Chicken Salad

Hello friends. Clearly I haven't forgotten that this blog exists. I just had not been cooking much on my own for a while. In fact, that whole healthy living thing just kinda evaded me for a while and I put on a few pounds as proof.

The one actual lifestyle change that worked for me was trying the ketogenic lifestyle. I will not gush about it as many people do. It worked very well for me when I stuck to it. I only stopped sticking to it during my wedding planning process as I was still new at that lifestyle and it takes a bit of work at the beginning to learn and plan your foods. There's a lot more cooking at home that happens for sure, which is great all around. Until you run out of time because wedding planning.

Anyway, I hope to get back to it but at the moment I'm just trying to eat healthy where I can and practice portion control (which is huge for me since I scarf things like no other).

So, on to the chicken salad. Sadly, I have no pictures. I was a bum and didn't take any while preparing this dish. I hope you understand.

I roasted a chicken in my oven a while back. When it was done, my fiance and I looked at each other and realized that we weren't hungry. So we stuck it in the fridge. A week went by... finally I decided it was time to eat that thing, so I put it in my crock pot with some filtered water and a few spices and boiled it until I had chicken broth. Then we tried to eat it.

It was very clearly old chicken. You could taste the "aged" flavor. We managed to eat a few bites, and then filled up on the rice I had made with the broth.

Figuring this was a total loss I put all my eggs in one basket: chicken salad. There was a lot of meat on that bird that I did not want to waste. I grew up very poor, so, unless there was mold on it, it was valid leftovers (I am not that bad anymore, but this chicken was definitely something that everybody else I know would have just thrown out by this point. In fact, they probably would have thrown it out before even bothering to make broth) and had to be eaten. Besides how I was raised, there's also the wedding budget to consider. We are putting more into this wedding than I expected, but at the end of the day, it will be really nice and it will be worth it. But it means we have to tighten our belts. And wasting a whole chicken just really isn't an option.

So, the first thing I did was scour the internet for some recipes and I found a few that I wanted to massage into a coherent recipe for myself. I love the website Use Real Butter and her Chicken Salad Recipe was a great starting base for mine. Then, after a long day at work yesterday, I went to the store and bought my supplementary ingredients: mayo, green onions, grapes, celery, and parsley.

Here's the deal. I hate nuts in my food. Absolutely and completely hate nuts in my food. I love them on their own, but not in my food. Their texture is all wrong. ALL WRONG. The same goes for apples in chicken salad. Just no. I never realized how picky I was about food texture until I hit a few foods that were so discordant in their texture that it was physically jarring.

To me, chicken salad should have the consistency of tuna salad, with a hint of crunch but without needing a lot of chewing. Also, celery has a tendency to be over powering, so no huge chunks.

How to accomplish this? Simple, take your celery, slice it lengthwise and then slice it into little chunks from there. You know how if you just slice celery it makes these little curved smiles? Cut those in half and you have the right sized chunks. These little chunks provide a little crunch and burst of celery flavor, but they're so small they don't overpower everything else AND they don't take much time to chew.

Along with slicing the green onions and the grapes and chopping some fresh parsley, the rest of the recipe is mixing. Speaking of mixing, you will notice there are no cranberries or raisins. I love cranberries and they're okay in my chicken salads but my fiance hates them with a passion (more for me). Deciding that I could do without a chewy texture in my chicken salad I opted for the slight sweetness of grapes.

How did my recipe fare? Did the fiance like it?

Oh boy did he ever! He asked for seconds! Which is saying something considering he took two bites of the plain chicken the night before and then politely declined eating any more of it.

Without further ado the chicken salad recipe.

Ingredients:
2 cups cooked chicken, diced
1 cup grapes, sliced 1/4" thick
1/4 cup celery, finely diced
2 green onions, thinly sliced
1/8 cup fresh parsley, minced
3/4 cup mayonnaise (more or less as needed)
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/8 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp salt (more or less as needed)

Instructions:
Combine the all the ingredients in a mixing bowl. Season with additional salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy in sandwiches, on saltine crackers, or straight from the bowl.

Serves: About 3

Review: Beef Tenderloin Wrap

Original Recipe to be found here at Use Real Butter. 

I modified it a bit as it is originally supposed to be an appetizer.

1/2 lb. Filet Mignon (One Piece)
Salt
2 Stalks Green Onions
6 Tbsps Hoisin Sauce

3 Tbsps Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1 Tsp Minced Garlic
Skewers

1 Package Baby Bella Mushrooms

1/2 Yellow Onion Sliced or Diced depending on your preference

Salt the filet and broil (or grill or pan sear) to desired doneness (rare to medium rare is preferred). 

Let beef rest and then refrigerate for an hour. 

Wash and trim the green onions. 

Slice the green onions on a shallow angle into thin strips. 

Remove beef from refrigerator and using a sharp knife, slice at an angle to about 1/8-inch thickness, as many slices as possible. 

For each slice, spread a little hoisin sauce on the beef, place a few green onions at one end of the beef (with the onions sticking out over the edges), and roll up the onions in the beef. I found that an easier method is to pour out 3 Tbsps hoisin sauce on a plate and dip one side of the beef in the sauce and continue from there.

Secure onto skewer.

Place olive oil, remainder of hoisin sauce, onion, garlic, and mushrooms in a skillet. 

Sautee over medium heat until onions are a translucent caramel color. 

Pour onion and mushroom mix over fillet skewers.

The reason I pour the onions and mushrooms over the fillet is because I wanted a warm dish for dinner and this recipe has you cool the beef to slice it up. I think if you have a sharp enough knife one could conceivably cut the meat after it has rested for a few minutes out of the broiler. Then the meat would be warm, but barring that you can pour the piping hot veggies over the meat and onions and that warms it up to a decent temp for a hot meal.

This is a very delicious and savory meal. Enjoy! And for super awesome photos of these wraps go check out the recipe's page at Use Real Butter.