This weekend, my wife and I dropped by the local Farmer’s Market to kill some time before the post office opened. I bought some ground beef and pork sausage, as well as the requisite peppers to make chili on Saturday. My wife noticed that they had some raw milk, so we bought a gallon and decided to make some more mozzarella. On Sunday, I used my kit and made a softer, fresher-tasting cheese than last time:

We had some chicken on hand, so we decided to try to merge Insalata Caprese salad with grilled chicken salad.

Insalata Caprese (which means ‘in the style of Capri’) is a plate with alternating pieces of fresh basil, mozzarella and tomatoes, and it’s often dressed with balsamic vinegar. Our tomatoes just went in the ground last week, but we had everything else on hand.

I marinated the chicken breasts for about 4 hours in balsamic vinegar, sprinkled them with salt, pepper and smoked Spanish paprika, and then stuffed them with our fresh herbs and homemade mozzarella. I tossed them on a charcoal grill with some hickory chips, and watched the cheese start to ooze out:

We had a head of romaine lettuce from the market, and we decided to grill the wedges. We cut them in half and sprinkled salt, pepper and olive oil on the cut sides. I threw them on the grill for about two minutes, or just long enough to sear the face and wilt the leaves a bit. As soon as we I pulled them off, I sprinkled Parmesan cheese on the charred faces:

Here’s how it turned out. I was fun to cut the lettuce and chicken into small pieces and eat it like a salad:

If I prepare this dish again, I’ll make a balsamic reduction to drizzle over the meal, and roast some fresh tomatoes to accompany the chicken.

Another way to do something like this would be to marinate the chicken breasts in Greek salad dressing, stuff them with chopped herbs, green olives and pepperoncini, and then grill the stuffed chicken with romaine wedges and sliced red onion. Then top it all with feta cheese while it’s still hot, and add a little more Greek dressing on top. That would be really good.

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