Grilled Chicken and Mango Salad

Tonight was so wonderfully culinary! Not only did we make the BEST salad and awesome smoothies, but we watched the tivo-ed version of yesterday's Top Chef -- yay Tre! (P.S. Why is there no outrage about Gordon Ramsey ripping off Top Chef's quick fire challenge in this week's episode of Hell's Kitchen? Lord.)

We really love dinner salads, and this one was particularly remarkable: tangy yet sweet, light yet substantive, vibrantly colorful. I found the recipe on Epicurious, and we modified it only slightly. Alex tried to get fancy with the grill and cook the chicken breasts on indirect heat, and they were getting a nice smoky aroma until we realized that they weren't really cooking. To his credit, he recovered them to the coals and the ended up cooking them to perfection.


Use the official recipe here, or make our special version of Grilled Chicken Salad with Mango (really, we just added avocado):

Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts
some olive oil
2 scallions
2 teaspoons thyme
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 shallot
baby romaine leaves
spring mix
1/2 cup shredded red cabbage
1 mango, cubed
1 avocado

Instructions:
Mix about a tbsp of oil with the chopped scallions and a tsp of thyme (woot for the garden). Rub it over the chicken breasts and let it sit for about 30 minutes. Grill the chicken if you have a grill, but if not, you could probably cook it in a frying pan as well. Make a bed of lettuce from the romaine, cabbage, and mixed greens. Add cubed mango and avocado, and top it with the chicken. We made a basic balsamic vinaigrette for the dressing and added the minced shallots and the other tsp of thyme (a vinaigrette is about 1 part vinegar to 3 parts olive oil).