Baked Goat Cheese Salad and Snap Peas with Orecchiette

We hadn't made Baked Goat Cheese Salad in years. It used to be a staple of our Salad repertoire. For some reason I remembered it, so we made it! It was great. We will make it again. Maybe I will bring back our salad with home made Green Goddess Dressing.

For the main course we made a great recipe from Sunday Supper at Lucques: Orecchiette Carbonara with English Peas and Pea Shoots. It is wonderful. I peeled the little string attached to each pea pod by hand, then chopped the peas, shell and all. The pasta just screams out “Spring is Here”. The peas retain all of their crunchiness and the pasta reheats easily in the microwave.

Baked Goat Cheese Salad

Food & Wine

 

Alice Waters used to say that she would rather make salads than almost anything else, which explains how she is responsible for one of the most iconic dishes of the decade, her baked goat cheese salad. In its essence, it's a harmonious blend of lettuces combined with softly baked thyme-and-breadcrumb-coated goat cheese, served alongside crunchy garlic croutons. As with so much of Alice Waters' seasonal, ingredient-driven cooking, this SIMPLE dish is all about the quality of the raw materials. Waters once said, "Only the best is good enough." So use the very best you can find.

 

INGREDIENTS

 

1       8-ounce) goat cheese log

¾      cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided, plus more for greasing

3       sprigs thyme

½      cup plain dry breadcrumbs

½      teaspoon dried thyme

¼      cup red wine vinegar

Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

8       cups loosely packed lettuce leaves

Garlic Croutons

 

DIRECTIONS

 

Preheat oven to 350°F. Brush both sides of bread with melted butter, and place in a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake in preheated oven until golden brown, about 15 minutes, turning halfway through baking. Rub croutons with cut sides of garlic while croutons are slightly warm.