Peaches, Chicken, and Greens Salad

It’s no surprise that I love trying new restaurants especially while traveling. There is something exciting about seeing what others are doing with food in different parts of the world. Whether it be something creative, strictly locavore, exotic, basic but done perfectly, etc. A lot of times I wish I could recreate some of the memorable dishes at home and sometimes I try :) Take for example this salad- it was inspired by a feature salad at Cactus in Seattle (South Lake Union location, home to Amazon). We were stopping for dinner on our drive up to Vancouver and after a quick search found Cactus along our route with solid Facebook and Yelp reviews. I will be doing a full restaurant review of Cactus because I was so impressed! They even had an adorable kids menu. 

Back to the salad, I swapped out a couple ingredients for items I had on hand. One were the peanuts, they used spicy peanuts. I only had roasted/salted peanuts in my pantry so ended up adding the barbeque flavored Biena chickpeas. I am obsessed with Biena chickpeas - they are crunchy and delicious. The barbeque flavored mimicked the spices in the original salad. Cactus made a delicious roasted poblano dressing and while I would’ve loved to take a stab at this, I didn’t have time because I was throwing this together on a weekday. I had the Primal Kitchen avocado oil Caesar dressing and it worked out perfectly.

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Ingredients - Serves 4 to 6

16 oz container of greens (I like using baby lettuces because they are mild and tender)

Shredded rotisserie chicken, 1/3 - 1/2 cup per serving 

3 large peaches, diced 

Cotija cheese (I used 1–2 tablespoons per serving)

2 avocados, diced

Biena barbeque flavored chickpeas (I used 2 tablespoons per serving)

Roasted and salted peanuts, crushed (I used 2 teaspoons per serving) 

Pickled Onion*

6 fresh radishes, thinly sliced  

Primal Kitchen Caesar dressing 

freshly cracked pepper

Directions

1. Shred chicken, dice peaches and avocados, slice radishes, and crush the peanuts.
2. In a serving bowl, layer greens followed by chicken and other ingredients.

*for the pickled onion, I’ve tried several different recipes. Recently, I’ve enjoyed this one.  I use a red onion (because it turns pink!) and flavor with a bay leaf and peppercorns. Sometimes I add more sugar if I want them to be sweeter. 

Enjoy! 

Just as tasty as it looks.