Salad, but no meat and potatoes.

In the last city where my Yeti wife and I lived there was a food recipe in the local newspaper with a title something like "meat and potatoes make a refreshing summer salad." I thought that was really kind of silly. I mean, sure, meat and potatoes could make a nice summer meal, when you have some nice thin skirt steak grilled and then sliced on a bias against the grain, and then you have some spicy potatoes, and maybe other grilled veggies, all in a tortilla. Maybe with some cilantro too. With some pitchers of vodka and lemonade. And maybe a few home-made frozen treats for the snowdogs. But come on, meat and potatoes are a refreshing summer salad? You've got to be kidding. So here is a nice salad I made the other night as part of dinner. It was so good we made it 2 days in a row for dinner afterwards. And the nice thing is that it really doesn't need any more dressing other than the ingredients shown as part of the salad. If you want to dress it up a bit I guess you could add some other stuff, but I'll have some suggestions at the end of this post.

A Refreshing Salad, even in Summer, Without Meat and Potatoes

1 head of Romaine lettuce
1 large roasted red pepper, or 5-6 large slices of canned roasted red peppers, cut into slices or diced, include the liquid
1 tablespoon of capers with their liquid, preferably packed in brine
pinch of salt
ground black pepper to taste

Cut the head of lettuce into about 1 or 2 inch pieces. Put the lettuce in a large bowl. In a separate small bowl, combine the capers, salt, black pepper, and red peppers and stir gently. Pour the caper and pepper mix over the salad. Toss gently.

That's it. If you want to dress this up a bit, I'd add a single clove of garlic, minced very finely or crushed, into the peppers and caper mix, or add a teaspoon of good balsamic vinegar. If you want this to be really fancy, sprinkle some finely grated Peccorino Romano cheese, about 2-3 tablespoons, over the top of the salad.

Serves 1 Yeti per head of lettuce, 2 people as a main dish, or 3-4 as a side salad.