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Swan down salad with Peking cabbage

Swan Down Salad with Napa Cabbage

Give this salad a try and it'll become a regular at your table. Its original, poetic name says it all: the salad turns out so light and tender, like soft down. The airy Napa cabbage scattered over the top completes the picture.

Maria

Recipe author

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Composition / ingredients

Servings:

Chicken breast

250

Napa cabbage

100

Eggs

Potatoes

Hard cheese

Mayonnaise

Ground black pepper

Salt

Translation table of volumetric measures

Nutrients and energy value of the composition of the recipe

By weight of the composition:

Proteins 42 % 11 g

Fats 31 % 8 g

Carbohydrates 27 % 7 g

148 kcal

GI: 100 / 0 / 0

Cooking method

Step 1:

How do you make Swan Down salad with Napa cabbage? Gather all your ingredients. Boil the chicken breast ahead of time in salted water. Hard-boil the eggs. Boil the potatoes in their skins until tender, then let them cool.
Step 2:

Shred the cooled chicken into thin strands so they look like swan feathers.
Step 3:

Wash the Napa cabbage and dry it well. Slice the head into thin ribbons, starting at the leaf tips and working toward the core. It's best to leave the dense, tough white parts alone—you only want the leafy green, not the white stalks. The easiest way is to slice the whole head without separating it into individual leaves.
Step 4:

So you don't flatten the layers by spreading mayonnaise with a spoon, put the mayonnaise in a piping bag (or an ordinary plastic bag) and snip a small tip off the corner. Pipe the mayonnaise onto each layer in a thin lattice—this keeps it even and preserves the airiness of the layers. Use a mild mayonnaise (olive-oil or avocado-based); it has a softer flavor than the standard kind.
Step 5:

Peel the potatoes and grate them on the medium side of a box grater directly onto the serving dish. You could grate each ingredient separately into its own bowl and then layer them, but that risks pressing the layers down with your hands. That's why I prefer to grate each layer right on top of the last. A medium grater works better here than a coarse one—the finer everything is grated, the softer and more tender the salad, which is exactly the effect we want.
Step 6:

Pipe a lattice of mayonnaise over the potato layer.
Step 7:

Spread the shredded chicken on top and pipe mayonnaise over it as well. You can salt and pepper every layer except the last two, but I usually don't season mayonnaise salads.
Step 8:

Grate the eggs over the top and pipe on more mayonnaise.
Step 9:

In the same way, grate the cheese for the next layer and pipe a lattice with the remaining mayonnaise.
Step 10:

Sprinkle the Napa cabbage over the salad. Chill it in the refrigerator for 1 hour to let the layers meld, then it's ready to serve. Enjoy!

It's best to make the mayonnaise yourself—it'll taste better and be healthier. (Look for homemade mayonnaise recipes.) You don't have to use mayonnaise as the dressing either; sour cream or plain yogurt work too. Use them on their own or mixed with mayonnaise in any ratio you like—this lightens up the dish.
How do you hard-boil eggs? To keep them from cracking, start them in cold water over low heat. Boil for 9 minutes once the water comes to a boil, then transfer them to cold water to cool. The sudden temperature change makes the shells easier to peel.