Of all the ways to transform a boring piece of chicken breast, Monterey style is a surefire move towards flavor wow!

I mean…chicken, bbq sauce, bacon, cheese, diced tomato, and your favorite aromatics. Quintessential ‘Layers of Flavor.”

The original Cobb Salad was born one late night in the kitchen of Hollywood’s Brown Derby restaurant. Back in in 1937, owner Robert Cobb had a late-night hankering for a satisfying meal. He began pulling readily available ingredients into a bowl. This kitchen sink salad was promptly added to the menu and became a runaway hit!

EAT COBB:  Eggs, Avocado, Tomato, Chicken, Onion, Bacon, Blue Cheese.

There are so many wonderful adaptations to the original Cobb Salad version. Here’s how I build a Monterey Chicken Cobb Salad!

Clearly we’ve transformed boring chicken breasts with all these wonderful toppings.

Now let’s transform the salad! This is your chance to add your favorite ingredients. The Cobb Salad is a great way to use up leftovers.

At the same time the Cobb Salad was gaining in popularity, so was the table-side preparation. This type of dining experience was catching on quickly. It’s what we fondly refer to as dinner and a show. Today, as we find ourselves eating in vs. dining out, any opportunity to serve a meal family-style is welcomed in this house.

Monterey Chicken Cobb Salad is a family favorite that even your most challenging eaters will enjoy!!

Love the Monterey flavors check out Monterey Loaded Nachos Fries and the Monterey Chicken Grilled Cheese Sandwich.

Don’t forget to follow us @LemonyThyme on Instagram and Facebook! And check out our latest TikTok videos and Pinterest boards too!

All my best,
xo Libby

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Monterey Chicken Cobb Salad

Monterey Chicken Cobb Salad is a family favorite that even your most challenging eaters will enjoy!!

Course Main Course

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes minutes

Servings 6

Author Libby with Lemony Thyme

Ingredients

For the Monterey Chicken

• 3 boneless skinless chicken breasts, about 2 pounds
• 6 Tablespoons hickory bbq sauce or favorite
• 6 slices bacon cooked crispy
• 3/4 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
• 1 Roma tomato diced
• 1 scallion thinly sliced
• 1 jalepeno finely diced

For the Salad

• 8-10 cups lettuce chopped
• 3 hardboiled eggs quartered
• 2 avocado diced
• 2-3 Roma tomatoes diced
• 3 scallions thinly sliced
• 2 corn on the cobb roasted, kernels removed from cobb
• 6 strips bacon cooked crisp, chopped
• 1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese

For the Chili Ranch Dressing

• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 cup mayonaise
• 2 Tablespoons fresh chives (or parsley) minced
• 2 teaspoons chili powder
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• pinch black pepper

Instructions

For the Monterey Chicken

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grill chicken breasts until almost done (about 155 degrees).
• Top each grilled chicken breasts with a schmear of bbq sauce, two slices of crispy bacon and a handful of shredded cheese. Place in oven for 10 minutes or until cheese is melted and bubbly and chicken registers 165 degrees.
• Remove from oven and sprinkle with diced tomato, jalapeno and scallion. Allow to rest for 5 minutes before slicing.

For the Chili Ranch Dressing

• Combine all ingredients. Chill until ready to serve.

For the Salad

• Place all salad ingredients on large platter. Top with sliced Monterey Chicken and drizzle with Chili Ranch Dressing.

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Braciole {Italian Beef Rolls} slowly simmered in spicy Arrabbiata sauce until the beef is fork tender.  The filling, comprised of parmesan cheese, fresh parsley, Italian bread crumbs, garlic, toasted pine nuts, and hard-boiled egg, is my loose interpretation of this classic Italian dish.

The first time this recipe caught my attention was while flipping through a Taste of Home magazine at my in-laws.  Everything about the recipe sounded wonderful. Then this week when my friend shared her new Weight Watchers cookbook with me and there was a modified version of a Braciole recipe, it was clearly time to make it happen.

I took some liberties, beginning with the beef.  Who wants to pound out steaks when you can step up to the deli counter and order slices of nice lean rare roast beef cut an 1/8-inch thick.  I’m sure if we had any Italian fans they are fleeing quickly at the sound of this.  But wait.  If convenience is what’s keeping us from enjoying a recipe as delicious as Braciole, can’t we make an exception.  Just this once.

No pounding required with my modified version.  Just combine the filling ingredients, spoon them in the middle of each slice of beef, fold in edges and roll tightly.  You could tie them neatly at 1-inch intervals with butchers twine ooooor you could take yet another short cut and just pan brown them, carefully turning so they don’t unfold.  That’s what I did and they held together just fine.

