batch of this scallion-caper-chicken for our pizza experiment night a few weeks back and ended up with quite a bit left over.
On the Sunday following the pizza night, Wife and I were making our regular big ass salad for lunch and out of the blue she asks, "Could you make a salad dressing from the chicken stuff we had on the pizza?" I'm like, "Chicken salad dress?" Really?" She was insistent. "I really like that flavor." So I thought about it. I started out with some of the basics of a vinaigrette putting some Dijon mustard, white wine vinegar, and olive oil in a blender. Then I added some of the chicken mixture and blended away. You know what? It was pretty darn good. I thought it needed something to soften it slightly and having some half and half around popped a little dose of that. Presto, just what was needed. It came out like a ranch dressing that was deeper in flavor. It was pretty hard to distinguish any chicken flavor.
Who would have thought, chicken salad dressing.
3 comments:
That sounds very original! This could become your signature dish.
meattastic!
Now that you are semi retired, you could publish a cook book.
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