Roasted Strawberry Cobb Salad

While we were on vacation I had a couple of salads with strawberries strewn across the top.  It is that season, after all.  When you get the ripe, juicy perfect strawberries.  And, not the Styrofoam things that look like strawberries but taste like, well, Styrofoam!  While on our way home from the office on Sunday I suggested to Connie that we stop at the stand down the street.  First I checked out the bargain table.  Each box is $1.00.  I scored two heads of perfectly fine iceberg lettuce in one, four bell peppers in another and a mountain of peaches in yet the third.  Then, the clamshells of strawberries were buy one, get one free.  Score!  $6.00 and I had everything I'd need for dinners and lunches this week.  That's in addition to my Imperfect Produce box that had a couple of roma tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, kale and a bunch of other goodies. 

The first dish that came to mind was a wedge salad.  We love my version of blue cheese dressing:  mayo, sour cream, dry mustard, cider vinegar and loads of blue cheese whirred through the bullet.  That and the duck breasts with cherry sauce I'd been wanting to make.  But, until we went to Jungle Jim's I couldn't find duck breasts.  We bought four there and since we split one for our entrée, we're good to go for a couple of months.  Ok, that was dinner Sunday. 

Lunch Monday was the next issue.  Salad with strawberries.  How about a strawberry vinaigrette on top of the strawberries?  I used eatyourbooks.com and hunted and hunted. Finally!  On closetcooking by Kevin Lynch I found it.  Roasted strawberry vinaigrette.  It sounded perfect.  And, it was.  Given that we had an avocado to use up and I'd fried bacon for the wedge salads and we had rotisserie chicken at the office, it sounded like a strawberry Cobb salad was in order. I added in some bourbon basted pecans that I read about in one of the cookbooks I bought on vacation.  Tried going back through the indexes and couldn't find the recipe listed so I made it up...  It drives me crazy when some cookbooks don't separately list the recipes inside the recipes.  Oh, well, at least I can usually recreate!

Roasted Strawberry Cobb Salad


Ingredients:
lettuce, chopped (I used iceberg because that's what we had.  You can use spinach, romaine...)
avocado, diced
strawberries, diced
bourbon basted pecans
blue cheese, crumbled
chicken, diced (I used slices of breast meat from a rotisserie chicken)
bacon, cooked and crumbles
roasted strawberry vinaigrette

Bourbon Basted Pecans
Toss a handful of pecans with about a tablespoon of bourbon.  Allow them to sit until the bourbon is absorbed.  Toss the pecans with a knob of butter (I used about a tablespoon) and a good sprinkle of seasoning (I used Emeril's but many would work.)  Bake at 350 for about 10 minutes stirring regularly.  You could also do these in a small skillet.

Roasted Strawberry Vinaigrette
makes enough for four salads
1 c strawberries
1/4 c balsamic vinegar
1/4 c extra virgin olive oil
1 T Dijon mustard
1 t honey
1 clove garlic, minced
salt and pepper