Sweet chilli chicken salad

Some people and a bit of salad

This is a delightfully fresh-tasting salad. Grateful thanks to chef extraordinaire, Miss Kate "K-Dog" Turner for the recipe.

Serves 10.

Chilli chicken salad ingredients

• I large bag rice noodles
• 2 whole cooked chickens*
• 3 red peppers
• 1 bunch spring onions
• 2 carrots
• 1 cucumber
• 2 mangoes
• 3 avocados
• I bag mange tout (snow peas)
• I bunch coriander (cilantro)
• Peanuts - about 4 handfuls (I have small hands. Maybe 3 handfuls if you have man-hands)
• A large quantity sweet chilli dressing

*Preferably, buy and cook your own chickens. As in, buy dead chickens then cook them. Though if you want to buy live chickens, spend time raising them, then slaughter and cook them, I take my hat off to you.
Instinct tells me the £4.49 ready-cooked chickens from Tesco probably didn't have a happy a life. If you didn't like the Henry Pig salad photo, consider becoming vegetarian. Personally, I prefer to know that my lunch lived a happy life before it was slaughtered so mI could eat it.

Sweet chilli dressing ingredients 

• Juice of 1 lemon
• White wine vinegar, or preferably, rice wine vinegar - about the same quantty as the lemon juice
• Sugar, or, preferably, palm sugar (1/4 cup), dissolved in the same quantity boiling water
• I dried chili, de-seeded (keep the seeds)
• Coriander powder
• 3 tablespoons fish sauce
• 4 crushed garlic cloves

How to make sweet chilli dressing

1. In a small pan, mix together the lemon juice, vinegar, sugar in water, powdered coriander, fish sauce and garlic cloves.
2. Simmer gently for about 5 minutes, till it starts to thicken.
3. Add the crumbled dried chill along with the seeds.
4. Garnish with fresh coriander leaves. 

How to make chilli chicken salad

1. Cook the rice noodles in some light chicken stock for about 5 minutes.
2. Drain and refresh under cold water.
3. Immediately toss in 1 teaspoon sesame oil, or, if you have some to hand, some sesame-based dressing.
4. Toast raw peanuts lightly in a pan then crush. 
5. Slice the peppers into long, very thin strips
6. Slice the spring onions diagonally into short strips.
7. Cut the carrots and cucumbers into julienne strips.
8. Cut the mango and avocado into thin strips.
9. Chop the coriander.

Lay everything out on separate plates and let people help themselves.**

**For salad club only. At home, mix everything together with the noodles and top with the toasted crushed nuts. 

Squash and satay soup

Here’s a soup that I really do consider free, since it is made almost entirely of leftovers. 

Before you turn your nose up at the idea, let me explain that after I made squash and sausage salad yesterday, I had some leftover Crown Prince squash and sweet potato. This had already been roasted in some rapeseed and chilli oil with a pinch of chilli flakes and ground coriander for the salad, so was ready to use.

Of course my initial thoughts were of turning this into soup, and at first I contemplated playing on another favourite salad by adding chickpeas and feta to a base of onions and vegetable stock.

Then I found a tiny tub of leftover homemade satay sauce in the fridge and hit upon the idea of making satay soup. Although quite healthy, this feels like a decadent soup to have for lunch at work on a Tuesday, so think of it as a reward for being almost halfway through the week. It is also reminiscent of the delectable Bolivian sopa de maní that is only served on Sundays.

Squash and satay soup nigredients

• I medium onion, finely chopped
• About ¼ Crown Prince Squash, roasted
• About ¼ sweet potato, roasted
• About ½ litre vegetable stock
• About 1½ tablespoons satay sauce
• Finely chopped mint leaves, to serve

How to make squash and satay soup

Couldn’t be easier, provided, of course, you have some ready made satay and leftover squash. Otherwise I wouldn’t bother.

1. Heat a tiny amount of oil in a pan.
2. Finely chop the onion and add to the oil.
3. Fry till soft.
4. Add the stock and the roasted squash and potato.
5. Add the satay sauce.
6. Bring to the boil then simmer for about 30 minutes.
7. Either liquidise roughly or smoothly to taste, or simply squash the squash and potato against the back of a spoon.
8. Add a little finely chopped mint.