So one time we had a gift card to a place called Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. (Why is it called that? I always think of two siblings fighting over who gets to use her name for the restaurant. Or Chris belongs to Ruth. Is Chris an indentured servant? Is she bussing tables to work off her passage to Texas? But I digress.) I'm not a huge fan of steak but I am also a firm believer in ordering the speciality of the house/region (and for that reason I 'm not inclined to eat sushi in the middle of Michigan) so I ordered a small steak. It was OK. But the salad... I dug that salad. I've been wanting to duplicate it ever since I tried it. A few nights ago I sort of did. It's been a long time since I gorged myself on salad. Maybe too long.
I don't really have quantities. I mean, it's salad. Adjust the amounts of extra stuff based on how much green stuff you are using.
Ruth's Chris Chop Salad
The chopped salad is a mix of julienned iceberg lettuce (I used romaine), spinach (I substituted kale), radicchio, tossed with red onion (I skipped the onion), mushrooms, green olives, bacon, hard-cooked eggs, hearts of palm, croutons, blue cheese and lemon basil dressing ... topped off with cherry tomatoes and crispy fried onions (these are key). Oh, and everything is chopped to a somewhat uniform size.
Below is the lemon basil dressing. It was really tart; probably should have added some sugar. I substituted Marie's Blue Cheese Vinaigrette (a favorite at our house).
Lemon Basil Dressing
2 tablespoons Pommery or Dijon mustard
freshly squeezed juice of 1 lemon
6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 basil leaves, very thinly sliced
coarse salt, to taste
freshly ground pepper, to taste
1 comment:
Back when I was pregnant with Danny, I visited Kim in Baltimore and her husband took us to Ruth's Chris. (Kim was pregnant too and pregnancy is the only time when I really crave red meat--we totally gorged ourselves). Anyway, at the time Kim's husband told us the story behind the name. Ruth bought the restaurant from some guy (apparently named Chris) and supposedly one of the stipulations in the buyout was that she keep the name. So, she added her name to personalize it. I am not sure if this is accurate, but it sounded good.
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