Background: My wife used to not like goat cheese or the band Spoon. Then, more than a decade into our relationship, she decided she liked both. She reminds me of this fact any time I accuse her of being, let’s just say, “too set in her ways.” Anytime I put goat cheese on anything, I hum “That’s the way we get by / To way we get by / And that’s the way we get by / To way we get by” and consider the fact that people can change. The night after you do the Quail move, if you have leftovers, do this move.
- Pick all the leftover quail off the bones. Save bones, gristly bits, and skin for stock.
- Get some goat cheese.
- Get some greens from the garden or store.
- Get a head of romaine lettuce.
- Get some of those Croutons you made.
- Do The Move for All Salad Dressings but add a little bit of berry something. It could be actual berries. It could be jam. It could be pomegranate juice.
- Add the quail, greens, romaine and croutons to a bowl and toss everything a bit.
- Add the goat cheese in chunks to the dressing. Break up the chunks with a fork until they are the size you want.
- Just before service, add the dressing and toss the salad with salad tongs.
Why It Works
- I reserve the juices from roasting the quail, which, you will remember, has a lot of butter. I pick the quail at the end of dinner and cover the quail with these juices before I store them in the fridge. When everything is chilled, the quail is submerged in juices and a hard layer of butter has formed on top like nature’s Tupperware lid. Pick the quail out and save the butter and juices with the skin, bones and gristle for stock.
- For this salad, I used some goat cheese that came covered in blueberries. (I don’t usually do this, because I want the versatility to go in any direction. But one time, I had this salad in mind and thought it would work well and it did.)
- Arugula works well, as does Swiss and rainbow chard.
- The romaine give the salad body and crunch. I find that salads with soft cheeses need a lettuce with a strong spine to stand up to them in a salad.
- What do you mean you “didn’t make croutons”? What are you even doing with your stale bread then?
- Sometimes my berry component comes from the ones on the cheese, other times they are the ones my kids reject because they have a weird divot in them or sometimes it’s just jam or jelly because that’s what I have.
- You aren’t dressing it yet because the goat cheese and the dressing will make the croutons soggy and the greens wilted.
- Goat cheese will cling to things and clump up in a salad. You can just keep tossing it better, but then you can over toss it and bruise the greens. Keeping the goat cheese chunks suspended in the oil of the dressing will help you get an even crumble and it will help distribute them throughout the salad instead of clumping up in a big wad. Also, the combination of the creamy goat cheese and the acidic dressing should satisfy both the vinaigrette camp and the creamy dressing camp.
- This is a salad that you want to toss just right: enough to get the goat cheese and quail and berries and croutons evenly distributed, but not so much that it becomes a soggy mess.
Mods:
- Add nuts or seeds to the mix. Pecans and sunflower seeds (or a mix of both to cut the cost) will work well.
- If you don’t have quail, duck leg meat would work.
- If you don’t have duck, chicken leg meat would work.
- If you don’t have chicken leg meat, increase the nuts and seeds.