Harvest Cobb Salad

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Cobb salad is already popular and now it comes harvest style with apple cider marinated chicken, chopped apples, walnuts, cranberries, and an apple butter dressing

You might think that after almost 5 years of food blogging that I would tire of all the seasonal products that explode off the shelves this time of year. Thankfully I have yet to be let down and am always excited to peruse my local Giant Eagle for the latest seasonal items. And the fuel points I earn in the process are an added bonus, completely justifying my spending. But I digress. During the fall it seems that the pumpkin and pumpkin spice flavors tend to be the most common. While I am all about #pumpkineverything, there are so many other flavors that are also deserving of attention!

Besides pumpkin, what else comes to mind when you think of fall flavors? Apple, pear, and sweet potato should be near the top of your list and if not, they should be now. Giant Eagle set out to prove a point on the matter with an expansive array of Seasonal Owned Brand products this fall including sweet potato pumpkin tortilla chips, apple butter syrup, and orange spice flavored apple cider. As you can guess those are the first things I grabbed off the shelf but I did also try the pumpkin gnocchi (with homemade alfredo-sage sauce ohmygod), pumpkin soup, and gingersnap granola (taste like dessert for breakfast). They can do no wrong!

Since for some reason I am on a salad kick this fall, I decided to harvest-ify a crowd favorite known as cobb salad. If you are unfamiliar, it’s basically a salad for the salad unenthused where chopped salad greens act as a vehicle for tomato, bacon, chicken, hard-boiled egg, avocado, blue cheese, and red-wine vinaigrette. Except today there is no tomato because I had to make room for other splendid additions such as dried cranberries, toasted walnuts, chopped apple, and crushed sweet potato pumpkin tortilla chips.

To begin this salad harvestivus, I marinaded the chicken in a mixture consisting mostly of the orange spice flavored apple cider. After those flavors saturated the chicken I went ahead and cooked it in the leftover grease from cooking the bacon. Never a bad decision. I also made the dressing using apple cider vinegar instead of red wine vinegar and threw in some apple butter syrup for sweetener instead of any other sub-par sweetener (at least as far as this salad dressing goes).

Once the bacon and chicken are cooked, the ingredients chopped, and the dressing blended, all that’s left is to feel all artistic by layering each ingredient in a row over a bed of chopped romaine. Seriously, play with your food. Only then will I give you permission to drizzle with dressing and blur the lines ;-).

One year ago: Pumpkin Spice Greek Yogurt Mousse

Two years ago: Chocolate Pumpkin Pancakes

Three years ago: Halloween Brownie Roll Out Cookie Sandwiches

HARVEST COBB SALAD

Serves 4 as an entree

Ingredients:

MARINADE

2 cups orange spice flavored apple cider

Zest and juice of 1 lemon

6 fresh sage leaves, chopped

3-4 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

2 Tbsp Dijon mustard

Salt and pepper

1 lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts

DRESSING

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

2 Tbsp apple butter syrup

2 fresh sage leaves, minced

1/2 tsp Dijon mustard

1 clove garlic, minced

Salt and pepper, to taste

SALAD

4 slices thick cut bacon

2 romaine hearts, chopped

2 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and chopped

1 avocado, chopped

1 apple, chopped

1/2 cup toasted walnut pieces

1/2 cup lightly crushed sweet potato pumpkin tortilla chips

1/3 cup dried cranberries

1/3 cup crumbled blue cheese

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, whisk together the marinade ingredients. Add chicken, cover with saran wrap, and refrigerate at least 2 hours or overnight.
2. In a medium bowl (or small jar with a lid), add the dressing ingredients and whisk (or shake with lid on) until emulsified. Refrigerate until ready to use.
3. In a large skillet over medium heat, cook the bacon until crispy. Remove from pan and let drain on a paper towel lined plate. Add chicken to the same pan containing the leftover bacon grease. Cook 4-5 minutes per side or until no longer pink. Allow to cool slightly then chop bacon and chicken.
4. Place romaine in a large, wide, shallow bowl or serving platter. Top with chicken, bacon, eggs, avocado, apple, walnuts, tortilla chips, cranberries, and cheese. Serve with dressing.

Source: Marinade adapted from Rachael Ray.