Tasty BLT salad can stand for 'be lite'
By Elaine Magee
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Q. I saw a "BLT" salad listed on a menu at a restaurant the other day and it is served with avocado garnish and bacon dressing. It comes with chopped egg and blue cheese along with crisp bacon and lettuce. It seems way too rich for me but I liked the concept. Can you save this menu item?
A. Bacon dressing often uses bacon grease and since I'm going to use turkey bacon in this recipe, which doesn't leave any grease to speak of in the skillet, I'm going to fall short in the bacon dressing department. How about I turn the avocado garnish into the dressing? The only trouble with avocado dressing is that it's important to make it right before serving the salad, and don't count on it lasting too long in the refrigerator after that, either.
To lighten up this colorful and crunchy salad, I used turkey bacon torn into bits and for every two hard-boiled eggs used, I threw out one of the yolks (to cut down on cholesterol and saturated fat). Reduced-fat blue cheese is available in many stores now so feel free to use this instead. And with my mini-food processor in tow, I whipped up the avocado dressing using an avocado, some lime juice and fresh basil, a splash of red-wine vinegar, and instead of a glug-glug's worth of oil (1/2 cup) I added only a couple tablespoons of olive oil and used fat-free sour cream to make up the difference.
This still might be considered a high fat salad to some, but we've cut the total fat and saturated fat in half and a large majority of the total fat in the light salad is coming from the smarter fats: monounsaturated and polyunsaturated.
Based on the description, the restaurant salad might contain at least 450 calories, 36 grams of fat, 11 grams saturated fat, 252 mg cholesterol per serving with 2 tablespoons of dressing.
BLT SALAD WITH LIGHT AVOCADO DRESSING
For the salad:
For the dressing:
Remove the shells and discard 2 of the yolks from the hard-boiled eggs and chop up the remaining 2 egg whites and 2 whole eggs.
In 4 individual serving salad bowls, assemble salad by layering the romaine lettuce then tomatoes topped with turkey bacon bits, chopped egg and blue cheese crumbles.
In mini food processor, combine avocado dressing ingredients and pulse until smooth (it will be on the thick side). Add more pepper to taste if desired. If you don't have a mini food processor, use a blender or mash the avocado very well with a fork and briskly whisk in the other ingredients.
Add a nice big dollop of dressing to each salad bowl. Spoon the remaining dressing into a small bowl and place on the table in case anyone wants additional dressing. Enjoy!
Makes 4 servings.
