Sweetbites Blog

Monica’s World Famous Chicken Salad

2012-05-27T15:54:54Z

This chicken salad has been in the making for quite a few years now. When I worked in downtown Miami, many years ago, our offices use to order most of our catering with Perricone’s Marketplace & Café.

And my favorite sandwich in the menu was their World famous Chicken Salad. Their version is prepared with golden raisins, roasted pine nuts, granny smith apples, basil, poached chicken breast and a touch of mayo.

When I moved away, I always missed the sandwich and so, there was nothing to do but try to duplicate it.

And as cooks we know that unless you know the actual recipe, duplications may work against you or for you.

In this case, Perricone’s recipe was a jumping point for my own world famous chicken salad.

You can go the long route and poach your own chicken for this, but I have used the supermarket-roasted chicken when I’m in a hurry, or when lazy sets in. Both work equally well and none will be the wiser.

MONICA’S WORLD FAMOUS CHICKEN SALAD

1 whole roast chicken – if you go with your supermarket option – skin off, and meat picked off the bone, then cut into pieces (I take a pair of scissors and chop away). Ultimately you can poach your chicken (use a combination of breast and thigh meat) by using some of these recipes here, here and here.
1 cup walnuts – toasted and roughly chopped (or pine nuts if you want to go the expensive route)
1 granny smith apple – cored and cut into small bite pieces
1-2 green onions – chopped finely
1 cup of golden raisins
½ cup of dried cranberries
a handful of fresh basil, chopped (about 1-2 tablespoons)
1 tablespoon of fresh lime juice (half of 1 lime)
salt and ground pepper to taste

for the dressing

1 cup of mayo
½ cup of sour cream
1 teaspoon of mustard
½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon of pepper jelly
dash of your favorite hot sauce (I use my go to Sriracha sauce)
1 teaspoon of fresh lime juice (half of 1 lime)
salt and ground pepper to taste

This is the easy part – Take all of the first ingredients and mix them in a bowl, season it with salt and pepper (taste it and adjust as needed)… I sometimes like to add an additional tablespoon of pepper jelly here and mix it in…gives it a kick – but this is totally optional.

Next up, mix in another bowl your dressing. Again, taste, taste and taste again and adjust your seasoning. I like my dressing to be tart and a bit sweet at the same time, so it’s all about balance. If it’s to loose, I add more mayonnaise, if it’s too dense, I adjust with a bit of more sour cream or lime juice.

Final step, marry the dressing with your bowl of goodness and fold until the whole thing is nice and wet. It’s ok if it looks like there is more dressing; remember the chicken will soak up all of this.

I don’t serve my salad until the next day – giving all of the flavors time to mesh well together.

Serve on your favorite bread, on top of endive leaves for a nice appetizer presentation or on toasted bread to make a crostini.

Salmon and Asparagus party Sandwiches

2012-05-19T14:26:58Z

The last couple of weeks I have been dealing with some health issues and while everything turned out better than expected, there have been some adjustments, and cooking has been very low in the priority list.

That is why Sweetbites has been a bit “dark”, as they say in the theater.

Then I took a quick little weekend trip to NYC, to meet up with “my people” to do some major wedding planning.

Happy to say, that we accomplished tons in 4 days. Colors are down, flow of event, flowers, décor, wedding dress! Hair, makeup and all the stuff that you think do not take time, until you actually start to talk about it. We had a conversation about cake for hours. Especially when I announced that I did not want one.

I had a major revolt from everyone in the room. Which then erupted in cries that I was crazy and “how I could possibly NOT HAVE CAKE at the wedding”. My MOH even went has far as telling me that she would not attend unless I had cake.

I had no choice guys.

I gave in.

Fior di Latte Gelato

2012-05-08T04:02:12Z

It’s almost summer, which means that most of us will start cleaning out the grills, the backyards and prepping ourselves to melt under some of that Florida sunshine.

Not that we are not already doing that, but we may hold onto a couple of more weeks before we start to venture out of our nice cool a/c comfort.

Other than thinking about all the mouthwatering grilled food that we will be making, we are also thinking of food that will cool us off.

