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. 

Smoked salmon and new potato salad

Heaven, Courtney, Kate, Danielle, Yuki, Andrea, Gina, Joyce

The problem with writing up Salad Club recipes is that quantities are rarely specified. This means they can be little vague, although generally the quantities seem to work out fine.

This week, however, we had a large turnout, and thought a few extra potatoes were needed. We 'steamed' these in the microwave by cutting them in half, placing in a large tupperware container, covering with boiling water and cooking on a high setting for 10 minutes. I have to say they worked well. Thanks to Kate for the instructions on microwaving potatoes. . 

Smoked salmon and potato salad with horseradish ingredients

Enough for 12

• 3 packs smoked salmon
• New potatoes, boiled
• 1 cucumber, cut into matchsticks
• String beans (aka green beans or French beans)
• 2 avocados, roughly chopped
• 1 red onion, finely sliced
• 3 bags watercress*

Creme fraiche and horseradish dressing ingredients

• About 500ml half fat creme fraiche
• 1/2 large bunch dill
• Small amount chopped fresh parsley
• 1 bunch chopped chives
• Rind of 1 unwaxed lemon
• Juice of half a lemon
• 2 tablespoon hot horseradish sauce
• Salt and pepper

How to make fraiche and horseradish dressing

1. Chop the herbs finely and mix together with all the other ingredients.
2. Season to taste, adding more lemon and horseradish till the dressing has the right balance.

A word on watercress

*I watched some rubbish programme last week where James Martin annoyed me about how watercress was underused. Rubbish! Watercress is ubiquitous!

Watercress is a great salad ingredient but doesn't hang around in a good condition for very long. If you get it mixed with other leaves in packets from the supermarket its always the first one to go soggy. You end up either throwing out the whole lot or picking out the rotten watercress to salvage the rocket and spinach. Packs of just watercress from the greengrocer need using up within a day or two before they turn slimy and unusable.

Of course, watercress doesn't just belong in salads. Its peppery taste and vivid green colour can be turned into a cracking sauce to go with fish, or, my favourite, fishcakes.
 

 

 

Salad Club II: Mexican chicken

Mexican chicken salad ingredients

• 1 whole cooked chicken 
• 2 ripe avocados 
• 1 punnet cherry tomatoes
•  2 Cos lettuces, or 1 Romaine lettuce (any crispy lettuce will do) 
• 1 small red onion 
• 1 tin sweetcorn 
• 1 tin kidney beans 
• Coriander (cilantro, I am bilingual), chopped (optional) 
• 1 quantity salsa dressing

How to make Mexican chicken salad

This is the easiest salad to make in the world, since we bought a cooked whole chicken from the supermarket. 

1. Pull the chicken meat off the carcass
2. Chop the tomatoes in half
3. Cut the cucumber into thick slices, then quarter the slices
4. Finely chop the onion
5. Slice the avocado into thin slices
6. Put everything in separate bows
7. Empty the sweetcorn into its own bowl, and the beans into another
8. Get Courtney to make the salad dressing.

Enjoy!