Coconut Poached Chicken Salad

This is one of those delicious salads, based on a moist poached chicken fillet. Add a leafy green, such as watercress, a few green veggies, asian herbs, and whatever else is in the crisper. It is really versatile, and perfect for this time of year.

Poaching ensures wonderful moist chicken, which is the centrepiece of this dish.

Chicken fillets seem to have grown in size over the past few years with some weighing almost 500g. Try and buy them around 200g each, otherwise you will have to adjust the cooking time.

Ingredients

• 4 x 200g chicken breast fillets, trimmed, skin off, at room temperature

The poaching liquid

• small tin coconut milk, 270ml
• 1 cup water or chicken stock
• 1 stalk lemongrass, just use the pale bottom part only, roughly chopped
• knob of fresh ginger, sliced
• 3 kaffir lime leaves, optional
• 1 long red chilli, halved, seeded and sliced
• splash fish sauce
• 1 tbs palm sugar, grated, or use the liquid variety readily available in jars in supermarkets
• coriander root and stem, finely chopped

The salad

• 1 bunch watercress, picked into sprigs, washed, dried
• 300g snowpeas, blanched
• 1-2 bunches asparagus, trimmed, blanched, sliced on the diagonal
• 1 lebanese cucumber, halved lengthways, deseeded, sliced on diagonal
• handful carrot, juillened
• handful red capscium, finely sliced
• 4-6 shallots, sliced on diagonal
• 1/2 bunch coriander leave
• handful Thai basil leaves, optional

The dressing

• 3 tbs fish sauce
• 3 tbs white vinegar
• 2 tbs sugar
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1/2 long red chilli, thinly sliced
• 2tbs lime juice

Method

1. To cook the chicken, combine all the poaching liquid ingredients in a saucepan large enough to fit the chicken fillets. Bring to a simmer over medium heat.
2. Add the chicken fillets and press a piece of baking on the surface.
3. Simmer for 8 minutes, turn the fillets over and cook for another 2 minutes.
4. Take the pan off the heat, the chicken will finish cooking in the hot liquid. Leave for another 5 minutes.
5. If the fillets are larger than 200g, you will need to leave them a little longer. They should feel firm, but still have a little ‘give’, when pressed.
6. Remove the chicken from the cooking liquid, and rest before slicing thinly across the grain.

The Dressing

7. Put the fish sauce, vinegar and sugar in a small saucepan with 125ml water. Place over medium heat, and stir well and bring to just below boiling point. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.
8. Just before serving, stir in the garlic and chilli and lime juice.
9. Store in a screw-top jar in the fridge for up to 5 days.

To Serve

10. 100g roasted, chopped peanuts
11. coriander leaves
12. Crispy Fried Asian shallots ( available in jars in most supermarkets)

Notes

This is Masterchef, Matt Prestons version of poaching chicken breasts, which takes a bit longer, but is totally simple. Pour enough stock into a saucepan to cover the breasts, (about 500ml of stock for each skinless breast) cover with a lid, and bring to the boil. Then slip the breasts in, remove from the heat, and leave covered for 45 minutes. Check to see if they have firmed up which shows they are cooked. Yes it works, I have tried it several times.