Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Mexican Chicken Salad with Tomato and Black Bean Salsa (SANS chicken!)


Can you feel the tension in the air????? Game 7 Montreal v Pittsburgh. It's first period Montreal leads but can they hold on????? I'd be more nervous if I wan't so full!

So last night I babysat my sweet little niece..Doodlebug. -That's not her name, just what I call her. I got home around 11pm last night exhausted and go straight to bed. Today at work I have a semi-frustraighting day and also have a 2 hour afternoon training session learning new closed captioning software. After which I rush to get the rest of my work done but still get home late. As you can imagine I don't really feel too much like cooking when I get home and lucky for me this recipe requires no cooking!! Just assembling really. The closest you get to cooking in using a blender to make your dresssing.

Before I get to all that though let me tell you about the Jicama. What the Eff is a jicama??? Answer....I've still no idea. Here's what wisegeeks.com has to say:

Jicama is a crisp, sweet, edible root that resembles a turnip.

Other website refer to this as a yam type of food. So at my Metro I looked near the yams. I picked out something that was not listed as a jicama but looked like the pictures I saw online. In the end I have absolutely no idea what ingredient I used in place of a jicama but it reminded me of a coconut apple almost. Coconut type texture but the soft flavour of a type of apple. Actually maybe an asian pear....Maybe it was a jicama...I've no effing idea.

It wasn't until afer I'd purchased the mystery root that I read Nigella's blurb regarding this recipe where she clearly states if you can't get a hold of a jicama use an asian or nashi pear, or water chestnut or even granny smith apple....too little to late for me.

Anyhow, I was ill prepared for other parts of this recipe too but didn't realize it until I was in the middle of preperation...The first thing I did was make the dressing. The dressing has a real tangy zip to it. The garlic and the lime juice are what make it. Next I made the "salad" part. Nigella lists COS lettuce. Which is just another way of saying Romaine lettuce.

Then I moved onto making the salsa. Turns out I only had one tomato instead of the 2 required. Which is something I can still hardly believe because Husband buys tomatoes like they're gold. We always have no less than 5 tomatoes around and I'm throwing out rotten tomatoes every other day it seems. So I couldn't believe we only had 1 tomato. Nonetheless I chose to ignore this fact and proceeded with my one tomato. Only to realize that I had just used all my limes for the lime juice in the dressing. What's to do when you've no lime juice? Why lemon juice of course. So lemon juice it was. Just a touch - lemons and limes for all their similarities really aren't that much alike. So I used just a bit to add a little sourness to the salsa.

To assemble, coat your salad in the dresssing, top with salsa. I used some of the left over dressing that I had to put a dollop on top to make it all look pretty. The end result is pretty eff-ing delicious. This salad is sooooo perfect for a lazy, hazy summer day.


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