The third and final short cut I should have used was my slow cooker.  In my head I reasoned that this sliced roast beef, albeit an 1/8-inch thick, would be melt in your mouth tender from the get go.  As it turns out it wanted a good hour, if not a bit longer, to braise in the arrabbiata sauce.  This could have been achieved in a LOW slow cooker while I went about my business.

Loose interpretations and liberties aside, they were amazing.  Don’t take my word for it, just ask my work-mates who enjoyed the four remaining beef rolls, cut into bites to be shared even further.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I’m making daily Healthy Choices as I work towards my goal of Fit by 50.  I have several teammates on this journey who’s support is invaluable.  We motivate each other, walk together and most importantly share recipes (and the finished product) with each other.  These Briacole {Italian Beef Rolls} with a 1/2 cup of sauce weighed in at 8 WW Pts+.  We served them over roasted spaghetti squash which added no additional points values.  Winning.

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Braciola {Italian Beef Rolls}

Prep Time 20 minutes minutes

Total Time 20 minutes minutes

Servings 8

Author Libby with Lemony Thyme

Ingredients

• 8 slices 1/8-inch thick, about 4-ounces each Boar’s Head Roast Beef
• 2 hard-boiled eggs chopped
• 1/2 cup Italian bread crumbs
• 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese shredded
• 1/2 cup fresh flat leaf Italian parsley chopped
• 3 Tbl. toasted pine nuts
• 2-3 garlic cloves minced
• 2 Tbl. olive oil divided
• pinch salt & pepper
• 3-4 cups arrabbiata sauce
• 1/2 cup dry red wine
• 1 large spaghetti squash optional

Instructions

• Combine chopped hard-boiled eggs, bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, parsley, pine nuts, garlic, 1 Tbl. olive oil, salt & pepper.
• Lay each beef slice on a flat surface; spoon 1/8th filling mixture onto center of beef slice. Fold over one of the short sides, then fold in edges and roll tightly. Reserve and repeat with remaining beef and filling.
• Heat remaining 1 Tbl. olive oil in a large covered skillet over medium-high heat. Brown rolls, 1-2 minutes per side, working in batches. Once browned, top rolls with arrabbiata sauce or transfer to a slow cooker and top with sauce. For stove top method, simmer beef rolls covered over low heat for 60-75 minutes or until tender. For slow cooker method, place on LOW for 3-4 hours or until tender.

For spaghetti squash…

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut squash in half lengthwise. Remove seeds and rub inside with olive oil. Place cut side down on shallow baking sheet. Roast for 50-60 minutes until skin is easily pierced with a fork and flesh is easily removed. Scoop flesh from skins into a bowl and season with salt & pepper to taste.

Notes

These Briacole {Italian Beef Rolls} with a 1/2 cup of sauce weighed in at 8 WW Pts+. We served them over roasted spaghetti squash which added no additional points values.
The 1/2 cup red wine listed under ingredients is used at your discretion. Great in the sauce or on the side.

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Flipping through the pages of this month’s Food Network Magazine and nodding out loud while I acknowledge their feature article on The Wedge Salad.  No matter how you serve it, the crisp cool crunch of iceberg lettuce underneath savory toppings is simply hard to beat.

Crispy bacon, hard-boiled egg, tomato, scallions, cornbread croutons and Homemade Russian Dressing all spooned liberally over a wedge of iceberg lettuce can easily be a meal.

Toasted sesame seeds, roasted corn, chilled crab, minced herbs and diced avocado are all fantastic toppings.  Classic Salads are wonderful year-round.

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Loaded Wedge Salad

Servings 6

Author Libby with Lemony Thyme

Ingredients

• 1 head iceberg lettuce
• 1 large tomato diced
• 6 strips bacon cooked crisp & crumbled
• 2 hard-boiled eggs chopped
• 2 scallions thinly sliced
• 1 cup croutons optional
• 1/2 cup toasted sesame seeds optional
• 1 cup Homemade Russian Dressing

Instructions

• Cut head of lettuce into six wedges. Arrange on individual plates and sprinkle with toppings.
• Serve with Homemade Russian Dressing.

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Lightly beer battered fish nuggets, perched on crispy caper tartar sauce slathered onto thick cut chips.  Now that’s a mouthful of love.

We’ll call these our Fish & Chip Bites {with Crispy Caper Tartar Sauce}.  The perfect Friday night nibbles.

Our simple beer batter consisted of flour, corn starch, baking powder, salt and beer.  I wanted it to be light but also reminiscent of classic beer battered fish & chips.

This recipe is meant to be playful, one of my most favorite ways to present food.  It just happens to also be mighty tasty.  Crispy Caper Tartar Sauce played a big role in that.  So much so, that it deserved a recipe post of it’s own.  Because besides our beer battered fish nuggets, I would love to dunk Crispy Fried Shrimp in this fabulous sauce.

