Tofu salad

Chicken Patties and Orange Salad

Still commemorating the salad week, now I start venturing other alternative for greenies because as our logic says, eating greenies for 1 straight week can be sickening if you're not a vegetarian. So, with that in mind, there I was, yesterday at Carefour's fresh produce section, pondering for almost 1 hour, practically memorizing all the price combination. FYI, now I can tell you how much is the minced chicken per kg compare to the filleted chicken breast (it's more expensive, btw). Or, how much is the towan fish compare to Cod fish, and start to calculate how much 1 bowl of salad will cost you after all the combination is calculated. Surprisingly you don't need excel spreadsheet to forecast how much you'll spend for 1 week salad combination. And even more amazing, I can memorize all these price tags with just one glance but can't even remember people's names that I just meet.

So during my venture with my brain keep working on combination and possibilities, one item hit me in the head, Orange! Why didn't I think of it before? It's CHEAP (cheaper than those greenies definitely), full of Vitamin C, and good for your skin, and it has flavor. So here is the next salad recipe.

2 small chicken patties, diced (recipe below)

2 oranges, peeled and diced

1/4 can chick peas (obviously what's left over from my previous salad experiment)

Dressing: Heinz Light Salad dressing (this time I'm too lazy to make my own dressing), max 2 tbsp

Alternative dressing: Honey mayo (mix mayo and honey with a dash of lemon pepper)

Assemble: Throw everything into a bowl and mix well

Recipe for chicken patties
500gr minced chicken

1 packet cilantro or Thai parley

zest of 2 oranges, thinly sliced and chopped

3 tbsp corn flour

Seasoning: lots of lemon pepper

1. Set oven to 200C

2. Mix all ingredients and seasoning well in a bowl. Make sure all the corn flour is well incorporated

3. Align baking sheet with aluminum foil and grease it with cooking spray. Using 2 spoons make huge chicken balls, lay it on the foil and flatten it. Repeat the step.

4. Spray the top of patties with the cooking spray and bake it for about 15 minutes or until it's well done.

Salad tips (yep, another one :p)

1. Do mix and match your greenies with fruit. It's fun. And it adds color to your bowl :). Try fruits like apple, pear, all kind of berries. melons (cantaloupes will be nice). Even the nasty watermelons are worth trying (I don't eat watermelons).

2. Never store fruits together with your greenies. While greenies can be prepared the night before, fruits will be the other way around. The best it to always cut them only when you want to eat them. But off course for busy bees that will be very tough, but you still want to eat fruits. So, the solution is buy an airtight container. Off course this container doesn't apply for fruits like apples, bananas, pears and the likes, which leads to point #3.

3. Soak cut apples/pears with salt water for about 1/2 hour and rinse them before storage. But this old school method won't last your fruits in their cheeky clean feeling color for that long too. Definitely not 24 hours. So fresh cut is still the best. Do allow 10 minutes of cutting fruits in your schedule when preparing salad for your lunches.

4. Add more protein to your bowl. Nuts and peas will be good. I initially want to use pine nuts instead of chick peas. But to my dismay, I can't find any pine nuts. I do find some sunflower seeds in the organic aisle. But why do I want kuaci on my salad? And pay a hefty price to buy it just because it's ORGANIC? So As usual, i try to find cheaper alternatives, and I remember Rachel Ray very often mentions to store chick peas can in your kitchen, it'll come in handy. Thanks Rachel.

5. Fresh fruits give you hassle because you have to cut it? You can have dried food instead. They sell from dried cranberries, blueberries, strawberries (surprised?), cherries, pineapples, apricots. mangoes, orange skins and even now durian is dried. But off course when fruit is dried, their sugar content is also higher than when they're fresh, so you might want to limit the usage.

Butterhead Lettuce Salad with Chick Peas and Balsamic Vinaigrette

It turns out that living healthy in Singapore is not cheap, folks. It seems like anything green and related to 'ang moh' eg. lettuces and the gang are priced like a gold in here. With a 5SGD bill, guess what you get, just 2 cute bouquet of red and green crispy lettuces, or a very, very slim romaine lettuce. I have to carefully reading all the descriptions on the price tags hanging above those lettuces. And I don't even bothered to go beyond lettuce. If the main salad ingredients are priced like this, it'll be more horrifying to see what's the price for the topping. This makes me miss US, where lettuce are abundant and very much bigger and cheaper.

So with this in mind, I have to be smarter and more creative in what I should throw to my salad bowl, or I'll spend equally like if I buy any salad from a bistro.

After mix and match, here is a new recipe that at least still fits in my budget.

1 pack of butter head lettuce (consists of 2 cute bouquet, just nice for 4 portion), cut to bite size

2 red bell pepper, diced thinly

1 can chick peas, washed and strained

4 eggs, hard boiled, sliced

Vinaigrette: 100ml balsamic vinegar, 50ml olive oil, lemon pepper to your taste, marjoram to your taste, mixed

Assemble:

1. On the bottom place lettuce, then bell pepper, top it with the chick pea and eggs

2. Drizzle the Vinaigrette for finish, 3 tbsp is enough

Storage tips:

1. All ingredients MUST be dry before go into the fridge. With that said, it means that everything must be strained to the last drop of water. Lettuce is the most particular. You'll get a rotten lettuce if you store it wet inside a Tupperware. One way to avoid this is to put 1 layer of strainer inside your Tupperware. This way, at least the water stick to your lettuce will be slowly go down.

2. Separate all the leavies and greenies separate. Mixing them up will cause them to rotten faster. It's the same principle when you see pre-packed salad bowl in supermarkets. They separate your dressings, croutons and greenies, so that it lasts long.

3. Greenies should not be stored more than 3 days, unless you like to have your greenies with dry and red colored ends. I'm very particular about this and that's why I'm so fussy about storage.

4. Eggs should be stored in whole, not cut. Only cut when you want to eat it.