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Recently I’ve been getting home from work WAY too late to want to do anything in the kitchen so half a cooked chook, a bag of salad and ready-made potato salad from the supermarket have been my ‘chef’s special’  more often than I care to say. It’s quicker than take-away and it’s relatively healthy, but so boring after the 15th time.  The plan was to have this again, but I thought if I spend just 5 minutes on prep we could actually eat something interesting.

I don’t usually keep ready-made salad dressing in the house, I wish I did sometimes when I’m being lazy, but it forces me to be a bit creative instead of just reaching for the good ol’ french dressing.  Often it’ll just be Olive Oil and Balsamic Vinegar, but other times I’ll go nuts and use all sorts of condiments.

The best way to make a good dressing is use approximately equal parts of oil and an acid, perhaps lemon juice or a vinegar. Then just chuck in whatever you have in the cupboard. Maybe some grainy mustard, or some herbs or spices. As we’re all on a Mexican Kick this month, and I am going crazy for Cholula, I’ve gone down that road.

Ingredients

1 cup canned chickpeas
1/2 cooked chook (chicken), shredded roughly
10cm cucumber, sliced
handful of Baby roma tomatoes, quartered
1/2 red capsicum
Coriander
Parsley
1/3 red onion, sliced finely
Mixed salad leaves
Handful of snowpeas, cut into strips diagonally
1/2 avocado, diced

 
Dressing
1cm cube of fresh ginger, cut into very thin slithers
Juice of 1/2 a very juicy lime (or 1 lime)
1 tbsp Cholula Hot Sauce
1 tbsp Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
1/2 tsp Paprika

Chuck it all together in a big bowl and serve.