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It’s nice to have a knock your socks off tartar sauce recipe up your sleeve.  This Crispy Caper Tartar Sauce is sure to impress with the addition of anchovies, hard-boiled eggs and crispy fried capers.  Flavor wow!!

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Crispy Caper Tartar Sauce

Author Libby with Lemony Thyme

Ingredients

• 2 hard boiled egg peeled & finely chopped
• 1/4 cup capers
• 2 Tbl. olive oil for frying
• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 2 Tbl. minced shallot
• 2 Tbl. minced parsley
• 1 tsp. anchovy paste
• 1/4 tsp. salt

Instructions

• Place eggs in small saucepan covered with water; cover with lid. Bring to a boil, then remove from the heat and let rest for 15 minutes. Drain and run under cold water for 2-3 minutes. Peel & finely chop.
• Heat olive oil in a small skillet over medium-high heat. Add capers and fry until crispy, 1-2 minutes. Drain on paper towels.
• Combine chopped eggs, crispy capers and remaining ingredients; refrigerate.

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Sometimes a recipe comes to me based on one single ingredient.  In this case it was a gorgeous Kimmelweck roll in the case at the bakery.  I couldn’t wait to get home and make tuna melts for lunch.  I promptly proceeded to burn the bun.  With all other ingredients gathered I turned to my freezer to find the tail end of a pack of Party Rye.  And that is how the Tuna Melt Grilled Cheese Slider was born.

Recipe Note:  By the time I got done picturing our Tuna Melt Grilled Cheese Sliders they were less than hot.  So I popped them in the oven and let them reheat for about 10 minutes.  Everything settled into happiness.  The cheese was nice and melty, the bread took shape around the other ingredients.  We decided that if we found these on a finger food buffet, we’d be very pleased indeed.  I wish I had pictured those however by this time lunch was a bit overdue.  And there was no stopping us.  Next time.

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Tuna Melt Grilled Cheese Sliders

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes minutes

Total Time 30 minutes minutes

Servings 2

Author Libby with Lemon Thyme

Ingredients

For the tuna salad…

• 1 small can or pouch of tuna
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• 1 celery stalk finely diced
• 1 scallion thinly sliced
• 1 tsp. prepared horseradish
• salt & pepper to taste

For the sliders…

• 8 slices party rye bread
• 2 slices muenster cheese cut into 4ths
• 2 slices Havarti cheese cut into 4ths
• 1 plum tomato sliced
• 1 hard boiled egg sliced
• butter for pan grilling

Instructions

For the tuna salad…

• Combine all tuna salad ingredients and blend well.

For the sliders…

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Layer the party rye with piece of muenster, piece of Havarti, scoop of tuna salad, egg slice, tomato slice, piece of muenster, piece of Havarti and top with bread slice. Repeat.
• Melt butter in a skillet and grill sliders on both sides until golden brown and cheese has melted. Remove to a baking pan. Once all sliders have been grilled, transfer to oven for 7-10 minutes.

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Crab Louie Salad Sliders.

The Crab Louie Salad has been around for over 100 years and first became popular on the West Coast of the United States (or was it King Louie himself who first dined on this salad…the world may never know).  The salad consists of crisp lettuce, sliced tomato, hard boiled eggs, ripe olives, sometimes asparagus….and of course gorgeous crab meat which is tossed in Crab Louie Dressing.

Some time last summer I decided it would be fun to pay tribute to as many of the classic salads as I could recreate.  I’m checking them off one by one and have loved learning their history and discovering their flavor personalities.  One consistent theme is that most of these salads were born out of Eat Out of the Fridge/Pantry Weeks aka combining ingredients already on hand.  Having said that, for many of these classics we’ve given them a twist of our own.  We decided to serve our Crab Louie Salad over toasted buttered rolls.  Crab Louie Salad Sliders were fantastic and needed to be shared.

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Crab Louie Salad Sliders

Servings 2

Author Libby with Lemony Thyme

Ingredients

• 1 Romaine lettuce heart shredded
• 1 medium tomato sliced
• 1 hard boiled egg sliced
• 6-8 ripe black olives sliced
• 4-6 ounces crab meat
• 2 slider rolls buttered & toasted

Crab Louie Dressing…

• 2 Tbl. mayonnaise
• 2 Tbl. chili sauce
• 1 Tbl. grated onion
• 1 tsp. capers
• 1 tsp. lemon juice

Instructions

• Combine the dressing ingredients. Toss the crab meat in the dressing then layer the salad as follows: toasted roll, shredded lettuce, tomato slices, egg slices, olives, and dressed crab meat.

Here are some of our favorite classic salads.

