Surprise Chef

I’ve been eating a lot of salad lately. It’s easy to knock one together, and I can keep the ingredients for a long time without them going off. I also don’t have to worry about finding a microwave at work to heat up my lunch in – which if you have a kick-arse reheatable luinch that you’ve been looking forward to since getting out of been at three in the morning, it’s guaranteed the ones out on site in Scumbag Workplace will have given up the ghost.

The fun thing with my approach to salads is that anything I feel like seeing in the bowl gets thrown in. A handful of fresh beans? Chopped cashew nuts? Any thing goes and mostly it works out.

I’ve been using labna chopped into it to replace dressing. Labna is a cheese of sorts, a very soft yoghurt ball thing that tastes awesome and tends to spread throughout the salad and coat everything in it. But the other reason I’ve been using labna is… I haven’t stocked up on the dressings yet. My relatively new pantry is bare when it comes to corruptible greats such as mayonnaise and assorted vinegars.

Last night’s salad effort included the last of the leftover roast chicken. I decided that the labna would no longer cut it when it came to bodgey dressing ideas. It was time to get creative. I had a lot of crunchy elements in my salad, which was lucky. The only elements in my pantry corruptible into some sort of dressing were of the asian factor.

What a brilliant experiment. It was simple and so effective.

I grabbed half a lemon and juiced it. Into that I put a splodge of sweet chilli sauce. I tasted it and mixed them by adding more until they balanced out – not to sweet and not too sour. Then I beefed it all out by adding olive oil and whisking it briefly. Fuck yeah. Yummy, and perfect for chicken and crunchy style salad.

Often I have invention disasters in the kitchen. I fail to see all the factors in what’s happening and end up with a bin-able offense. But when I pull it off, well I have to say I get pretty proud. This particular adventure is definitely a “save that one for later” recipe.