Every once in a while, you run across a dish that’s so easy and versatile that it seems perfect for just about every occasion.  There are lots of foods like this in the world, and I’m sure like me, you probably go through phases with them; for a long time, the perfect picnic or potluck offering, in my opinion, was my mother’s capellini salad with capers and tomatoes, followed by a long-standing infatuation with a potato salad dressed with sundried tomatoes and their oil.  After that I had a brief flirtation with the antipasto tray (far too expensive to be sustained), before moving on to a dessert dalliance with a couple of pound cakes and a chai-spice brownie recipe. Each one of these dishes was perfect in its own right and was a quite reasonable addition to a picnic or potluck table, but each one has passed out of my fancy as THE DISH.

It’s high time I found THE DISH again, and I think this is it.  It’s perfect for any and every occasion, I swear, barring perhaps a wedding; but what would you be doing bringing a covered dish to a wedding, anyway?  (If it were the type of wedding that necessitated a potluck offering, I guess this would be just as good as anything else.)  This is a dish that requires almost NO COOKING AT ALL.  There’s some modest prep work — nothing hard, mainly a bit of chopping — and then the blender does the heavy lifting by whipping up the dressing for you.  All you have to do, honestly, is bring all the ingredients together and let them commingle into something light and fresh and delicious.  With such minimal effort required, it’s an excellent weeknight meal, a great lunch item, and a no-fuss potluck offering that will make you look like a star.  And since it’s lacking in mayonnaise, it’s happily quite safe for warm weather picnics.  Try it, adjust it, make modifications to the recipe to make it really “your own,” but most importantly, love this Greek-style Chicken and Quinoa Salad the way I’m falling in love with it.  Seriously, this could be THE DISH.

Greek-Style Chicken and Quinoa Salad