Cobb Salad with Chicken Breast and Avocado

Preparing the ingredients

1. Cobb salad is made with fried bacon, pan-fried chicken breast and hard-boiled eggs — those are the ingredients that need cooking. The vegetables are no trouble at all.

2. Prepare the salad leaves: wash them ahead of time and put them in cold water for 15 mins so they crisp up again. Then pat them dry.

3. Hard-boil the eggs: cover with cold water, bring to a boil over high heat and cook over medium heat — quail eggs 4 mins, chicken eggs 10 mins. Cool in cold water. You can swap the quail eggs for a couple of chicken eggs.

   

Dressing

1. If you’re dressing the salad with a plain mix of olive oil and vinegar, you can make it just before serving. We’ll prepare a more complex dressing in advance — it’s tastier and works beautifully with salads like this.

2. Make the dressing base. Peel a small red or white sweet onion and chop it very finely. Season with salt and pepper, add 1 tsp sugar (5 g), 1-2 tsp wine vinegar and 1 tsp Dijon mustard (5 g). Stir and put it in the fridge — the oil goes in just before serving.

   

Bacon and chicken

1. Fry the bacon until crisp. Cut the bacon or pork belly into large cubes and fry in a skillet over medium heat, stirring now and then. The pieces should render plenty of fat and turn crisp and nicely browned. Transfer the fried bacon to a plate lined with a paper towel to drain the excess fat.

   

2. Fry the chicken breast in the same skillet. Pour off most of the rendered fat. Pound the fillet lightly with a flat mallet or the handle of a knife so the meat is an even thickness. Put it in the skillet and fry over medium heat until cooked through and golden, about 5 mins per side: when cut at the thickest part, the juices should run clear. The chicken should cool a little and be just slightly warm.

   

Assembling the salad

1. Cobb salad is easiest to serve on a large flat-bottomed plate. On a square plate the rows of ingredients come out the same length; on a round plate it’s better to lay them out in arcs.

2. Lay down the bed of leaves: tear the washed and dried salad leaves into pieces and spread them evenly over the plate. You can use other greens, or even a salad mix — they’re sold everywhere. Iceberg, cress and oak leaf lettuce all work well.

   

3. Lay out the rows of bacon, chicken, tomatoes and eggs. Cut the chicken breast into thin strips or cubes. It’s best to slice across the grain with a very sharp knife so the chicken pieces keep their shape. Lay two rows of bacon and fried chicken over the greens, on opposite sides of the plate.

   

   Halve the cherry tomatoes, lay them in two rows along the very edge of the plate and season with a little salt. If you’re using regular ripe tomatoes, cut them into wedges or cubes. Peel the quail eggs and halve them; chicken eggs are best cut into large pieces. Lay the eggs in a row down the middle of the plate, leaving room for the avocado.

   

4. Add the avocado, cheese and green onions. Halve the avocado and remove the pit, as in the avocado salad recipe. Peel off the tough skin, dice the flesh and place it in the free space in the middle of the plate next to the eggs. For the blue cheese, Roquefort, Danablu, Dorblu, Gorgonzola or any other will do: crumble it with your fingers or dice it and scatter it over the tomatoes. Slice the green onions and sprinkle them over the salad.

   

Serving

1. Dress the salad and serve right away. Do this immediately, since the avocado can darken, and cold bacon and chicken in the salad aren’t great. By now the sweet onion in the dressing has had time to marinate. Pour 3-4 tbsp olive oil over the onion and whisk the dressing with a fork — it emulsifies nicely. Drizzle the dressing evenly over the salad. Cobb salad is served unchilled.

   

   Cobb salad is often served with sliced leek rings, olives, artichokes, and fresh or roasted sweet peppers. Sometimes the dressing is made spicy, which is delicious. If you like, instead of rows you can serve the salad on a large plate with each ingredient piled in its own mound on the torn lettuce.