I hope you all had a nice week 😁❤️

How do you prefer your salad? At home, we eat salad everyday. If possible, I like to find different flavors, textures and temperatures in my salad, so I like to combine raw and cooked ingredients and serve it freshly made. There were salty, sweet and sour flavors; soft, crunchy and meaty textures; warm and cold ingredients. This what I call fun.

I bought a huge broccoli three days ago, enough for a stegosaurus to have a good snack, and I've been preparing it in different ways.

Today I decided to add the last third of it to a chicken salad, plus some garlicky homemade mayonnaise for a dressing.

I used raw spring onion, parsley, and cilantro, leek, spring onion, and carrot, homemade Granny Smith chips.

The result was a fun, nutritious dish with lots of delicious, crunchy little things to bite.

INGREDIENTS

For the salad

• 400 gr broccoli, florets and stems with their leaves
• 200 gr Granny Smith, chopped
• 2 cups spring onion
• 1 cup leek, including the leaves
• 1 cup cilantro
• 1 cup parsley
• 1 cup carrot
• 250 gr chicken breast
• 2 bay leaves
• 3-4 garlic cloves, flattened
• salt to taste

For the apple chips

• 1 Granny Smith

Add as many slices as you like.

THE PROCESS

When making a salad, I start by washing the vegetables well, I guess that like anyone else. But as this is a chicken salad with a homemade mayonnaise dressing, I start by cooking the chicken, and while it's cooking, I make the matonnaise. Once the mayo is in the fridge and the chicken is done, I get to work with the vegetables, which I want to be warm when served.

SHREDDED CHICKEN BREAST

I freeze the chicken in pieces and clean, ready to cook. I took 4 chicken breast fillets and let them thaw before cooking. It was about 500 grams, so I'd be using it for another couple of meals. I cooked it in two cups of water with the garlic, bay leaves, and a little salt. After the water dried out, I removed the bay leaves and the clove skin and shredded the meat using two forks, until the chicken was completely shredded. I'd be using half of it for the salad.

HOMEMADE GARLIC MAYO

The combination of garlic mayo and fresh apples in salad is a must when you're making Venezuelan Christmas salad, but you can see that it's popular all year round. I use my smoothie blender to make it in a snap.

I like to make my own mayonnaise because I know what kind of oil I'm using. Also, I can add little or no salt at all. Making your own mayo allows you to control measures and ingredients and make substitutions to create vegan dressings, for example.

I put all ingredients inthe blender glass, except the olive oil and garlic, and let the blender do the job.

I saw how it thickened in a minute

Then it was time to add the peeled and flattened garlic cloves and the olive oil. The latter I poured little by little as the blender went.

This mayo sets quickly, so I took it out of the blender glass immediately.

After half an hour in the refrigerator, the homemade garlic mayonnaise is firm.

...and can be used right away.

APPLE CHIPS

For these apple chips, I used Granny Smith because it is perhaps my favorite, either raw or cooked. I cut almost a whole one into slices for the chips; I used it raw to mix with the chicken salad.

The chips were done in 20 minutes in my air-fryer. I just washed and sliced it without peeling it and took the seeds and parts out before placing them on the baking tray.

20 minutes at 300° F were enough.

After they cooled, they turned crispy 😁

NOW, VEGETABLES 😋

I was going to need raw and cooked vegetables. I began by washing them well. I had plenty, so we would have salad for the whole weekend. My husband takes advantage of this better than me, since I leave for work on Friday at the crack of dawn and return on Saturday evening--we still have some mayo that will last at least another week (yes, it lasts a lot more than the customary 3 days for homemade mayo).

Besides washing the broccoli, I always classify its parts for different purposes and then store them in the fridge: buds and stems for salad & soup and the chopped stalk for creamy soup.

I also use leek leaves a lot to eat them raw or sauteed. I keep the thickest leaves for vegetable broth and soups.

This salad had raw and half cooked ingredients. I cut the broccoli stems lengthwise and sauteed them for a minute in the hot wok; these I cooked for a little longer than the rest of the broccoli, as they have more fiber. I transferred the sauteed stems to a dish and continued to sauteed the rest of the broccoli.

I used my only wok during the whole process. The vegetables went in, sautéed, and came out to make way for the next ones.

After the broccoli stems and buds, sliced carrot and leek.

Finally, some of the spring onion, sliced.

After this, it was time for raw vegetables and the apple. I finely chopped everything and mixed it with the shredded chicken and garlic mayonnaise.

I saved some of the sliced spring onion to add on top for extra crunchiness.

Finally, I assembled the salad in two big bowls 😋

Food is served 😋

I served two bowls of salad and there was enough left over to eat another couple of meals.

I like to find different flavors and textures in every bite of salad, so one like this definitely makes my day. I hope you liked it 😁❤️

Bon appetite!

All text and images are my own. I have taken the pictures with my Redmi 9T cell phone. And if any GIFs here, I've used GIPHY for all them.

Thank you so much for your visit :)

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