Summer Chicken Salad

This salad is amazing, fresh and delicious, and summery with mango and pineapple mixed through it.  Again, you can substitute the chicken with tofu strips, and leave the meaty bit of the dressing to make it acceptable to the non meat eaters.  I was so worried at first when she announced she didn't want to eat meat, but it's not going too badly at all.

Summer Chicken Salad

Ingredients

750g chicken breast

440g can of pineapple pieces (juice not syrup)

1 small brown onion finely chopped

1 tbsp mild curry powder

1 tbsp mango chutney

1/2 cup whole egg mayonnaise

1 butter lettuce

1 mango peeled and sliced

1 avocado peeled and sliced

1/2 cup macadamia nuts

4 sprigs lemon thyme

1 tbsp olive oil

Method

Poach chicken in pineapple juice with thyme.

When cooked, set aside and reserve 1/4 cup of poaching liquid

Slice chicken diagonally across grain

Fry onion in oil, add curry powder, and cook for 30 seconds till aromatic, add mango chutney.  Remove from heat, add reserved poaching liquid and mayonnaise.

Tear up lettuce and put it in a bowl, mix in avocado and mango and sliced chicken (or tofu)

Pour over dressing, and toss.  Sprinkle with macadamias.

This is another one from the old recipe book, such a winner.

Thai Beef Salad

I often order this if I'm out and it's offered, so delicious, so many flavours.  I found an old recipe book in the cupboard recently that I'd forgotten about, or dismissed as boring, but looking through it, realised that the reason I had written all of them down was because they were amazing.  Kind of like the analogue version of this blog, which I started for the kids so that when they leave home they can cook my recipes :).  Such vanity.  Maybe they will be relieved to experiment on their own without my interference.

Thai Beef Salad

Ingredients

800 g rump steak cut into strips as thin as you make them
150 g baby spinach (or any other green you fancy, I've been bulking it up with extra fancy lettuce I've had in the fridge to make it go a bit further)
1 red capsicum sliced - sometimes I fry up the slices, and sometimes leave them raw, depends how I'm feeling, both are nice
2 lebanese cucumbers cut into matchsticks
2 carrots cut into match sticks
1/2 cup snow peas cut in strips
1 cup bean sprouts (this is optional, I don't always have them on hand)
1/2 cup coriander leaves

Dressing

2 tbsps of lime juice
1 tbsp soy
1 red chilli chopped
1 clove garlic
I tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsps olive oil


Cook meat quickly in small batches in the oil
cover with foil and allow to rest
Mix all dressing ingredients
Prepare the vegetables and toss together
Toss meat and vegetables together
Pour over dressing and serve


I make a vegetarian option for the one who doesn't eat meat by frying up strips of tofu (with or without soy, it doesn't matter to her, she loves tofu either way), and make a separate dressing omitting the fish sauce, because, fish).  She says its really good.