Grilled Salad

I know.  Crazy.  But ohhhhhhhhhhh so good!! 

Let me link you to the original recipe so you can first peruse and I can give credit where it's due:

http://thepioneerwoman.com/tasty-kitchen/recipes/salads/grilled-salad/

We love the Pioneer Woman and her recipes.  And I read this and thought someone had lost their minds.  Had a friend not specifically tried it and gave it a rave review, there's no way I'd have tried it.

Why?
Well, for one, I've never tried Feta cheese.  I know.  But good news, I can cross that off the ol' bucket list now.  I've tried it and *drum roll* I liked it.  The reason I've never tried it is that I always thought it was like blue cheese.  Which is not in my eating inventory at this point due to its stinkiness.  It looks too much like the stink cheese, so I've largely ignored it.  But it's not stinky at all.  It's sort of tart?  sour?  hmm...I don't know the best word.  But very very mild and worth trying.  The texture was sort of like fresh mozarella but not as wet.  Blah.  I know.  This description isn't going well.  In a nutshell, you should try it.  As well as be prepared for more recipes on here featuring feta now that it doesn't scare me.

Why else?  Well, have you ever even contemplated GRILLING LETTUCE??  It just doesn't make any sense, right?  But it works!

Here's the recipe:

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Grilled Salad

Ingredients
2 heads Romaine Lettuce, Washed And Dried
½ cups Feta Cheese, Crumbled
½ cups Balsamic Vinaigrette
Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Preparation Instructions
Split each head of lettuce lengthwise.
Drizzle the cut side of each half evenly with a tablespoon or two of oil.
Season the cut side of each half with salt and pepper.
Grill each half, cut-side-down, over a hot direct fire for about 90 seconds.
Remove to a sheet pan, sprinkle evenly with the cheese and let cool.
Drizzle each half with an equal amount of dressing.
Cut each half in half width-wise, serve and enjoy!

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Julie's notes:

• When prepping the Romaine, I trimmed the tops off with a knife and left the root/base part intact.  I think you need to to keep the leaves from flying all over the place.  The when I served it, I trimmed the bottom off and cut it all up.
• We did this on our outdoor charcoal grill.  So it was delightfully smoky and charcoaly tasting.  Mark is in LOVE with this recipe, so we will be trying it again on our indoor grill pan.  Not sure if it will be the same but yum on the charcoal!
• The oil will drip off onto the grill and if you're like me, you're going to be waiting for those bundles of Romaine to just go up in flames.  But they don't.  Maybe because of the water content?  Not sure.  But if you leave it the 90 seconds, you'll be fine.  Just look for the grill marks and you'll know you're done.

And that's about it!  It's just really so so simple.