[Recipes]: 2 Flavourful Salads.

There’s no need to dread eating salads with these two recipes, which additionally allow you to have make multiple bowls of salad packed with flavour just as a single store brought salad bowl provides.

First up is ‘Honey Mustard, Ham, Egg, and Baby Potato Salad’.

Ingredients (serves 2-3):

• New Potatoes peeled or with the peel attached.
• Slices of sandwich ham.
• Honey mustard.
• Two boiled free range eggs.
• Iceberg Lettuce.
• Cherry tomatoes.
• Dried onion.

1. Boil the new potatoes and eggs in separate saucepans, allowing to chill over night.
2. In a large bowl combine the potatoes and eggs: sliced, followed by halved cherry tomatoes and chopped fresh iceberg lettuce. Use salad utensils or you hands to carefully toss the ingredients together.
3. The ham should be divided into strips, approximately the same length as the lettuce: I prefer to use crumbed ham for this particular salad.
4. For serving add a drizzle of honey mustard and a sprinkle of dried onions. If you can’t obtain premixed honey mustard from your local supermarket you can simply make it yourself. I suggest you use English mustard for a more peppery taste, or American mustard with clear honey for a sweeter flavour.

If you aren’t too conscious of your calorie intake, adding shredded chicken breast works well.

Next is ‘Texan-Mexicain Pasta Salad’: my all time favourite salad which I recreated to achieve a dish similar to what I had eaten from a British supermarket. Warning! If you don’t like spicy foods prehaps you should give this salad a miss.

Ingredients:

• Iceberg lettuce or mixed salad leaves
• Chicken breast
• Fajita seasoning
• Jalapeños
• Red ‘kidney’ beans
• Sour cream or mayonaise
• Mild cheddar cheese
• Sweetcorn
• Plain macaroni (optional carbohydrate).

1. Cook small strips of chicken breast in fajita seasoning: you may mix the spices together yourself or buy a sachet of premade seasoning that is red chilli and paprika based. The strips shouldn’t be larger than thumb sized pieces. Additionally use this time to boil the macaroni if you wish to add this to the salad. As salads are served chilled, you will need to allow the chicken and/or pasta time to rest to a chilled temperature.
2. Rather than this being a mixed salad it is made up of layering. The bottom layer of the bowl or container should give place to shredded iceberg lettuce and/or mixed salad leaves (plus the pasta if you are adding some) with a scattering of sweetcorn; on top of this spoon some mayonnaise or sour cream.
3. On top of the mayonaise or sour cream, which acts as a cooling agent, combine some of the fajita chicken followed by a sprinkle of jalapeños, a tablespoon of red kidney beans and a pinch sized amount of grated mild cheddar cheese.

These salads are especially suitable for serving more than one person or for keeping mealtimes at work interesting.