Sunday, November 15, 2009

Chicken Blue Cheese Sandwich

It is mid-November and we are experiencing weather that I would like to have stick around until… next May. The sun is not as high in the sky as it has been for previous months and it isn’t nearly as warm, either, but just having the bright yellow orb in the sky is enough to make me happy.


There is still arugula growing in the cold frame and as I was picking some for a lunch salad, I thought of a sandwich that my friend Nancy had made when she visited the lake house a few months ago. I mentally clicked through the ingredients which I would need—blue cheese, chicken, fresh tomato…yes, I had them all. In fact, I only have a couple of tomatoes left from the garden and this would be a wonderful way to use one. Jack was out of town and I could make a sandwich with blue cheese and arugula without having to make him something else. I found an 8” piece of a baguette in the freezer and went to work.


I had a lot to do that day, and decided not to look up the Cooking Light recipe but to just “wing it”.


First I thawed a chicken breast, heated the grill, and cooked it. After it cooled a little, I sliced it diagonally.


In a small bowl, I mashed blue cheese, cream cheese, salt and pepper, and enough skim milk to make it

spreadable.

After splitting the baguette in half horizontally, I scooped some of the excess bread from the center of both halves (and yes, I ate it the "excess"—never waste good bread!). The blue cheese mixture was spread on both cut sides; on the bottom half I layered arugula, then the chicken slices, then the tomatoes.


Because it was such a gorgeous sunny day, and we hadn’t yet put away the tables on the patio, I ate outside. For 20 minutes or so I pretended that it was still summer.



The grilled chicken, blue cheese, bitter arugula, and sweet ripe tomato all combined to make an absolutely delicious sandwich.



A praying mantis sauntered across the table to see what I was doing. I offered him (her?) a bit of arugula but, perhaps like Jack, he doesn’t care for it.



(this happy little guy looks kind of cute when viewed as a small photo, but is slightly terrifying when placed on full-screen!)