Chicken Salad with Apple, Celery and Rosemary

I think I must have gone nuts. I have a major presentation due tomorrow and here I am blogging away about something I cooked during the weekend. Anyway, I went shopping at Giant in Penang Plaza the weekend before and I came across something interesting at the veggie corner. Fresh herbs! Grown locally by Genting Garden at Genting Highlands and I think that's why it was very affordable too, at only RM1.99 per packet.

There were a few choices to choose from, oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary and a few others. I decided to buy a packet of rosemary. It smelled great! I was so excited and delighted with the buy that as soon as I got home, I quickly stored the herb in my fridge to preserve it's freshness. This is not a good sign. Stuffs that goes in the fridge are almost always quickly forgotten and later end up being burdensome. I often find myself in a situation where I had to force myself to cook the something before it spoils. And this is exactly what happened to the poor rosemary when I found it last weekend...

I didn't have any good recipes for rosemary at hand, so I decided to do a search on the Internet. Went to Google Search and typed in "rosemary + recipe" and the results came out. I thought the recipe in the first result sounded quick and easy so I off I went into the kitchen to fix it.

The recipe was from The Gourmet Connection Magazine Archive. It's called Chicken Salad with Rosemary. When I told my siblings that I'd be making this and that the recipe also calls for celery, one of them said, hey, I heard celery goes well with apples so why don't you throw some in. I said okay and did what she said, I lessen the celery and added in some apple cubes. The recipe also calls for sour cream which I did not have so, I just substituted it with a bit more mayonnaise and added a twist of lemon... and voila! I have my own version of the salad and the taste was not too bad.

The salad earned a rating of 7 over 10 with additional comments that it would have taste better if the celery had been more thinly sliced. In normal occassion, my siblings would usually run away from veggies like celery. I did not know why they were so willing to eat it this time. I guess it must be the recipe! Yeah!