Chicken, Egg and Bacon Salad

Shame there were no leftovers...

I´m not sure that this one can exactly count as a recipe, as it´s more a “chuck it together and enjoy” kind of dish.   Here in Spain the main meal of the day tends to be at lunch time.  Even in cities where people work in shops and offices, there is still a tradition to shut at 2pm and then re open at 5pm.  Lunch is taken very seriously!  The evening meal is rarely eaten before 10pm, which was a bit of a struggle for me at first, even though I usually ate at about 8pm in the UK.  Over time I´ve got used to it, especially now that I´ve realised that the evening meal is generally something very light.  A soup, or salad perhaps.

Of course, there are times when the evening meal is something more elaborate, but that tends to be related to an event, in which case you wouldn´t go to bed early (that´s around midnight here!) but more like somewhere between 3am and 7am…crazy hours.  Of course, that gives you time to digest dinner, dance it off, and perhaps even indulge in a breakfast of hot chocolate and churros before going to bed to sleep off the festivities.

Last night was just a regular night.  We fancied something light but filling, so I made one of our favourites –  Chicken, Egg and Bacon Salad.

Ingredients are rather approximate – use what you have to hand.  We used:

  • One lettuce heart roughly chopped
  • Two small-ish potatoes (boiled in their skins then peeled and roughly chopped)
  • Two hard boiled eggs, quartered
  • One large chicken breast, griddled
  • 4 rashers of streaky bacon (griddled)
  • 1 small packet of anchovies in olive oil
  • Olive oil
  • Lemon juice
  • Seasoning

I also made an extra dressing, which make enough for another salad

  • Half a small tub of natural yogurt (half a 125 tub)
  • The same quantity of mayonnaise
  • The juice of half a lemon
  • A tablespoon of milk
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper

There´s no method to this, just combine the salad ingredients, season and dress very lightly with olive oil and lemon juice.  You can leave this out if you like lashings of the yogurt and mayonnaise dressing.  It´s entirely up to you.  For the dressing, just put all the ingredients into a bowl and mix until you´ve got a smooth, fairly runny sauce and drizzle over the salad.

Other ingredients which are good in this salad, which I guess has a touch of the “Chicken Caesar” about it, are avocado, croutons, grated hard cheese….go on, give it a go!