Friday, December 6, 2013

Don't make this chicken salad

I didn't think salad would be a hard thing to make for dinner, but I think I was wrong.
I followed (kind of...not really) a recipe I found online, but the one I linked to yesterday was wrong. I took some parts of that recipe and other parts of a recipe that I either dreamt or lost into the abyss of my browser history and it came out...okay.



Looks pretty anyway.

Here's what I did.

Dressing:
2 tbsp lime juice
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp chili sauce
splash of peanut oil

1 chicken breast, sliced up
1 bag of  frozen "grilling veggies" from Wal-Mart (zucchini, squash, onions and red peppers)
5 mushrooms, sliced
mixed salad greens (spinach and spring mix)

I cut up the chicken into bits. I had originally intended to slice the breast in half longways, but the breasts we have left are a bit skinny for that, so I cubed-ish. I poured about 1/3 of the sauce into a pan and cooked the chicken in it, adding the frozen veggies as the chicken cooked.
In a separate pan I cooked the mushrooms with 1/2 tsp of butter until they were warm and then took them off the heat.
I put something like two handfuls of mixed salad into bowls and poured the rest of the dressing over it. There wasn't quite enough left so I made some more dressing to pour over the chicken and veggies.
Put the mushrooms on top, and then scooped the chicken/veggie mix on top of that and poured the rest of the dressing over the top.



It smelled pretty good as I was cooking, but it was VERY limey. Way too limey. I was trying to stretch out the chicken a little bit, but this wasn't a great success. Mr. Idiot seemed to like it well enough, he ate what was left in my bowl, but it was too limey and there wasn't enough difference of texture.
I don't want to give up on salad because it does help stretch the meat out, but this was no bueno. I'm thinking maybe if I get some peanut sauce and add some peanuts to the salad it'll have more crunch, and maybe less acidic lime taste. And I think the grilling veggies were a mistake. The flavor just...didn't go together. Maybe teriyaki chicken with peanuts and chili sauce.
Hrm.
Thankfully Mr. Idiot brought home chocolate cake (YAY!) with the lime juice I asked him to pick up, so neither of us went too hungry.
Hopefully tomorrow's dish goes down better.

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