>With the record-breaking heat, I most certainly did not want to cook something for dinner tonight. Since we had a half-bag of spinach left over from a soup recipe I made late last week, I decided to make some sort of spinach salad.
The spinach salads I had bookmarked to try didn’t really inspire me, so I googled spinach salad and found this recipe (the bonus was that I didn’t even have to go shopping–had almost everything at home!). Since the recipe serves 8, I used AllRecipe’s handy calculator to turn it into 2 servings (which I’ve posted below). I also added chicken to make it a main course salad. Gavin, who rates all salads as 3/5, said that this salad was “at least a 4,” which really shocked me!
Below is my take on the salad (added chicken, omitted poppy seeds, a little extra onion).
Jamie’s Cranberry Spinach Salad
Prep time: 10 minutes
Total time: 20 minutes
Serves 2
Ingredients:
3/4 tsp butter (I eyeballed this)
3 TBSP slivered almonds
1 boneless chicken breast
salt & pepper
1/2 bag baby spinach
1/2 c. dried cranberries (I threw in a little more…maybe 2/3 or 3/4 cup, but this is not necessary)
1-1/2 tsp toasted sesame seeds
2 TBSP white sugar
1/2 tsp minced onion (I eyeballed this and my guess was that it was more like 1 tsp, and it was just fine…not too oniony)
1/8 tsp paprika
1 TBSP white wine vinegar
1 TBSP cider vinegar
2 TBSP canola oil
Preparation:
1. In a skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. Cook and stir the almonds in butter until lightly toasted. Remove from heat and let cool.
2. Salt and pepper the chicken breast on both sides. In the same pan the almonds were cooked in, cook the chicken breast. (I find cooking an average boneless chicken breast for 6 minutes per side gets me perfect results: safely cooked, but still juicy.)
3. In a large bowl, combine the spinach with the toasted almonds and cranberries.
4. In a smaller skillet, toast the sesame seeds. (If I were smart and had read the recipe closely from the beginning, I would have, in the same skillet, first toasted the sesame seeds, then melted the butter, toasted the almonds and then cooked the chicken. Hopefully if you’re smart and reading this carefully before you begin, you will save yourself from washing 1 extra skillet!)
5. In a small bowl, whisk together the sesame seeds, sugar, onion, paprika, white wine vinegar, cider vinegar, and canola oil. Toss with spinach just before serving.