I wasn’t going to post this recipe for the sole reason I couldn’t get a decent picture of the dressing or of even one of the salads I made with the dressing. Turns out roasted chilies aren’t photogenic in the least, or I am a bad photographer. Probably a bit of both.

Blogs are all about photos and I feel strongly that we eat with our eyes before we eat with our mouths. But this time, this one time I am going to ask for your trust, to believe me that this tastes a million times better than it looks.

Let me back up a bit and tell you what inspired me to try to recreate this salad. I was in Santa Fe earlier this summer. One of my favorite restaurants I have ever been to is Pasqual’s in Santa Fe. We had a great dinner (our 20th anniversary!) and guess what? One if the dishes I had was a salad of field greens with ‘fire-roasted Poblano chilies’. As far as I could tell it was just a vinegar based dressing with some Poblanos added. It was simple, delicious and unusual and unlike any salad I have had.

This is my attempt at recreating it. I have to say I am really happy with the salads I have made with this copy-cat dressing, and so is everyone who ate them.

I started with some of our roasted peppers. I have used Poblano and Anaheim,  fresh  chilies just roasted and chilies that were frozen and thawed. All are good.

Look farmilar?

For the dressing I used;

• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1/4 olive oil
• about 1/2 a bag of roasted chilies peeled, seeded and chopped
• about 1/4 teaspoon each of ground cumin, coriander, salt and pepper

I threw that all in a jar and mixed it up really well.

See what I mean about the photos? ugg.

With this ugly dressing I made some really nice salads. I didn’t serve it on field greens like they did at the restaurant. I used what I had from our CSA share.

One time I had some nice tomatoes and I sliced them really thick and topped the tomato with ricotta cheese and roasted chilies dressing made with Poblanos. That is a shaved Brussels Sprout salad next to it. The chilies look like olives:(

This next salad is a sort of chopped salad made the dressing with the roasted Anaheim chilies.  I chopped up what I had; cucumbers, my last tomato (goodbye summer), a Carmen pepper, celery and a little bit of onion.

With the leftovers I added some white beans and some parsley and had that for lunch.

Hopefully you have a bag or two of roasted chilies in your freezer and might want to try this. I think you will really like how unique the chilies are in a salad.

Until next time.

Mo