Green Salad with Grilled Chicken & Caesar Dressing

This weekend, Mike and I volunteered with our friends Jeremy and Kendra at a camp in rural New York. We spent Saturday wandering the campus, picking up remnants of an epic shaving cream battle and harnessing teenagers into a giant three-person swing that drops passengers from 60 feet in the air. As lovely as it was to escape the city, we were both ready to come home and eat something green and not-fried.

Enter Mike's last-minute salad suggestion. We ran to Trader Joe's, grabbed a bag of mixed greens and some grilled chicken for protein, then came home and quickly assembled what we deemed to be a mighty successful, mostly-healthful meal. Definitely going on our list of recipes to tweak and repeat.

Green Salad with Grilled Chicken & Caesar Dressing
(Caesar Dressing adapted from Epicurious recipe)

Salad Ingredients

1 bag of mixed greens
2 carrots, diced
1/4 cup walnut pieces
2ish tablespoons herbed goat cheese
2 chicken breasts

Caesar Dressing Ingredients

7 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
5 anchovies, roughly chopped
3/4 cup TJ's reduced fat mayonnaise
1/2 cup reduced fat buttermilk
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

Preheat a cast-iron grill pan on medium heat (if you have an actual grill, by all means use it instead). Spray it quickly with olive oil spray to lubricate. Quickly salt and pepper the chicken breasts and then place them on the grill pan. Cover with a large sauce pan lid. Grill breasts for 7-8 minutes on each side, or until juices run clear. Remove from heat, let the chicken rest for 4-5 minutes and dice into bite-sized pieces.

While the chicken is on the grill, finely chop the garlic and anchovies in a food processor. Add the mayonnaise, buttermilk, parmesan, lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce. Blend in the food processor until smooth. Season with black pepper to taste. Cook's note: This will make plenty of leftovers.

In a large bowl, combine greens, carrots and about 1/2 of the dressing (or enough to coat the greens). Serve salad with walnut pieces, diced chicken and goat cheese. Salt and pepper to taste.