“Homemade with Love. In other words, I licked the spoon and kept using it.” -Spicy Goulash

This week’s recipe is… Winter Spa Salad with Lemon Chicken

This week we have a very special recipe. Made from spinach, kale, celery, cranberries, cucumber, parsley, tomatoes, chickpeas, and mandarin oranges, we have a salad that is both healthy, filling, and delicious!

Along with the ingredients in the salad, the Winter Spa Salad also includes zesty lemon chicken. The lemon chicken is boneless skinless chicken breasts marinated with olive oil, juiced and zested lemon, salt, and pepper. This mouth-watering combination is almost complete! The last ingredient is the dressing!

The dressing for our Winter Spa Salad with Lemon Chicken includes minced shallot, half a bunch of de-stemmed and lightly minced mint, mayonnaise, cider vinegar, Dijon mustard, brown sugar, salt, and pepper.

Now that we’ve listed all our ingredients out for the different parts of our salad, let’s dive into the history of this dish!

HISTORY OF THE SALAD

The salad is a dish that has become common as a first course meal, and a go-to lunch and dinner for many throughout the world. But where did it come from?

The Oxford Dictionary of Food and Drink in America claims that the salad was popularized a long time ago during the age of the Roman Empire. It’s first form was a mixture of raw leafy vegetables which were marinated with a salty, oily dressing. Interestinly enough, the word salad actually comes from the Latin word Sal, which in English means salt.

As salads have evolved and become more complex as time has gone by, the original Roman version, what we would call the Garden Salad, still lives on today without much of a change.

HISTORY OF CHICKEN SALAD

It is believed that Chicken Salad was first made roughly around 1863. It is believed that Rhode Island is the state that first created Chicken Salad, although it is up for arguement as others believe that it was in fact an 18th century Russian dish. However, what is not up for arguement is that it is delicious.

TRIVIA

Question: In what year was the Ceasar Salad first created?

Answer: 1924! It is believed that an Italian chef in Tijuana created the now-popular dish. Interestingly, this chef insisted that the salad must be made with Italian olive oil, and must never include anchovies. The more you know!

Question: In what year was Jello-O-Salad first made?

Answer: The 1960s! Now, although gelatin-based salads had been made for some time, (around the turn of the century, to be exact) Jello-O decided to one-up the culinary game by creating celery-flavored gelatin!

Junior Chef Stars – The Premiere Cooking School for Kids and Teens

We hope you enjoyed this week’s recipe! Keep your year rolling by giving your child the gift of a February or March Cooking Class!

To see a list of our upcoming classes, click here!