BBQ Chicken Salad

Ok.  I've been sitting here for, on and off, three hours starting and erasing rants and raves about how to intro this salad I made on Friday (my favorite of all salads, widely available in various incarnations at chain restaurants across the country).  What I like and don't like about salads-as-meals, how to make a salad not suck, why most of them do, etc.  Ad nauseum.

Then I realized, YOU ARE TALKIGN ABOUT SALAD.  Like, a bunch of lettuce and toppings dumped in a bowl and topped with a dressing of some sort--certainly not rocket science, and definitely not the frontiers of cooking on which the aforementioned foodies could certainly postulate for hours upon end.  Everyone can toss together some sort of salad mixture, open a bottle of hidden valley and call it a day.  Any restaurant nowadays has several versions of a meal-sized salad on their menus, reflecting this recent "healthy" "trend." You've all eaten hundreds of lackluster salads, maybe a few great ones here and there, but by and large have been bored by most of them.

There just isn't really much to say about salad.  And there, I thought, is the problem. We think they are so common and banal nowadays that we don't think about them, we just throw them together and coat them with something bottled.  Now, really, even I admit there is an upper limit--and a low one at that--on how exciting a salad can be.  But it can be a lot better than a pale tomato wedge, shredded carrot, and bottled dressing on iceberg.

Instead, tyy to branch out a little bit and throw weird things into a salad.  I'm on a crushed tortilla chip kick right now (use them instead of croutons!).  Go through the fridge for leftovers and see what you can toss into a bowl of lettuce--beans, cooked veggies, any meat diced up, roasted potatoes, etc.  Make your own croutons by tossing bread cubes with garlic oil (or any old oil and spices) salt & pepper and toasting them in the toaster oven (or in a skillet).  Likewise, making your own salad dressing is an easy endeavor, and one that everyone should at least try...but I'll never give up the convenience of bottled dressing either.

So, anyway, this is the best write-up I can do today, and it really doesn't do justice to this, my favorite salad, inspired by the BBQ chicken salad at California Pizza Kitchen and the Southwestern Chicken Salad at Rio Bravo, although I certainly don't think these two chains have the market cornered on this fairly common salad incarnation.  It mixes in a ton of veggies so it isn't like eating a big pile of lettuce, and with two bottled dressings it couldn't be easier to put together.  A little spicy, a lot crunchy, many different flavors going on besides just lettuce and dressing.  And, if you're lucky enough to have a father in law with a green thumb, you'll have lots of garden-fresh produce ready to marry together.

And, internet, I apologize for the crappy camera phone shot of it all mixed up.  I had this great cobb salad-like shot of all the ingredients piled together, yet separate, in the bowl, but where it went I can't fathom.  So this is all you get. 

BBQ Chicken Chopped Salad
Serves 2 as a main course

1/2 large head romaine lettuce, washed and chopped into 1" pieces, stem parts shredded
2 ears sweet corn, cooked and kernals sliced from cobs
1 cup black beans, rinsed and drained
1 large tomato, chopped
3 scallions, thinly sliced
1 poblano pepper, seeded and chopped
1 or so cup cooked chicken, chopped (if BBQ, even better!)
1-2 handfuls tortilla chips, broken into small pieces
ranch dressing
bbq sauce

Throw all ingredients into a bowl.  Use equal parts BBQ sauce and ranch dressing; toss salad.