How are you doing? I hope you also having these warm and wonderful September days. This is my favorite time of the year. Summer is all about keeping it simple. I love simple but now that shops and markets are still brimming with sweet summer produce, you can finally find muscat grapes, purple figs, persimmons, and pomegranates. Dishes get a little bit richer, flavor denser. You are not longer a sweaty mess in the kitchen.
This picnic is simple, you can make it in advance, and the ingredients are easy to assemble, so nothing gets soggy.
What I brought:
Grilled chicken
Grilled veggies
& my favorite herb sauce
Farro salad with grapes and goat cheese
Olives
Ricotta with honey and figs
Chocolate cookies
Every day I walk the dogs along the French and Swiss vineyards, checking if they grapes are ripe yet. Here in France they have so many varieties in shops and I am always experimenting with them, using them in all kind of dishes. Here I combined the grapes with goat cheese, and farro...
The ingredients:
2 cups farro
100 gram goat cheese
a small cucumber
a cup red grapes
a teaspoon capers
a few mint leaves
2 scallions
make the dressing with lemon, apple cider, olive oil, salt and pepper.
Soak the farro overnight and cook it the next day according to the instruction on the package. You can use barley if you can't find farro. Or even rice, be careful not to overcook it. When ready, drain and cool it with running water.
Mix the other ingredients in. The farro should be chewy and not soggy, so you can mix the dressing in now, and it will get richer in flavor. Keep it in the fridge till you are ready to go.
This dish is also very easy, and straightforward, and tastes amazing.
Gril the chicken and your choice of veggies ( I use courgette, peppers, fennel and aubergine). You can grill it in your oven, grill pan, or BBQ.
The ingredients to make the marinade and sauce for the chicken:
Use a handful of your favorite herbs. I picked sage, rucola and rosemary from the garden.
1 garlic clove
1 tablespoon maple syrup or honey
1 pinch of cayenne
1/2 cup olive oil
1/3 Greek yogurt
Puree the herbs, with the garlic, maple syrup, cayenne, and olive oil.
Use half of the sauce to marinate the chicken as long as you like.
Mix the other half with the yogurt and keep it in the fridge.
The day before your picnic or the same morning grill the chicken and veggies. Let it cool, and keep it in containers in the fridge.
Serve the chicken with the dressing drizzled over it.
Enjoy!
