Chicken Caesar Salad
Serves: 4
Time: 40 mins
I love a Caesar salad, it’s an oldie but such a goodie and this version is what I like to call a finger food salad because we eat it with our hands. Simply build each leaf with toppings then fold and eat. Yum!
Leftovers
Leftovers work great on a roll so I’m buying a whole baguette and using that for my croutons and the leftover for the lunches.
Butterflied chicken
I find it incredibly frustrating that most butchers these days buy their chicken already portioned and have no cuts with skin on. If you are in Sydney you can get good free range chicken butterflied with its skin on from Haris farm, otherwise coles now do thigh cutlets with the skin on which works great.
What you'll need
1 whole butterflied chicken bone out skin on
2 baby gem or baby cos lettuces
8 slices of bacon
1 crusty baguette
Parmesan block
1/2 lemon
Worcestershire sauce
1/2 bunch of flat leaf parsley
From the pantry
Vegenaise or mayo
olive oil
sea salt and pepper
Optional Extra for Lunch
2 boiled eggs
Prep and Cook
Cook Chicken
Preheat oven to 180c
Remove your chicken from the packaging and pat dry with a paper towel.
Season both sides really well with salt and the flesh side with pepper as well.
Rub a teaspoon of olive oil into the skin and lay out skin side facing up on an oven tray lined with paper.
Place in the oven to cook for 30 minutes.
Cook Bacon
Fry your bacon off in a non-stick frypan till nice and crunchy. I tend to turn my bacon often the closer it gets to being done to avoid burning.
Wash Lettuce
Cut your gems into quarters and dunk in a large bowl of cold water. Give them a really good shake to get off any grit and dirt.
Flick off the excess water.
Wash the parsley and pick off the leaves
Cook Croutons
Cut off about 1/3 of your baguette and rip it up into nice chunky bite-sized pieces.
Place into a mixing bowl and toss in enough oil to coat well, season with salt and pepper and pop on an oven tray lined with baking paper and pop into the oven for 10 minutes.
Peel Parmesan
Use a peeler to peel off lovely long strips of Parmesan.
In a small bowl grate roughly 1/4 cup of Parmesan and set aside.
Mix dressing
You can make your own from scratch using egg yolks, mustard, vinegar and oil for the base…..but I’m cheating……so
Mix 1/4 cup of veganaise or mayo with the grated Parmesan. Mix in 1/2 teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce (go heavier if you're an anchovy lover) and squeeze over 1/2 a lemon. Mix well.
Bring a small pot of water up to the boil, place eggs in and cook to your liking (3 minutes for runny).
Plate it Pretty
Once the chicken is out of the oven let it sit for 5 minutes before slicing into nice big chunks.
Layout the lettuce wedges, then place the bacon pieces so they stick up high, sprinkle over the croutons, splatter across with the dressing, then lay over the chicken pieces and finally scatter with cheese and parsley.
Enjoy!
Lunch tomorrow
Lunch tomorrow is the exact same as dinner, I don’t often mix the salad dressing with the salad for lunch leftovers but I quite like the Ceasar all dressed the next day, baby gems and coz hold really well.