Cobbless Cobb Salad
By Catherine Newman
Makes: 4 servings
Total carbohydrates: 10 grams per serving
Hands-on time: 30 minutes
Total time: 30 minutes
Okay, while this recipe is missing the chicken and bacon that would make it a traditional Cobb salad, it has retained the other crucial elements that create a perfectly balanced meal: juicy summer tomatoes, pungent blue cheese, creamy avocado, and tender-yolked eggs. By all means add the meats back in, if you like. Or do what we sometimes do, and sprinkle on a handful of chopped smokehouse almonds; you’ll get bacon’s smokiness and crunch in a delightful vegetarian format.
Ingredients
4 eggs
¼ cup white or red wine vinegar
½ cup olive oil
1 clove of garlic, finely minced or put through a garlic press, or ¼ teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt (or ½ teaspoon table salt)
1 head of lettuce, torn into bite-sized pieces, or 1 (8-ounce) bag of salad greens
2 tomatoes, cut into wedges
1 avocado, pitted, peeled, and sliced
½ cup crumbled blue cheese
2 tablespoons chopped chives and/or basil (or snip them with clean scissors)
Instructions
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Cook the eggs: put them in a small pot and cover them with a couple inches of water. Bring them to a boil over high heat (I put a stone or glass marble in the pot if I’m likely to forget them; it will rattle when the water starts to boil), then cover the pot, turn off the burner, and let the eggs sit for exactly 7 minutes. Now dump the eggs into a colander and run cold water over them until they are no longer warm to the touch – this prevents that green ring from forming – then peel them and cut them in half.
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Make the dressing: whisk together the vinegar, oil, garlic, and salt, or shake them together in a lidded jar.
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Arrange the lettuce on a large plate, drizzle it with dressing, and toss. Arrange the eggs, tomatoes, and avocado around the lettuce, and drizzle those with dressing too (you will likely have leftover dressing, which will keep in the refrigerator for a week or longer). Sprinkle on the blue cheese and chives and/or basil and serve.
About Catherine
Catherine loves to write about food and feeding people. In addition to her recipe and parenting blog Ben & Birdy (which has about 15,000 weekly readers), she edits the ChopChop series of mission-driven cooking magazines. This kids’ cooking magazine won the James Beard Publication of the Year award in 2013 – the first non-profit ever to win it – and a Parents’ Choice Gold Award. Her book "How to Be A Person" was published in 2020. She also helped develop Sprout, a WIC version of the magazine for families enrolled in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), as well as Seasoned, their senior version. They distribute over a million magazines annually, through paid subscriptions, doctor’s offices, schools, and hospitals. Their mission started with obesity as its explicit focus – and has shifted, over the years, to a more holistic one, with health, happiness, and real food at its core. That’s the same vibe Catherine brings to the diaTribe column.
[Photo Credit: Catherine Newman]
