The Sauce that Will Transform a Week of Dinners
Plus, a slew of gormlessly simple dinner ideas and my dog's private convo with his vet revealed!
Hey! Hi! Gorgeous spring day here, Clyde the cat is sitting next to me and purring loud enough that I suspect if you listen closely you'’ll be able to hear him through the substack.
(Also, if you could click the heart-shaped like button above, it would make the algorithm gods very happy and that will cause me to purr.)
However, I shall not distract you with idle niceties when there is important news to share. I’ve had a recipe breakthrough that has transformed the way I eat. It’s a simple, healthy green sauce that transforms the plain into fancy and the fancy into amazing.
Apparently at 4:30 pm every day on the Internet, millions and millions of humans type into a search engine: “How should I cook chicken breasts tonight?”
Poach them, grill them, bake them with salt and pepper, heck, broil them with a squeeze of lemon until they are mere mummified remains like my mother did, but with this green sauce, rich with herbs, garlic, avocado and feta, your dinner will be transformed into something you actually want to eat. Hell, buy yourself a rotisserie chicken (as recommended by Bosco, see below) and serve it on a bed of salad greens and green sauce and finally understand what others already know: You are a genius.
This sauce is inspired by my friend Eve, who was inspired by the traditional German Grünne Sosse that is a springtime specialty in the land of the Teutons. Eve brought her version to a Seder I attended earlier this week. She layered roasted carrots over a bed of green sauce and sprinkled pomegranate seeds on top. It was beautiful and delicious and I knew I had to have this green sauce in my life.
I futzed around with a recipe for my own version of green sauce and that, my friends, is the other magnificent thing about this recipe. Use my ratios and ingredients as a jumping off point. Hate cilantro? Don’t use it. No feta in the fridge? Substitute buttermilk, sour cream or creme fraiche. Have an abundance of basil? Use only that. Chervil, tarragon, watercress and sorrel also make great additions and they’re not even mentioned in the recipe.
This is yours to play with. The possibilities are near endless.
Some Options:
Salad dressing: I drizzle it over greens for an instant salad.
Use it as a dip for grilled or poached shrimp
Top off some cooked fish. Buy yourself a slab of salmon, bake or poach it. Refrigerate. When it’s time to eat, slice the salmon into pieces. Plate up with a big serving of the sauce and boiled potatoes. Dreamy.
Use the sauce as a bed for roast asparagus, boiled new potatoes, sliced beets and chopped hard-boiled egg. Honestly, any combo platter of vegetables you have in the house works. That’s the beauty of this sauce, it makes whatever you have better.
On top of a turkey or veggie burger. Or hamburger. (But let’s admit turkey and veggie burgers need more help.) Or a turkey sandwich.
For a savory breakfast, serve it up with warm pita, a fried egg, chopped tomatoes and cucumbers.
Toss with cold boiled new potatoes for a lush potato salad.
Make a chicken salad with the green sauce. Add a tablespoon or two of mayo to lighten the sauce, some diced celery and red pepper, and refrigerate for an hour to let the flavors meld.
Transformation Sauce
Makes about 2 1/2 cups
What You’ll Need
3/4 cup (150 grams) Icelandic or Greek yogurt
1/2 cup (100 grams) feta cheese, drained
3 tablespoons lemon juice
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 small ripe avocado, peeled and pitted
1 cup (20 grams) parsley and/or parsley and cilantro
2 tablespoons chopped chives
1 tablespoon chopped dill
2 tablespoons basil leaves
2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
salt and pepper to suit your taste
What You’ll Do:
Add all the ingredients into a blender (anything from a NutriBullet to a food processor will do) and blend until smooth. My blender tends to balk and give up after one whir (it has one job! and yet!), so I add a few tablespoons of water to loosen the mixture. Blend until reasonably smooth.
Taste and adjust salt, lemon and herb balance.
Keep refrigerated in an airtight jar for 4 to 5 days.
Let me know how you decide to use it.
In other news, I don’t know about you, but I had a very hard time listening to the news this week. You? If you saw glimmers of hope, please share with the group. If you just want to vent, do that too. As Joyce Vance remind us in her newsletter, “we’re all in this together.”
It’s Bosco’s Gotcha Day! Nine years ago today, we adopted our big fluffy dog from the Big Fluffy Dog Rescue in Tennessee. He was listed as a dog for people who’d never had a dog before, and he had the same markings as our cat, Clyde, so we adopted him. I wish I could thank whomever it was who fostered him after he was surrendered to a shelter in Alabama. Bosco arrived a calm, laid-back dog (save for in the presence of squirrels and our neighbor’s cat) and has been so ever since.
Earlier this week we had a bit of a scare with him. He’d stopped eating, had become lethargic and lay on my bedroom floor. I dragged him to our vet, an experienced, ever-so-sensible woman known for her terse manner with humans and soft-spoken coos at pets (“Hey, Honey Man!”). She once explained to me that she liked everything about being a vet except the patients’ owners. I laughed an understanding laugh and we’ve been jolly friends ever since.
Yesterday the doctor listened, palpated, took his temperature and let her kiss him. She suggested he’d merely eaten something that didn’t agree with him, then led him into the other room and subjected him to a thorough ear cleaning (flappy, fluffy dog ears = yeast). When she brought him back to me, she suggested I entice back to eating with some rotisserie chicken. I will never truly know what happened in the back room, but I suspect a Dr. Doolittle moment, where she asked him what he really would prefer to eat instead of dry kibble, he said cheese and rotisserie chicken and she assured him it would happen. When I walked into the house later that day, Bosco recognized the unmistakable roast chicken smell and came bounding down the steps, unrecognizable from the creature I’d drag-assed to the vet only hours before. Hmmm.
The Part Where I Beg Like a Dog:
This substack is a reader-supported publication. I cannot do it without you. If you’re able, paying for a subscription helps pay for the groceries necessary for recipe-testing and recipe development. Also, it supports me—a freelance writer—and ad-free journalism.
The pay scale for journalists and writers has not kept up with the cost of living. That’s why having a substack newsletter has become such a terrific venue for so many writers. Best of all, it puts me, Bosco, Calvin and Clyde in touch with our readers like never before. And: Now Bosco has expensive rotisserie chicken habits.
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I love Bosco. I had two goldens. Laid back and sweet. I feed them all real food. I'm going to try your wonder sauce. Can I substitute blue cheese in it?
Looks fantastic! Going to Frank’s red hot this stuff lol.
And Bosco as a puppy!!!! Such cuteness!