today's lunch? contest remnants

Gal and I love to cook, create, and enter all sorts of contests, so we often have plenty to eat.  ...eventually. It's tough to wait until Gal finishes up the pictures, so I'm happy to have a little bit of slop (meaning this stuff didn't fit in the picturesque little bowl) to dish up as my lunch in the meantime.

Because it's highly unlikely that you entered the same contest as us, and made the same dish, I am happy to sorta give you the 'what we did" to get the above salad.

Reverse Engineered Remnant Salad

Serves 2

1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved lengthwise
2 tbsp cup peperoncini strips
2 tbsp roasted bell pepper strips
1 tbsp green onion, finely chopped
dash salt
1/2 eggplant, sliced into 8 circles
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, divided
6 oz crumbled feta cheese, divided
1 Persian cucumber, cut lengthwise and then across into wedges
1 tbsp Italian parsley, chopped
10 pitted calamata olives


Directions

Place the bell pepper strips, peperoncini, chopped green onions, and halved cherry tomatoes
in a salad bowl. Sprinkle with the salt and stir to coat. Set aside for 10-15 minutes, and then transfer the mixture to a colander and drain over the bowl, saving the juice.

Go back in time to last night, and make enough eggplant circles so that you have 6-8 leftover slices, today. ...or, if that takes too much time, make some fresh eggplant today. Do this by heating a non-stick skillet over medium high heat, then add 1 tbsp olive oil. Cook the eggplant circles until they are browned and golden on both sides. Set aside on paper towels to cool.

While all this is going on... Place half the crumbled feta cheese and the remaining olive oil in a separate small bowl or measuring cup and stir well to combine. The cheese should start to get creamy. If it's too thick, mix in enough of the reserved juice to thin to the consistency of thick salad dressing.

Stir the tomato mixture, dressing, cucumber, parsley, olives, and remaining cheese together.

Lay the slices of eggplant on a plate, and spoon the salad mixture over the top. As you can see, I garnished with romaine, but that's up to you. OMG, you can almost not taste the no meat! This stuff is amazing.

For best results, serve this as an appetizer to the foods that we can't show you yet because they are going to be submitted and win us millions of dollars.

Gal just finished with the camera, so off to eat (more)!