After we got home from church this morning, Bryan said he had a great idea for lunch. So he cooked and and watched! He is the more creative cook between us. I do a lot of tweaking of recipes, or combining of several different recipes, or adapting ideas to work for our family – generally needing a good structure to start with. But Bryan makes stuff up based on what ingredients we have available. Bryan can also eat something in a restaurant, then come home and duplicate it – as in the case of P.F. Chang’s famous Lettuce Wraps.
He’s the cooking equivalent of musicians who can play a song after hearing it once.
What he came up with today, I call Blue Mandarin Chicken Salad.
Saute chicken in Yoshida’s marinade until chicken is well browned and marinade is evaporated. Yoshida’s marinade can be found in the Asian isle, next to the soy sauce and teriyaki sauce. In fact, if you have teriyaki sauce at home, you could probably just mix in a little brown sugar or honey to sweeten it.
Today we used a can of chicken (comes like canned tuna – in water, needs to be drained) to save time, but in the future we will likely use 1-2 chicken breasts cut into pieces. The canned chicken still tasted great, though.
Fill a large bowl with crisp lettuce (we used romaine hearts), and a can of mandarin oranges. Add blue cheese crumbles, and chop some roasted almonds. Add chopped almonds to the chicken, and saute together until almonds are warm. Add chicken mixture to the salad, toss, and serve with salad dressing.
Bryan and I ate nearly the whole bowl of salad between us, and the kids ate peanut butter and jelly, so this probably isn’t a family style meal. But if you’re having a friend over for lunch or bringing something to a pot luck, this was very tasty!
YUM! That looks so good. You post the best recipes! 🙂