Lunch Counter Chef’s Salad

Classic Cobb Salad

Grilled Caesar Salad

The Wedge Salad with Homemade Russian Dressing

Greek Salad

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We had a good old fashioned Lunch Counter Style Chef’s Salad for dinner last night.  It had been years since I’ve had one.  Once the salad revolution transformed how we view salads, some of the old standards have been slowly forgotten.  I can say with certainty that there’s a reason the Chef’s Salad was on most menus for decades.  It’s delicious and a completely satisfying meal.

Here’s a fun link that outlines the timeline of the origin of this beloved salad.

I made a lovely Honey Ginger Vinaigrette {with Shallot & Cilantro}.  It was wonderful with our salad.  Our Catalina Salad Dressing is also a classic.

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Lunch Counter Style Chef’s Salad

Ingredients

• Salad greens
• hard boiled eggs
• tomatoes
• ham
• turkey
• cheese
• avocado
• favorite salad dressing

Instructions

• Put salad greens in a large bowl. Top with sliced hard boiled eggs, julienne cut ham, turkey, and cheese, tomatoes, and sliced avocado.
• Serve with favorite salad dressing.

You might also enjoy…

The Classic Cobb Salad

Grilled Caesar Salad

Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing

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Scotch Egg Sauce.  ‘Scotch’ as in hard-cooked, not hard-liquor.

This sauce brought back memories.  The first bite gave me a warm familiar feeling and I remembered creamed eggs over toast.  A breakfast for dinner meal we ate as kids and apparently liked.  Looking back, it may have been one of the easiest (and affordable) meals Mom could get on the table in a hurry.  I’m sure she ‘sold’ it in such a way that made it a favorite.  So many things I’d like to ask her.

For this recipe we used a 3/4 cup of cooking liquid from our Cod & Potatoes Poached in Milk.  If you’re making this recipe alone or perhaps for Creamed Eggs Over Toast, substitute milk in place of the cooking liquid.

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Scotch Egg Sauce

Course Sauce

Servings 4

Author 60-Minute Meals

Ingredients

• 1 Tbl. butter
• 1 Tbl. flour
• 3/4 cup cooking liquid from Cod & Potatoes Poached in Milk
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• salt to taste
• fresh ground pepper
• 1/8 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
• pinch cayenne pepper
• 2 hard-boiled eggs chopped

Instructions

• Melt butter in a sauce pan and add the flour, stirring with a wire whisk. When blended and smooth, add the cooking liquid, stirring rapidly with the whisk. When thickened and smooth, add the cream, stirring. Add salt, pepper, nutmeg and cayenne. Simmer, stirring often, about five minutes. Sitr in the egg and serve.

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Today’s the day.  The day I dread each January.  Taking down the Christmas decorations, or as we call it….Grinching Away Christmas.  Every year I procrastinate.  Drag it out until the very last minute.  The house just doesn’t feel the same without them.  The lights of the tree warm the room and my soul.  I hear trips being made to the basement….this is really going to happen today.  Ugh!  Can we just have a Wedge Salad instead.

This might be the time to share that there was the year I refused to take the tree down.  I left the lights on and removed the decorations, for a bit.  But then decided to hang little hearts on it in February for Valentines Day.  Easter Eggs in April.  And when Shelby’s Sweet 16th Birthday Party came around in May, I’m sure I made her proud when all her guests brought her a pair of flips flops…that we hung on the tree.  The Flip Flop Tree…hehe.  Maybe I’m slightly odd, but leaving the tree up all year was fun to do just once and it did make life so much easier when the following December rolled around.

Enough about Grinching and Procrastination.  Today for lunch we had The Wedge Salad.  I absolutely love this salad.  I know there are all kinds of fancy greens that I’m sure are more nutrient packed than good old iceberg lettuce, but there’s something about the cool crispy crunch of iceberg that I adore.

There’s not much of a recipe for this salad, but I will share this crazy good Homemade Russian Dressing recipe again.  This is the same one we used on our Classic Reuben Sandwich and it’s good.  Really good.

We topped our Wedge Salad with crispy bacon, hard-boiled egg, sliced tomato, scallions, a little goat cheese, and our homemade Cornbread Croutons.  Our New Year’s Day Cornbread was at the end of the road but made really tasty croutons.  Just cut it into cubes and baked at 350 for about 15 minutes until nice and crunchy.

Shhh…I don’t think anyone will notice if Nicholas hangs out just a little longer.

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The Wedge Salad {with Homemade Russian Dressing}

Course Salad

Ingredients

• Iceberg lettuce
• sliced tomato
• crispy bacon
• hard-boiled egg
• scallions
• goat cheese
• croutons
• freshly cracked pepper

For the Russian dressing..

• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 2 Tbl. ketchup
• 1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp. prepared horseradish
• black pepper
• pinch of cayenne

Instructions

• Remove core and outer leaves from head of iceberg lettuce. Cut into wedges.
• Top with favorite toppings.

For the Russian dressing…

• Combine all ingredients and spoon liberally over salad.

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