Grilled Vegetable Salad

A Chicagoan I know calls California Pizza Kitchen‘yuppie pizza.’ Hailing from the land of deep dish makes one finicky, I suppose. Of course this same Chicagoan seems to find Dominoes incredibly satisfying (which I stipulate it is every one and a while). But given a choice, I would prefer California Pizza Kitchen. But this post is not about pizza. It’s about salad!

The one thing I must eat whenever I visit the California is their grilled vegetable salad.



Grilled asparagus, Japanese eggplant, zucchini, green onions, roasted corn, avocado, sun dried tomatoes - all separated into colorful quadrants over a bed of lettuce. It’s such an ideal combination of flavors and textures - even sun dried tomatoes cannot ruin this dish. (Yeah, I said it. Just because we can make raisins with grapes does not mean we should do the same thing with tomatoes. No. No. No.)

I can never think of anything inspiring to do with the salad greens I get, but I decided to try an recreate some version of this salad. I had mixed salad greens, zucchini, garlic, avocado ... and bacon (left over from my Great Beet Experiment). I quickly abandoned the fantasy that my vegetables would bear the marks of a professional kitchen - straight, black grill marks - and sauteed the garlic, zucchini, and bacon on the stove top. After It was done I tossed with the salad greens and topped it with a few chunks of avocado. Poured on top, the balsamic vinegar was supposed to trickle over the greens and unify the flavors. Unfortunately when I tasted it, the vinegar pushed away all the other flavors like a child demanding its parents attention.

The next day I tried again with Caesar dressing. Just right. It didn’t really taste like the food doppelganger I initially tried to create, but it was definitely something I would like to make again.