Make-Fast Mondays: Mango Macadamia Chicken Lettuce Wraps

These lettuce wraps are fresh, fast and packed with flavor!

Make-Fast Mondays: Mango Macadamia Chicken Lettuce Wraps 
¼ cup olive oil
2 tablespoons lime juice
2 tablespoons orange juice
1 cup chopped cilantro
2 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1 pound cooked chicken breast, cubed or shredded
1 cucumber, seeds removed, peeled and diced
1 mango, peeled, cored and diced
1 avocado, stoned and diced
¼ cup diced red onion
1 head butter lettuce, leaves separated
¼ cup macadamia nuts, coarsely chopped

Make dressing by blending first five ingredients in a blender until smooth. Combine chicken, cucumber, mango, avocado and red onion in a large bowl. Add dressing to the bowl and stir gently to mix. Spoon the chicken mixture onto lettuce leaves and sprinkle with macadamia nuts.

May 24 Salad: Muscat love

I picked up some orange muscat champagne vinegar at Trader Joe’s the other day and put it to good use with this salad of mixed lettuces, sliced Asian pear and goat cheese crumbles.

May 6 Salad

I based this whole salad around the dill that’s been chilling in my fridge for the past couple days. We had a royal potluck at work last week to celebrate Wills and Kate getting hitched. My contribution was a huge batch of tea sandwiches — dill rye, English cucumber, cream cheese and fresh dill. The only thing that would have made this potluck better would have been a visit from one or more of those adorable corgis from “The King’s Speech,” but I digress.

I had dill to spare after the potluck, and thought I’d use it to make the Mustard Dill Vinaigrette that goes along with an orzo salad recipe I absolutely love. I drizzled said dressing over a plate full of butter lettuce, grape tomatoes, English cucumber slices and grilled salmon. Yum.

May 5 Salads: Double trouble

I doubled down on salads today. I assembled a delicious hodgepodge for lunch in order to knock out some remnants from the past few days (baby greens, taco meat, cilantro dressing, beans, red bell pepper).

For dinner, I crafted a sort of Cobb with butter lettuce, hard-boiled egg, crispy turkey bacon, blue cheese crumbles, grape tomatoes and diced cucumber. I also whipped up a batch of balsamic dressing, enough for this and a few more salads. The wonderfully fresh lemon — a home-grown doozy from our neighbor’s gentleman caller — yielded enough juice to easily quadruple this dressing recipe. I reserved the remaining lemon juice for an upcoming salad.

All you need to make some delicious balsamic dressing

Balsamic dressing
(thanks to the Bon Appetit Cookbook for inspiration)
 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
¼ cup olive oil

Whisk first three ingredients in a bowl to blend. Gradually whisk in oil.

Jolly good, indeed

May 3 Salad: My first mango

 

Can you believe it took me 30 years before I purchased my very first fresh mango? Sure, I’ve eaten and enjoyed mangoes before, but someone else always did the work. Pretty ridiculous, eh?

Well, thankfully the weekly grocery ads inspired me to put a mango in my shopping basket, because this fruit was a key component of a pretty fantastic salad. This dinner-sized salad features a couple butter lettuce leaves (washed and patted dry), half of a diced mango, half an avocado (sliced), a dozen large cooked shrimp (give ‘em a quick squirt of fresh lime juice) and some cilantro vinaigrette from my May 1 salad. The end result was sweet, snappy, rich and refreshing all at once.