lemon & tarragon smoked chicken salad

Months ago, when my mum visited me in Canberra, we went to Poacher's Pantry in Hall. Being the foodie she is, she purchased two lots of smoked meat for the family in Sydney. I also got the smoked chicken with tarragon and lemon. I normally wouldn't buy a whole piece of expensive meat just for myself... but I wanted some variety in my diet and thought I could give some to Dan. If you didn't know, I'm a bit funny about how I eat food - I try to avoid large portions of food and try to savor what I do eat. For example, if someone gives me a wrapped piece of chocolate, I usually 'save it' til I am in the mood to eat it.

The Poachers Pantry website has a list of recipes for smoked meat from the shop: http://www.poacherspantry.com.au/recipes. I appropriated some recipes and made a salad with the smoked chicken. Not that hard at all.

In addition to the chicken, the salad had mixed salad leaves, blanched broccolini, stir fried mushrooms, grated carrot and toasted walnuts. The dressing was a concoction of lemon juice, olive oil and crushed roasted garlic. I have a tendency to stuff up food when I know I'm making it for someone else (damn those high self-expectations) so I made it for myself first then packed it into a million separate containers for Dan's lunch the next day. I felt like a school mum :S

Overall, the salad was good. The chicken was tasty but had a weird rubbery texture (probably due to being smoked). I put half a packet of chicken into one salad, which was probably too much but oh well. It looked delicious and health though!