This recipe was provided to me courtesy of the Heart Foundation, who kindly hosted a blogger event last week (you can read all about that over on my other blog) and fed a bunch of us delicious, healthy food – which we had to cook ourselves! 
It’s easy and quite quick to make, and really does look spectacular.
Serves 4-6
Salad
1 red onion, peeled and finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 knob of ginger, chopped
1/4 cabbage, finely shredded
1 carrot, grated
2 sprigs of mint leaves, finely chopped
Dressing
2 tbs fish sauce
4 tbs rice wine vinegar
2 tsp caster sugar
1 tsp sweet chilli sauce
Topping
Unsalted peanuts, chopped
Fried shallot flakes (available in the Asian section at the supermarket)
Combine the dressing ingredients in a large bowl and mix until sugar is dissolved. Add the onion, garlic and ginger and mix well. Allow to stand for 20 minutes while you prepare the chicken to allow the flavours to develop. Once chicken is almost ready to serve, add the cabbage, carrot and mint and mix well. Arrange on a serving platter with shredded chicken on top and sprinkle peanuts and shallots over.
Poached chicken
4 120g chicken breast portions
500ml water
2 parsley stalks
1/2 an onion, chopped
1 chopped red chilli
Freshly ground pepper
Bring the water, parsley stalks, onion, chilli and pepper to the boil in a shallow pan. Place the fillets into the liquid, turn down low and allow to poach for 10-12 minutes, turning once. Remove from the poaching liquid and shred with two forks. Alternatively, you can cut the chicken into thin slices.
As you might have noticed, I used what was on hand for the pictured version. I had some red cabbage in the fridge and plenty of carrots. Fresh mint grows in our garden, so that was easily available. I thought it needed a bit more “green” though, so I added some finely shredded lettuce. You could substitute any kind of cabbage in this recipe – wombok would work really well – and could even use different herbs. A mixture of mint, basil, coriander and Vietnamese mint would be fantastic. Use your imagination and go nuts!