Potluck Asian Chicken Cabbage Salad

Chicken, cabbage and salad greens tossed with an easy Asian dressing. Almonds, radishes, and ramen provide a crunchy contrast to this pot luck salad.

I had cabbage and radishes aplenty when informed of the impending opportunity to use up farm share veggies pot luck. Following my tip to stick with the familiar, from my post Five Tips to Feed Your Family From the Farm Share, I decided to make a chicken & cabbage salad with an Asian dressing. The guests did not include vegetarians or folks with nut allergies, so I felt comfortable making my usual recipe which comes from the Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbook (Amazon affiliate link).

I've tweaked this recipe in a few ways, shown below. First off, I added salad greens since I'm serving a crowd. Second, I added radishes since I had some, I thought they'd look pretty, and the extra crunch would go well. Third, I used seasoned rice vinegar (the kind I use for my sushi rice) and, since that is sweetened, I omit the sugar. I double the dressing since it's so good--and so easy to make. Method-wise, I change the recipe by tossing the chicken-cabbage mixture with the dressing and let it hang out for a few hours. Then I toss the whole lot together with a bit more dressing and it's ready to serve.

If I were planning to take this to work for a lunchtime pot luck, I'd cook the chicken, toast the ramen & almonds, make the dressing and chop all the vegetables the night before. In the morning I'd combine the chicken, cabbage & some of the dressing in one container, the salad greens, radishes, and green onions in another, and the ramen and almonds in a third container. At serving time I'd [carefully] toss everything together with more dressing in a large bowl or serving tray, top with ramen and almonds, and serve with extra dressing on the side.

For more recipes using cabbage, please see my Cabbage Recipes Collection. For more recipes using salad greens, please see my Salad Greens Recipes Collection. For more ideas using radishes, please see my Radish Recipes Collection. These collections are all part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient.

Greek-seasoned Salmon, Artichoke and Feta Dip

Greek-seasoned salmon with feta cheese and artichokes in a baked dip--terrific for a Dip Dinner!

Having an assortment of dips for dinner is a nice way to change up the dinner hour. Dips are easy to assemble in advance--no last minute work involved!
After spending time outdoors enjoying the return of warm sunshine I'm not necessarily ready for a heavy meal--but I'm happy to turn on the oven.
A dip dinner like this makes a good compromise meal. I like to offer choices, knowing that my spouse will clean up whatever is left another night as a pre-dinner snack. [Sometimes it can drive me batty that dinner will be ready in 7 minutes and he has to eat something NOW, but if I've got a bit of this or that to use up I'm all over it.]

It is hard to show a black dog against a dark background.

For this Dip Dinner I had this Greek-seasoned salmon, artichoke and feta dip, a vegetarian spinach feta artichoke dip (to be coming soon) and a mash up of this dip and the vegetarian one. That mash up won't be written up for the blog--it was too wishy-washy of a dip.

This recipe came from my friend Sarah while we were both living in Hawaii over a dozen years ago. She served it at a rubber stamping party and I immediately requested the recipe. I've played with the recipe over the years, sharing a slow cooker & swiss chard variation early on the blog, Slow Cooker Salmon Swiss Chard Artichoke Dip, as well as an arugula & artichoke version, Baked Artichoke & Arugula Dip.  I like my apps, and you can find many more ideas on my Pinterest board, Awesome Veggie Apps and Snacks.

I opted to try a Greek version using this new spice blend I picked up at a shop downtown (see Note below) along with feta cheese covered in a magical markdown sticker. This is a very good combo which we'll have again. For more recipes using Salmon, you're out of luck until I add protein to the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. I have worked my way through the whole salmon I bought at the grocery store down the street (wild caught, overnighted from Alaska, and cut & wrapped to order). For more recipes using marinated artichokes, please see my Recipes Using Veggies In Jars Collection, which is really quite a mouthful but a tasty one at that.

Mediterranean Chopped Salad Concept Recipe

Fresh vegetables chopped together, tossed with a vinaigrette, and garnished with feta cheese.

This is not a post for a tentative cook, though honestly I have no idea how many of my readers aren't assertive in the kitchen. I mean, someone adventurous* enough to sign up for a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share has got to have some confidence in the kitchen, right?

I made this salad to serve alongside a Lebanese-spiced ground beef and lentil dish. We ate this as shown, with hummus, yogurt, and warm naan bread. The fresh crunchy salad was the hit of the meal. Over the summer I threw together versions of this quick salad to serve alongside grilled chicken, alongside a dinner of hummus & chips, and as a snack. [Apparently I never bothered to label any other photos of it in the thousands of photos taken last year.]

Why should I include such a simple recipe idea on this blog? Easy. The whole point of the blog is to give you ideas for what to do with produce from your farm share, your garden, the farmer's market or store. The more ideas, the more successfully you'll use your produce. If the photos do a decent job of conveying how fresh and crunchy this side dish is, then my work here is done.

This recipe will appear in the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient as well as the Cucumber Recipes Collection and the Pepper Recipes Collection. If I remember to snap a photo of it with other combinations of veggies, I'll update and add it to additional collections. You can also find this, and other ideas for using Colorful Veggies [that grow] Above Ground on my Pinterest board of the same name.