Recipe: Grilled Chicken Salad with Grapes and Walnuts

Dewey's Pizza is one of my favorite places to get not only pizzas, but salads!  I love almost all the salads I have had there, especially their House salad and their Candied Walnut Grape salad.  I recently decided to make a salad inspired by their Candied Walnut Grape salad.  It turned out pretty great!  I don't know if it was AS good as Dewey's, but not bad for home made :)

Ingredients: (serves 2-3)
Romaine Lettuce
half a red onion, chopped
1/2 cup of red grapes, halved
1-2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts OR 4 chicken tenderloins
chopped walnuts, toasted
goat cheese

Dressing:
extra virgin olive oil
balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp. Dijon mustard
1 garlic clove, minced
salt and pepper to taste

My amounts of ingredients are not exact because I feel with salads you really just kind of eye ball the ingredients to your liking.

First, preheat your oven to 350 to toast the walnuts.  Next, I seasoned the chicken with salt, pepper, and rosemary and got the grill ready.

Next, I washed and chopped the Romaine lettuce and used a salad spinner to get it nice and crunchy, then put in the fridge to chill while I got the rest of the ingredients ready.  I put the walnuts in the oven and the chicken on the grill.  While those items are cooking, slice the grapes in half, chop your onion, and prepare your dressing.  Watch the walnuts though, I have a history of burning nuts when then are toasting!  They only take about five minutes.

To make the dressing, I poured about 1/3 cup of EVOO, then about another 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar together. I really just estimate and taste as I go. Squeeze in the Dijon, and add the garlic, salt and pepper and whisk it all together.  I put in the fridge to chill while everything else was coming together.

I grilled the chicken on each side for about 5 or 6 minutes then chopped it up.  Now, all that is left to do is assemble the salad!  Romaine on the bottom, put some grapes and onion on to your liking, add the walnuts and chicken then top with the goat cheese.  I prefer to use the "log" goat cheese as opposed to the pre-crumbled goat cheese.  Just add as much as you like!

Again, I thought this was a pretty great salad! It filled me up and there was left-overs for lunch the next day too.  You could serve this as a side salad sans chicken if you would like or even put it in a wrap!  You could also switch up the cheese, use gorgonzola or feta, you could use dried cranberries instead of grapes, or any other kind of nut.  Hope you enjoy!
~Kate