Nonna's Crostata

2012-05-06T16:34:31Z

My maternal grandmother was a true Italian socialite. She had the most active social life of anyone that I have ever met. When I was growing up, spending time with her meant going to afternoon coffee dates with her friends. Playing canasta or poker at the country club most of Saturday afternoons and if there was a birthday, wedding, baby birth, baptism or any type of celebration within a 50-mile radius in our city, she was there, my sister and I at her heels.

She was generous, funny, and knew EVERYONE. What she was not, however, was a fan of a kitchen. Unlike my paternal grandmother, Nonna Franca was not a slave to her kitchen. She could cook, but it was easy dishes, something that she could put together fast and be out of there to meet her social circle at the next bingo game.

Sunday Afternoon Tea Party

2012-05-02T11:50:03Z

I believe we should all celebrate more often. Not just weddings, anniversaries, milestones and other major moments, but the everyday opportunities – the change of seasons, a new job or just the fact that I love cake! As I always like to point out, when opportunity knocks, answer the door and offer it some food and drinks!

And knock it did.

A few weeks ago I was approached by the marketing group for Donsuemor and told that they liked my collaboration so much during their “Dessert a day” campaign, they wanted to know if I would be interested in partnering with them once more. They, along with Davidson’s Organics were looking for a few bloggers willing to host a tea party and use their respective products as part of the event.

They did not have to ask me twice. I jumped at the chance.

Brown Butter Cake with Dark Chocolate Buttercream and Rich Chocolate Mousse Filling

2012-05-01T04:01:19Z

This past week I had a cake fail moment. It was one of those cakes that you think it totally going to work but upon tasting, it’s just not what you thought it was going to be.

So, I was cakeless and the bug of eating good cake stayed with me the rest of the week.

It was time to find a cake recipe that was labor intensive in order to occupy my Saturday.

I found it in February’s issue of Food & Wine magazine. They talked about Tom Douglas cakes and how easy it was to make them at home. The featured recipe was his Brown Butter Layer Cake with Rich Chocolate Buttercream and Dark Chocolate Mousse Filling.

It had me at brown butter.

Zucchini Chips

2012-04-30T00:20:19Z

This post is going to be short and sweet savory.

I was in the kitchen making a salad.

And I found myself with left over zucchini.

Had a light bulb moment and decided to make some chips out of them.

Snacking Coconut Cake

2012-04-24T02:17:40Z

I know that some of you were expecting to come here and see all the pretty pictures of the tea party that I hosted this past weekend.

And instead you are getting a post about coconut cake.

Life is unpredictable guys!

The tea party is a sponsor post, which means that I’m on a schedule set by Donsuemor and that post will not go up until the first week of May.

But, I promise that this cake is totally worth it.

It all started with a dream. Seriously. I dreamed of coconut and woke up with the thought of sweet coconut scenting the house.

Then I was craving chocolate.

Blueberry Crumb Muffins

2012-04-15T20:16:09Z

Yes my Sweetbites cooks, there are more blueberry posts coming your way.

Tom and the Mr. D decided to go blueberry picking yesterday and came back with EIGHT POUNDS OF BLUEBERRIES for me to work my magic with.

It was time to do same mass baking in order to make sure all EIGHT pounds of them would not go to waste.

The pitch started:

Nonna's Semolina Cake

2012-04-11T04:01:17Z

There is something comforting in having something sweet on top of a kitchen island. While I was growing up the only time I experienced this was when I would visit my paternal grandparents. My grandmother would always have snack cakes prepared and ready for anyone to eat if they were in the vicinity of the kitchen – and like a good Italian family – we were ALWAYS in the kitchen. Most of the cake would last 2 days tops. Like a good Italian family, we would always sneak into the kitchen and take a little piece of cake until the next one appeared, just like magic.

This past week, I was looking through my old recipe notebook and came across the recipe, written in my 15 year old penmanship, with little flowers all around, which brought to mind how my grandmother would give me her recipe. I would sit in this big kitchen table she had in the corner of the room and she would dictate what she will be doing. Add a pinch of this, a tablespoon of that, a little bit of this… my grandmother was not big about keeping measurements - it was all in her head.