Cooking Light

Mom, Doug & Sandy visited me last week which means I'm coming off a massive food binge. The peak of said binge was lunch on Friday: I ate the fried chicken on brioche, with bacon, blue cheese, egg, avocado, & sundried tomato vinaigrette at Citizen Cake. For serious.

Brioche
Fried chicken
Bacon
Blue cheese
Egg
Avocado
Sundried tomato vinaigrette

Damn, that is one good sandwich. 

If it doesn't kill you by clogging your arteries, you surely will die of ecstasy upon eating it, I promise. And I ate the entire thing.

Well, I'm sure it will shock you to find out that my jeans were just a smidge too tight this morning and as much as I'd like to blame that on their being freshly laundered, I think we all know what's going on here. I'm sure the two huge pieces of pizza and the chocolate croissant I had yesterday that capped off 5 days of eating out for almost every meal, drinking at lunch and dinner (and sometimes in between) and barely working out the whole time had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Needless to say, it's been a day of light eating. 

That said, I haven't cooked at home in days, and I've been really itching to make something delicious and use what was left of last week's farm box delivery. I knew there was a rather large bag of summer squash in my fridge and was determined to put it to good use. Some trolling of Epicurious led to this recipe, which inspired the below. I did a terrible job taking pictures tonight because I was much more into the joy of actually cooking than I was into the joy of documenting it. Sorry!

Kate's Summer Salad

Makes uh...maybe 4 servings? I don't know. I have at least enough remaining for a couple of lunches. So it makes that much.

Ingredients

2 large summer squash or 6 small ones, trimmed and sliced lengthwise

1 red pepper, cored and quartered

3 tablespoons olive oil, divided

1/2 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined if you're into that

2 tablespoons pesto, divided 

2 teaspoons red wine vinegar

juice of one small lemon

1 cup chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1 medium-sized heirloom tomato, cored and chopped

Salt and pepper

Directions

1. Heat a grill (or in my case, grill pan) so it's good and hot and smoky.

2. Turn on the fan that blows on your overly sensitive smoke detector and open some windows.  

Oh wait, that's just at my place? Nevermind...onto step 3.

3. Make the dressing: combine 1 tablespoon pesto, juice of half the lemon, vinegar, and salt and pepper, in a small bowl. Set aside.

4. Combine the shrimp, 1 tablespoon pesto, and 1 tablespoon olive oil in a small bowl. Toss to coat. Set aside.

5. In a medium bowl, combine the summer squash, red pepper, 2 tablespoons of olive oil and salt and pepper. Toss to coat. Grill the veggies until tender but not mushy. I think this took about 12 minutes in my grill pan. Chop the veggies and add back to the medium bowl along with the dressing. Toss to coat.

6. Turn the heat to medium low and grill the shrimp for about 90 seconds on each side. Add to the veggie bowl along with the chickpeas and heirloom tomato. 

7. Season with salt and pepper. It might need the rest of the lemon juice, so have a little taste and then possibly throw that in as well. I did.

Serve over arugula for a salad or stuff in a pita pocket (again, with arugula) for a sandwich. 

Tastes delicious alongside some pinot grigio. 

What? Wine's good for you. 

Plus, I said I was eating light, not going on a cleanse.

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