the 'I can't be bothered' salad

I don’t know about you, but with the warmer weather comes the ‘I can’t be bothered’ mantra. “I can’t be bothered making dinner, let’s eat out”, “I can’t be bothered eating out again, let’s get takeaway”, “Oh, not takeaway again, I may as well make something”.

This is the type of ‘something’ that usually ends up on the dinner table – light, not too many ingredients, and easily flung together on a warm day. It’s basically requires some shopping and chopping.

When making this, I modified the original recipe below to replace the capsicum with celery (as I didn’t have any capsicum), and I omitted the coriander and mint (as I hate coriander – some mint would have been nice, though). And the dressing is very tasty – make more!


Vietnamese noodle and smoked chicken salad

Serves 4

Ingredients

125g glass noodles (bean thread vermicelli or rice vermicelli)
2 skinless smoked chicken breast fillets (250g total), shredded
2 carrots, cut into matchsticks
1 red capsicum, cut into matchsticks
1 long red chilli, seeds removed, thinly sliced
1 ½ cups (90 g) bean sprouts
½ cup each coriander and mint leaves

Dressing
1/3 cup (80 ml) lime juice
2 tbs caster sugar
2 tbs fish sauce


Method

Soak the noodles in a bowl of boiling water for about 5 min. Drain, refresh under cold water and drain again.
Place noodles in a large bowl with the chicken, carrot, capsicum, chilli, bean sprouts and herbs.

In a small bowl, combine the lime juice, sugar and fish sauce, stirring until the sugar is dissolved.

Pour the dressing over the salad, then toss well to combine and serve immediately.


Recipe from delicious. November 2008.