TY COBB SALAD

 

Hi folks, Chef G. here, and I'm happier than a giraffe eating leaves off a Serengeti acacia tree.  The main reason for my happiness is that I didn't get pilloried too badly for my ill-advised Halloween episode last week, though the general consensus was that the post was more gross than it was scary or funny.  Sorry about that.

Another reason for my happiness is that today I am going back to my Chef G. roots--SERIOUS cooking excellence.  At the same time, I'm also moving forward with my new mission--HEALTHY cooking excellence.  

As you can see, the common theme here is excellence.  Old school excellence, modern excellence, excellent excellence--it really doesn't matter what kind of excellence, because I already know I'm the most excellent celebrity chef on television, radio, the internet, or any other media platform.  That's not just my opinion; it's a scientific fact proven by some guy.

I could go on and on about my cooking excellence but, lucky for you, I don't like to brag.

What Is Cobb Salad Anyway?

I remember seeing Cobb Salad on restaurant menus when I was a kid.  It seemed to be a big thing at supper clubs all over the Midwest.  

I grew up in Iowa, so you can probably understand how, as a pre-teen, I came to believe Cobb Salad was made from corn cobs.  A bare corn cob is truly a thing of beauty, but I sure didn't want to eat a salad made from them.

Corn on the cobb is one of my favorite foods.  At the bottom of this photo, you can see how efficiently I gnaw every kernel off the cobb.  The two cobbs at the top were eaten by non-Iowans.  (For more information on how to grill and eat corn on the cob, see this episode from 2022:  https://chefgcooks.blogspot.com/2021/04/corn-iowas-crop-americas-vegetable.html )

Now that I'm a sophisticated adult, I know Cobb Salad isn't what I thought it was back in the 1970's.  It doesn't contain corn cobs at all.  No, it's sort of like a tossed salad, except the ingredients aren't tossed.  Instead, they're arranged separately and artistically on a platter.

And here's the most interesting part:  The salad was named after one of the greatest baseball players of all-time--Ty Cobb.  I'm pretty sure Gordo Ramses and all other my competitors in the celebrity chef world don't even know that fact.  They have no time for sports because they have one-track minds concentrated on nothing but food.  I'm more well-rounded than those bums, and I think that makes me a better chef. 

Okay, it's possible that bit of Ty Cobb trivia is not so much a fact in reality as it is an alternative fact in my chefydelic mind.  All I know for sure is that Ty Cobb is a Hall of Famer and he was almost as skilled at playing baseball as Chef G. is at cooking food.

But here's a statistic that differentiates Ty Cobb from me: 

Ty's career batting average was a respectable .366, which is the major league record.  My career delicious dish average is .955, which is the celebrity chef record.  As you can see, my D.D.A. is an incredible 589 percentage points higher than his B.A.  I win!

  

Ty Cobb:  Almost as excellent as Chef G.

Enough about statistics!  Let's move on to my recipe for Ty Cobb Salad.

Part One:  The Vinaigrette

I was going to claim vinaigrette was named after the famous surrealistic painter Rene Magritte, but I didn't think you would fall for another ridiculous joke.  So I let it go.

Anyway, the old version of me routinely topped his salads with bottled dressings from the grocery store.  My favorites were Italian and French dressings made with high fructose corn syrup and seed oils.  No wonder my glucose and cholesterol levels are high.  But dammit, the sweet flavor of those dressings enhanced even the worst tasting vegetables, leaves, grass, sawdust, etc.

The new version of me is going to try his hand at a healthier alternative.  After looking up a few vinaigrette recipes, I was pretty impressed with how many of them there were to choose from.

I decided to start with a Balsamic Vinaigrette.  The recipe I saw online was very simple, but I modified it to make it more complicated.  That's what us celebrity chefs do.

Whisk the following ingredients in a bowl.

-1/2 Cup Balsamic Vinegar

-One Tablespoon Honey

-One Tablespoon Dijon Mustard

-1/4 Teaspoon freshly ground pepper

-Salt (be mindful of your blood pressure though)

-Four Tablespoons minced chives

-Slowly stir in 2 Cups Olive Oil

The ingredients before the whisking.

After the whisking, I tasted my creation.  It was so good that I poured the mixture into a jar, applied a label, and made plans to put it on the market . . . at a premium price, of course.  Place your orders now.

PART TWO: Assemble the Salad

A Ty Cobb Salad is all about "presentation."  In the chef world, presentation is an art.  Unfortunately, many celebrity chefs go overboard by catering to pretentious foodies who don't care what the food tastes like as long as it looks good.  I, on the other hand, can assure the foodies that this dish will look as good as a Rene Magritte painting while, at the same time, I can assure the rest of my Chef G-niuses that it will be delicious.  It's the best of both worlds, courtesy of ME.

Here's a step-by-step tutorial on how I created my work of delicious salad art:

-The prep began on Saturday night when I roasted a chicken.  Mrs. Chef G. and I made a meal of it, but I saved some breast meat for my Ty Cobb salad.

-Sunday morning, before the National Football League games started, I boiled a couple of eggs and I fried five strips of bacon.  I let both of them cool before proceeding.

I fried the bacon in my back yard.  It was a courtesy to Mrs. Chef G., who is currently experiencing sensitivity to strong smells due to her chemotherapy.  It was also a pleasant experience for me.  It was a chilly November morning, the leaves on the ground were beautiful, and the bacon aroma reminded me of so many greasy campsite breakfasts of yesteryear.

-I peeled the shell off the egg.

-I de-greased the bacon with napkins.

-I removed the leftover chicken breast from the refrigerator.

-I sliced all three proteins into 1/2" chunks 

-At halftime of the Detroit vs. Miami game, I started chopping up the healthy ingredients.  (That would be the fruits and vegetables.)

Leafy Greens:  Spinach & Romaine Lettuce

Campari Tomatoes:  "The tomato lover's tomato"

An Avocado:  Nature's gift to good health

-Then I lined a cookie pan with parchment paper.

-Then I lined the parchment paper with the lettuce and spinach.

-Then I arranged the chicken, tomatoes, avocado, egg, bleu cheese (not previously pictured), and bacon in vertical lines.  It had to be in that exact order for maximum beauty and flavor.

A bed of greens

Precise rows of healthy salad deliciousness

At this point, the salad was ready to eat.  The key for maximum enjoyment is to use a spatula to scoop up the salad ingredients from left to right and gently unload them into a large bowl.  That way, you get a nice mix of all eight ingredients.

Digging in with a spatula

The final step is to spoon a generous amount of Chef G's Balsamic Vinaigrette onto the Ty Cobb Salad.

All I can tell you is that my salad was as good as a salad can be.  (One could argue that was thanks to the one unhealthy ingredient--bacon.)  By its very nature, a salad could never be as tasty as, say, a rack of baby back pork ribs slathered with Chef G.'s BBQ Sauce.  But maybe, just maybe, it might help me live longer.