Almost a Cobb Salad... only lighter

We are Cobb Salad lovers in our family. The other day we had some friends over for dinner and wanted to make a green salad that would look as delicious as the Cobb one, only lighter... sort of! :D

So, I found this recipe at one of my favorite food blogs: "Smitten Kitchen". She made this Classic Cobb Salad, adapted from Saveur. You can check her recipe here. I love the way it looked, so in order to make my salad a side dish instead, I switch the blue cheese for feta and didn't add the chicken.


Ingredients:
Serves 4 to 6


- For the Dressing: 

3/4 cup canola oil

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

3/4 teaspoon dry mustard

1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire

1/4 teaspoon sugar

1 clove garlic, minced

Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste


- For the Salad:

1 head romaine lettuce, chopped

1/2 head red leaf lettuce, chopped

2 ounces feta cheese, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

6 strips cooked bacon, roughly chopped

2 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes

2 medium tomatoes, peeled*, seeded, and cut into 1/2-inch cubes

1 avocado, peeled, pitted, and cut into 1/2-inch cubes

Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

2 tablespoons roughly chopped cilantro, for garnish


Directions:


- To make the dressing: Combine the canola oil, olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice, mustard, Worcestershire, sugar, and garlic in a blender/food processor. Purée the ingredients to make a smooth dressing and season with salt and pepper. Set the dressing aside.

Note: If you're planning on making the dressing only for the salad, you'll only need half of what the recipe calls for.


To make the salad: On a (very) large platter, combine the lettuces. (It's important to remove all the extra water from washing them). Arrange the feta cheese, bacon, eggs, tomatoes, and avocado on top of the greens in neat rows.

To serve, drizzle salad with dressing, season with salt and pepper, and top with the cilantro leaves. Alternatively, toss everything together in a bowl.

If you want to make this salad ahead, this is her advice for it:

Salad dressing keeps, covered and refrigerated, for up to one week. Individual ingredients (except the avocado, which is too prone to browning) can be prepped and chopped, and kept in separate containers in the fridge until you’re ready to assemble the salad. However, no doubt due to sturdiness of 2/3 of the lettuces, I found that the entire assembled salad kept surprisingly well wrapped in plastic in the fridge for a few hours.

Enjoy!

Source: www.smittenkitchen.com