Bonjour mes amis!
I come to you again to bring you news of salad with peaches from the cookbook At Home with the French Classics!
I actually made this recipe more than a month ago and neglected to write about it. Has anyone else struggled with productivity during this pandemic? I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit sensitive to that constant flickering light at the end of the tunnel. I keep hoping it will finally get brighter and I will get out, but that light is starting to look a bit like it’s fueled by gas. A gas light if you will.
Now that we got that out, let’s get productive and make this refreshing summertime salad.
What you’ll need
- 8 skinless, boneless chicken half breasts (about 3 pounds) poached, chilled, and diced
- 1 avocado diced
- 2 white or yellow peaches, peeled and diced
- 1 lime
- 2 celery stalks, chopped
- 3 scallions, chopped
- 2 hard boiled eggs, chopped
- 3/4 to 1 cup mayonnaise, to taste
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/8 teaspoon pepper
- pinch of curry powder
- 1 head lettuce, separated into leaves
- Tomato wedges or cherry tomatoes
Before I get into our first step, let me just give you this lazy chef hack. It’s ok if you don’t want to cook and chill your own chicken my friends. I’m going to take a wild stab in the dark here that most of my readers are not aspiring contestants for Top Chef, Iron Chef, The Great British Bake Off, and/or insert your favorite cooking competition show here.
I’m here to tell you my dear loyal readers that it’s ok to just buy some frozen chopped chicken at your favorite grocer. We aren’t pro chefs here. It’s ok.
Although if I were a pro chef I think my favorite role would be a saucier personally. I think we can make the argument that I’m saucy kind of girl. It’d fit me well in the kitchen world.
Now that I’ve given you permissions and confessions, let’s move onto actual steps. Our first step is to toss that chicken, avocado, peaches, and juice from half of the lime in a large bowl. Toss it for a bit and then add celery, scallions, and hard-boiled eggs. Continue tossing and mixing.
We are now ready to flavor our mayonnaise with some salt, pepper, curry, and the remaining lime juice. Add this mixture to your chicken mix and toss yet again. Once everything is mixed together put it in the fridge and let it marinate for at least and hour. The cookbook mentions you can also let it sit for a day.
Once it’s marinated, get your lettuce out and tear off leaves equally for serving. Place your mixture on the bed of lettuce and then garnish with your tomatoes.
As you can see in the photo above this salad is a chonky, green, and bountiful salad. It reminds me of the American Cobb Salad only French of course. I can hear French people sigh as they read this. I imagine then like so…
There is no what came first, the chicken or the egg debate on this one. Our French friends made this salad so Americans could walk and I personally am grateful. This salad is a meal and a tasty one at that. The texture of the egg and avocado pair nicely because the avocado smoothes the egg out like butter on toast. The tomatoes are a salad garnish staple for a reason and adding peaches to this mix gives the salad a nice splash of sweet that doesn’t overpower the rest of the flavor.
All in all a great salad and one you could even make more American by turning it into a chicken salad sandwhich.
Please French people don’t hate me for suggesting that. I love you….
thehermitfool 