Celebrate Spring with this Easy Salad

Sometimes you just don’t want a heavy dinner to celebrate with family and friends. Here’s a recent celebration dinner we had when we had an early flight over the Easter. We still wanted to get together and have a nice meal, so we opted for an early dinner featuring salad. It turned into a riff on Salade Nicoise, with Chicken instead of Tuna. Simple, clean and worked remarkably well for six people.

Here’s how it’s done:

6 chicken breasts

½ lb of bacon, cooked crisp and cut into small pieces

Your favorite Teriyaki sauce

1 Pineapple

1lb haricot verte

1lb asparagus

1lb small mushrooms, halved or quartered

Chopped tomatoes

1 head Romaine

4c arugula

1 small package marble or fingerling potatoes

Olive oil

garlic

½ c blue cheese

½ c goat cheese

Preheat Oven to 375.

Preheat grill when ready to cook chicken.

Early in the day, marinate the 6 chicken breasts in teriyaki sauce (I prefer Soy Vay). Grill the pineapple.

Clean the greens and spin in a salad spinner. Wrap in a kitchen towel or paper towels until needed.

Toss cleaned, and quartered mushrooms into 1T olive oil and crush one clove of garlic over the mushrooms and toss. Add salt and pepper to taste and toss.

Put mushrooms in the oven for 35-45 minutes or until lightly browned and slightly dehydrated.

Bring a pot of water to a boil and blanch the haricot verte, plunge into ice water to cool and retain it’s color. Drain with strainer, dry and chill.

In the same pot blanch the potatoes until fork tender, drain and chill.

Meanwhile, prepare a mustard vinaigrette:

½ c. Olive Oil

1T Dijon mustard

3T Red wine vinegar

Juice of 1 lemon

Mix ingredients in a small jar and salt and pepper to taste.

Prepare a large platter by pouring 1T vinaigrette in the bottom and spreading around with a paper towel. Layer the chopped romaine, top with arugula. Put a quarter of the haricot verte on each corner of the platter, fill in with potatoes, tomatoes (if preferred you can toss the vegies in the dressing first). Slice the chicken and pineapple and serve on the top or the side along with the cheeses.

Serve with French bread and good butter.

This turned into a fun and clean eating Easter dinner which can be used for small events throughout Spring and Summer. What could you celebrate with this salad supper?