Bonus Post: Budget Pasta "Salad" plus fruit.

Improvised Caesar / pasta / Waldorf salad

I've been on holiday, so this is a quick filler post from when I had to grab a fast budget picnic lunch, and hope for the best.

I've been on holidays for the last ten days, and it was great.

Short on time to catch a train, a fast lunch was necessary.  I picked up a "Caesar" Salad with pasta, chicken and bacon, plus a mini-pack of apples and grapes from the T.

*munch*

Tasting the dressing tube first, I don't think it's improved an iota from back in the days when I made this Caesar much better.

I'm only going to dot it about and throw the rest the hell away. Too much vinegar, too much mayo.  Yuck.

• The pasta as always is over cooked, but isn't soggy today. Croutons, but yeah, they wouldn't travel... 
• The chicken is dry-ish; edible. 
• The salad - few leaves of iceberg at the bottom; disappointing.  
• The bacon is smoky but not crispy, and that smoke flavour isn't from wood...
• There's some cheese in here as well.  It...works with some mouthfuls, I'll give it that, but it's just T-ShopValueCheddar® instead of a nice Pecorino.

So, today, all I'm doing is tipping fruit into a store bought salad and adding a dash of sauce to balance it. 

 Will apple and grapes turn this into a half-Waldorf,  or a half-baked horrible disaster?

Pasta Chicken Bacon Caesar salad, per person

• 1 serving of pasta - fusili or similar. 
• 4 lettuce leaves, iceberg.  Little Gem also works from scratch.
• 1 half-portion of chicken - say half a breast, or 1 thigh or 1 drumstick.
• 2 rashers of streaky smoky bacon, chopped into 1/2cm strips
• 1 apple, quartered, then chopped into thumb-sized chunks.
• 6 grapes, plus or minus 1.
• A few shavings of your finest (ahem...) ripe cheese.  Parmesan is best but any hard mature cheese is good.

About the dressing:

If I was trying to reverse engineer this dish, I'd do a garlic mayo myself, from scratch.  Otherwise a nice olive oil and vinegar mix  (4/1 ratio) would work.  Some folks do (3/1) oil / vinegar but I don't like the acidity.  But whatever floats your boat.

Method

 If you're cooking it from scratch:

•  Boil pasta for the requisite time, say 7 minutes for fusili.
•  While this is on, fry the bacon.
•  Drain pasta, allow to cool.
•  Shred your salad ingredients and dress appropriately.  I'd add the bacon fat in myself as part of that.  
• - Dress with your dressing of preference, (I'd go for olive oil and white wine vinegar) to your taste, season, chill in the fridge.
•  - Add the apples and grapes last, and serve.

*munch*

I must say for something I have put no effort into, I can report that, if I had shelled out an extra pound on a packet of nuts or seeds, or even 30p on celery, this would have been even better, and probably a very good budget Waldorf.  Not great you understand, but better than what you would get at your company barbecue.



I hope that's given you some ideas for messing around with your pre-bought picnics when you are in a rush to get to somewhere sunny.

I looked online and some recipes for Waldorf Salad and Caesar can be found here, as well as mine.  So yes, maybe it's O.K. to quickly play with your food, when on holiday.