A Healthy Lunch: Chicken Caesar Salad

Once the weather gets sunny and warm, making pretty food makes me feel happy. Mostly because pictures look so much better in natural daylight compared to artificial lighting. In previous years, I've always wanted to make cookies at around this time, but unfortunately, I don't have an oven this year. So sad.

Anyways, sunshine also brings to mind fresh green salads, at least to me. Now, I've never been a salad person as Ibu might tell you, but that doesn't mean I've never had the urge to try. I've tried an Asian Chicken Salad before, but didn't finish because it was too bland, too sweet. But another salad I've always wanted to try was Chicken Caesar Salad, so here's an easy way to make it. :)


Basically, you take either some baby gem lettuce or Cos or Romaine lettuce (which is traditionally used to make Caesar salad) and cut it into pieces. I used baby gem, since it's smaller and easier for me to finish up the whole pack. Next, you add in cooked chicken pieces chopped in pieces (I liked using the Ayam Bakar Goreng recipe) and croutons, which you can either make yourself by frying cubed pieces of bread or simply buy from the supermarket. They're widely available in the UK, though I'm not quite sure in Brunei. I got the garlic and cheese flavoured croutons from Sainsbury's. Last of all is the salad dressing. Again, you can make it yourself, but why bother? Just grab a bottle from the supermarket. If there is enough interest or if Caesar salad dressing is not available in Brunei, perhaps I shall try making my own dressing. But for now, I'll stick with the ready-made dressing.

And that's it! Just mix everything up and you're ready to go. I had a small portion last night and it was surprisingly tasty! I actually finished it up, which is no mean feat for someone who's not fond of veggies, haha. The dressing was quite delicious - sort of garlicky mayonnaise with a hint of cheese. I do think the chicken is an important part of the flavour, of course, so make sure you use something tasty. Feel free to use your favourite chicken recipe. :) The croutons were also nice sonce they were crunchy, giving a contrast in textures. What I decided to do then was pack another small portion for lunch today. Since I didn't want to risk the dressing making the lettuce soggy, I poured the salad dressing in a small bottle that I happened to have handy. Voila!

Isn't it adorable??? I have a matching tomato sauce bottle too, which I use more often, hehe. Anyway. If you plan to pack a salad for lunch too, it would be best to keep it cool. I plan on doing that by packing in a small bottle of water that I had frozen overnight.

Of course, that's just a small salad and definitely wouldn't be enough for lunch. So I am also packing myself a sandwich. I found these delicious looking cheese-topped bread rolls at Tesco's yesterday. They were only 36p and would be enough for two big sandwiches. Perfect!

For this sandwich, I added in beef pastrami, chicken salami, some extra chicken pieces from the salad, mature cheddar cheese as well as those cheese slices (macam cheesedale). This was baked in a toasted oven for about 5 minutes before I topped it with baby gem lettuce. Sandwich done! Wait for it to cool a little before wrapping it in clingfilm, ready for lunch. Yay! Can't wait to have lunch later!

Quote of the day: All normal people love meat. If I went to a barbeque and there was no meat, I would say 'Yo Goober! Where's the meat?'. I'm trying to impress people here Lisa. You don't win friends with salad.