I should make consomme once a week, I have not had to think about my protein for days with all that poached chicken on hand! Here we go, another recipe to use it up. I had a pow-wow with Jo this morning, co-director of the cookie house and she pointed out to me that we need more salads, which is true, but not surprising as we are just coming out of winter and mostly what I share with you is my dinners. So here we go, an absolute stunner of a salad, brim full of flavour and something you would pay a motsa for at a restaurant but can do so quickly and easily, and much, much more thriftily at home. Ready? Then let’s go.
Ingredients
Makes enough for one big meal or two side meals or entrees
1 poached chicken breast, cut into chunks (you can use a shop bought roasted one if you want to, I won’t tell and then use the bones to make the consomme!)
2 tablespoons pesto
1/2 avocado, sliced
1/4 of a Lebanese cucumber cut into matchsticks
1/4 carrot cut into matchsticks
1 spring onion, sliced
I stick celery, sliced
about a dozen raw macadamia nuts
6 green olives
5 capers
1 tablespoon canned, drained edamame beans
pepper
nigella and sesame seeds
Water down your pesto to dropping consistancy, (for lovely pesto recipe go next door to pesto blog), by this I mean you want it to drop off the spoon when you scoop it up and turn the spoon sideways, now stir in the chicken, making sure you have it all nicely coated.
Now, cheesed macadamia, what do I mean by that? Well, I was having a small sulk because what this salad really wants is a nice firm feta, or some roasted haloumi, but if I put that in I will not be able to breathe with my asthma this afternoon, and I am very aware that a lot of the people who follow this blog (Hi Mum!) are not supposed to eat dairy either, so I thought, right, I am looking for something buttery and salty and melting. Hmmm. So this is what I did, and very nice it turned out too.
Toast your macadamia in a small pot over a medium low heat, while you are doing that coarsely chop the olives and capers and crush the edamame beans with the side of your knife. When the macadamias are showing a little colour and are hot, turn off the heat and stir in the olive/caper/edamame mixture and give it all a good stir around.
Trust me, it tastes much better than it looks, tip that in with your chicken, add your salad veg, give it all a good stir around, pop it in a bowl, dress with a grind of black pepper and top with the seeds of your choice, I have used nigella and sesame seeds because I like the colour contrast.
There you go Jo, a nice summery salad.
We haven’t done this for a while, so let’s take a step back and look at this meal from a round meal perspective. We have our protein in our chicken, our macadamias, the nuts in our pesto and our edamame beans, we have some wonderful unrefined carbohydrate in our fresh veg, some excellent fibre there and in our edamame beans, some really good fats in the olive oil in our pesto, our nuts and our olives and avocado, loads of vitamins and minerals, some phytoestrogens in our edamame beans, very good for Jo and I who are menopause buddies and the whole thing is just brimming with antioxidants. I think this one can go down in the Round Meal Hall of Fame. Ooo! Note to self, start a Round Meal Hall of Fame.
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