Barely, barely salad if we're honest. There's a reason why this one is happening in Meat Week, and it is the Franco-Belgianness of an approach to salad: it doesn't count if there's no bacon.
Chicken and bacon and peach salad, it is called. And that is exactly what it is.You will need some cooked chicken, or you can cook it as needed - warm is good for this, but cold would also be fine. I just bunged thighs into the oven, as I never have leftover chicken at the moment. I don't think I've cooked a whole chicken throughout lockdown, though I vaguely remember mentioning I had a student special where you got about 10 meals off one chicken and three onions (risotto was involved), and I have cooked that quite a few times over the years.
Anyway: sort some chicken. Then, a frying pan. Fry plenty of bacon in your pan, then reserve the bacon and keep the grease. Fry a sliced onion in your bacon grease, till soft but not caramelised. 8-10 minutes or so will do it, on not too high.
Meanwhile, sort out some salad leaves. Floppy lettuce, plenty, and some kind of herb. Recipe suggests chives, tarragon, chervil or basil - basically anything also floppy, with a bit of oomph.
Also, slice your peaches - a couple of them in 6ths, turns out to be the instruction, so mine were a bit thin.
Also also, sort out your dressing - a seriously mustardy vinaigrette, with a shake of good honey.
(Good honey: nearly bought this for borage #JacobinDay, but the stall only takes cash. I eventually remembered I'd still got a tenner leftover from last year, and bought it some weeks later. It's very nice. If not notably boragey.)
The onion should be done now. Scoop it out to keep with your bacon, and now: fry your peaches. Just a minute or so, then drizzle on some honey, and cook another minute.
Serve. You will want bread to mop things up. It's very good for summer, especially the rainy kind.
*
Less ideal, tonight's meatballs. I knew they were meant to be deep fried, which I never do, so the actual cooking was going to be an issue; I had plans for that. But I had omitted to account for the first two recipe steps in planning my evening: grate and drain a couple of big potatoes, and then mix the meatballs together and wait for an hour, *with two slices of bread on top* to squeeze out any further water.
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| Sure, suuuuure. This is normal. |
If I'm honest, it was never going to be a feelgood cooking night. I've had a long day, in which I've partly been helping at an online conference, with all the slightly vague feelings that immersion in a conference gives you. And then because it's online I have also been present in the office, and not 100% doing good things there (derp, derp self, you fool). I planned to go shopping at lunchtime, but couldn't because of sorting out the derp, and so I had to go after work (which was at least blissfully empty at the checkouts thank you football), which meant that making the meatballs got kicked back to past half six, at which point an hour's wait and then an indeterminate cooking time made dinner look quite far off. Also, I'm having a mattress delivered tomorrow, and my delivery window is 7-9AM, so I've got to be up at 6.30 dammitall.
Graaaaargh. ANYWAY.
Pork mince, chopped onion, an egg, a touch of bicarb, dried mint, cinnamon, those squeeze-dried grated potatoes, the starch from the bottom of the bowl you've drained your spuds into (which did indeed exist, amazingly), a lot of chopped parsley, seasoning and limited breadcrumbs (recipe says 100g for 500g mince but start by adding half that and see how dense it looks). Cypriot meatballs, these, from Taverna.
In theory then deep fry small meatballs. I did not do that. Big meatballs. Warmed on the hob to get the pan started, then 35 minutes in the oven.
You know what? These were good, against all odds. They cooked out nicely, the potato made them almost fluffy on the inside. I wasn't tooooo ravenous by the time they arrived. And with all that potato in them, all you need on the side is the odd tomato. I
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