Cheeky Chicken Salad

I called this chicken salad cheeky, because it wasn't a recipe from a book, but one that I made up. I usually make up a recipe on Friday, but this one cheekily slipped in on a Saturday! It came about because a colleague at work had a big pot of Onken peach wholegrain yoghurt for her tea one day this week, and said that peach was by far the best flavour. Of course, this made me want to try it, so I asked my mum for any recipes she knew that used peach yoghurt. She came up with chicken salad with peach yoghurt dressing, and I came up with the actual ingredients and recipe. The supermarket didn't have the Onken peach yoghurt, but they did have Yeo Valley peach and apricot, so I got that instead. This is what I came up with.

For the chicken element, I just baked a mini breast fillet and shredded it. For the salad part, I had a bag of mixed crunchy salad, and added my own extra to it- dried chopped apricots to tie in with the apricot in the yoghurt, and a big stalk of choped celery. I also cooked some quinoa to add as well. I actually got it for a recipe that I will be having next week, but as I have never had it before I really really wanted to try it. I just cooked it in water this time, as I thought I like to have new ingredients plain the first time I use them as a benchmark for future variations! I'm happy to say, it was very nice, a bit nutty tasting, and the texture was like little pearls popping in your mouth. An odd way to describe it, but it's the best I can do! Anyway, back to the salad. To garnish it, I used the peach and apricot yoghurt, and some flaked almonds which I quickly toasted. I was going to add some things to the yoghurt to make a proper dressing, but when I licked the lid, it was so nice I decided to leave it!

The salad-y bits and bobs.

It just seems to be saying, 'fill me in!'

The quinoa cooking and puffing up nicely

Quinoa close-up. You can see, that just like other grains such as couscous and rice, what at first looks like a rather measly portion, puffs up into something much more substantial.

Just to prove that I did mess it up before I ate it, as usual!