Soup & Salad Sunday Supper

What an exciting trip to Park Road Books for the Lee Brothers book signing! They seem to be on board to join us for cocktails at our December meeting before their talk at Queens College. Kudos to Barrie and Katherine for their charm. I brought nothing but was nervous and sweaty, per usual. After an hour of non-stop food talk, I came home to start preparing our Soup & Salad Sunday Supper. I made my old standby Potato Leek Soup and tried a new recipe from my "new" Ellie Kriegrer cookbook (and when I say "new" I mean a newly purchased Christmas gift for someone....maybe one of you....that I am carefully using until the time when I have to wrap it up). I thought I would share the recipes since I wanted to finally figure out this blog thing. Hope you are all having a nice Sunday night and have a wonderful Thanksgiving week. I think we should have mandatory blog posts of all our Thanksgiving meals (complete with pictures). Mine will be lacking since I have the vegetarians coming.

Ellie's Buffalo Chicken Salad

1lb boneless skinless chicken breasts, pounded, cut into strips

2 TB Frank's Hot Sauce

2 teaspoons olive oil

1 heart of romaine, cut into strips

4 stalks celery, thinly sliced

2 medium carrots, coarsely grated

2 scallions, thinly sliced green parts only

1/2 cup blue cheese dressing (recipe follows)

Preheat broiler.

In large bowl, toss chicken strips with hot sauce and oil. Arrange chicken on baking sheet and broil until cooked through, 4-6 minutes, turning once.

In large bowl, combine the romaine, celery carrots and scallions and toss with dressing. Divide on plates and top with warm chicken. Serve with extra hot sauce.

(I did not toss it together with dressing as instructed......I should have....would have been better)

Ellie's Blue Cheese Dressing

1/4 cup nonfat plain yogurt

1/3 cut lowfat buttermilk

2 TB mayo

1 TB white wine vinegar

1/2 t sugar

1/3 cup blue cheese crumbled

Salt and pepper to taste

Strain yogurt in a strainer lined with doubled up paper towel for 20 minutes in refrigerator.

Whisk buttermilk and yogurt into mayo until smooth. Add vinegar and sugar and continue to whisk until well combined. Stir in the blue cheese and season with salt and pepper.

(I liked the dressing.....lighter than normal blue cheese I make with sour cream....but it was good.)

Adrienne's Potato Leek Soup

3 leeks, white and light green parts only, sliced

2 carrots, chopped

2 celery, chopped

1 zucchini, peeled and chopped

4-5 white or yukon gold potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 inch cubes

8 cups chicken broth

1/4 cup light cream or whole milk

lemon

Salt and pepper to taste

Saute leeks, carrots, celery and zucchini in olive oil until soft (10 minutes or so). Add potatoes and cover with chicken broth. Bring to a boil and simmer until potatoes are soft. Take off burner and blend using an immersion blender. Add cream and warm through but do not boil. Add Salt and Pepper to taste. Ladle into bowls and squeeze a little lemon in each.