Wombok Salad with Chicken

My mum makes a mean wombok salad, one of the things I have missed since going Failsafe. We managed to find some dried noodles* at a local Chinese supermarket that listed all the ingredients as Failsafe. Since I had the noodles, the main ingredient of this recipe, I had to adapt her wombok salad! I have been working on the dressing to make a suitable failsafe version for a while now and have had many failures. Then a few months back, I finally got it right… it was perfect in fact!!! I was ecstatic! Yah!!  Unfortunately through using one drive to transfer my documents between devices, the right version with the new dressing saved on it got saved over. Arrrrr! I was devastated and could not restore it or find it anywhere and I could not remember for the life of me what I had put in it. I couldn’t bring myself to try it again knowing how long it took me the first time…

I strolled past some beautiful looking womboks in the supermarket the other day and suddenly felt the urge to try again! The first batch of the dressing was a failure, but I did not waste it, I used it in a stir-fry which was delish. A second attempt and lots of tweaking, it is finally presentable. I still don’t feel it is as good as the one I finally succeeded in, but it had the seal of approval from the family and that is what counts! The dressing tastes a little ordinary on it’s own, but poured over the salad it seems to come to life and was a perfect match for this salad.

I love that this can be a meal within it’s self or you can also leave out the chicken and make this as a side salad which is perfect to take to a BBQ.

Wombok Salad

The Chicken:
800g diced chicken breast
2 cloves garlic, crushed
3 tablespoons Rice malt syrup
2 tablespoons rice bran oil

The Salad:
1/2 – 1 wombok
6 shallots
100g raw cashews
Dried Failsafe Noodles

The Dressing:
10 saffron strands
1 tablespoon boiling water
1/4 cup of Rice bran oil
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cloves minced garlic
2 tablespoons Carob syrup
3 tablespoons water
1/2 teaspoon citric acid

Marinate the chicken in the  garlic and rice malt syrup for at least 20 mins. Cook the chicken in the oil, in small batches until lightly browned and cooked through and set aside.

Thinly slice the wombok and shallots. Place into a large salad bowl. Add the chicken, cashews and dried noodles and toss gently to combine. Chicken may be added to the salad either hot or cold, your preference.

Place the saffron threads in a little bowl and pour the boiling water over them allow to sit for a few minutes. Place all dressing ingredients including the saffron and water into a large seal-able jar. Shake well to combine all the ingredients. Keep stored in the jar and give another shake and pour over the salad just before serving. The noodles can go soggy if dressing is poured on too soon before serving.

The salad above I made to share with some of my good friends, we indulged while the kids were at school. I added I few extras to the wombok salad recipe above, so this version is not failsafe, but very quick, easy and looks great to take as a plate to share.

I used all the ingredients listed above and added thinly sliced celery (FS), julienne cut carrots (moderate salicylates), thinly sliced capsicum (Very high salicylates), fresh coriander (very high salicylates) and a garnish of sesame seeds (high salicylates and amines). I also added a little dash of tamari sauce (very high amines and glutamates) to the dressing.  Beautiful!

*  The dried noodles I found are Dragon & Phoenix brand Deep Fried Noodles. Ingredients: Wheat flour, salt, vegetable oil (contains antioxident 307), mineral salt (500)