The Whiledorf salad

The other night I was staring at the chicken that we'd roasted at the weekend to provide quick and easy protein for our meals during the week, and I thought to myself, "I really don't want another chicken salad." 

So then I stared into the fridge for a few minutes. 

And I stared into the cupboard for a while too. 

Eventually, after several more rounds of staring, a meal started to form in my head. 

I remembered a while ago I used to make a really nice miso soup style thing with buckwheat noodles, chicken and lightly steamed broccoli, and I remembered I used to scatter a few blueberries on the top.

Which sounds disgusting but it was really nice.  The blueberries, apart from being insanely good for you (I watched a program once where people who ate blueberries as their afternoon snack increased their brain function or concentration or similar by about 1 gazillion percent for the rest of the day - caveat, I may not have got the statistics of that exactly right.), they're yummy and unlike lots of other fruit, not too sweet.  They have a great earthy taste and they add just the right element of zing to an otherwise quite flat dish.

So, there began my salad for that night.  

Instead of buckwheat noodles I started with a base of grains - one of my famous packets of 'gravel', perfect for such an occasion.  I think this one was just a mixture of red quinoa, buglar, freke.  Just enough to add a bit of bite.  

Then I added some broccoli I had blanched in boiling water for just a few minutes and then plunged straight into cold water afterwards.  This keeps it lovely and green and al dente...nobody likes slodgey fart flavoured broc in their salad.

Next came an apple (my favourite, pink lady) chopped into pieces and some celery before tearing up some roast chicken and adding that too.

Finally I crumbled a few walnuts over the top for our healthy fat stress busting component and a little earthy taste with a good old crunch.

I decided not to use any dressing or seasoning as I wanted it to stay really fresh and crisp and for all the individual vibrant flavours to stay in tact.

And all that staring into cupboards and fridges paid off as not only was it very tasty, it also felt super healthy and it was really satisfying because of all the different flavours and textures.

I used to absolutely HATE any type of fruit near any sort of savoury food (I'm thinking duck a l'orange, sultanas in coronation chicken..bleurgh), but done like this in a really simple, fresh and non sweet way, it really does chuck a different spin on the boring old chicken salad.

So,I'm calling this, my twist on another classic featuring apples and walnuts, the Whiledorf salad!