Pear slices, Gorgonzola cheese and pecan-crusted chicken chunks nestle in a bed of mixed greens, dressed with vinaigrette. Pear and Gorgonzola salad with pecan-crusted chicken appears on the menu of many fine restaurants, including Jackson's Restaurant, Villa Rosano, DeVore House and The Cheesecake Factory. Few recipes include both the salad and the chicken. Take the recipes for each that speak to your taste buds and swap out high-fat and high-calorie ingredients to create a healthier dish.
Fruits
Jackson's Restaurant in Commack, N.Y. includes cranberries in its pear Gorgonzola pecan-crusted chicken salad. Villa Rosano in Boca Raton, Fla. adds mandarin oranges along with the cranberries, DeVore House in Alpharetta, Ga. adds red grapes, and the Cheesecake Factory adds tomato wedges. One pecan-crusted chicken salad recipe at AllRecipes.com omits the pears and adds a 15-oz. can of mandarin oranges and a cup of dried cranberries to a four-serving salad.
The sliced pears add 2 1/2 mg calcium to each serving, almost 74 mg potassium and a little over 30 mcg lutein. (see References 2) The mandarin oranges bring almost 12 mg calcium to each serving, almost 145 mg potassium, 36 mg vitamin C and 1394 IU vitamin A. (see References 2A) Add the cranberries and you gain additional calcium and lutein and add vitamin K. (see References 2B) Tomatoes, although declared a vegetable by an act of Congress, add them for a significant boost in calcium, potassium and vitamin C. (see References 2C)
Pecan-Crusted Chicken
Most recipes use three to four boneless, skinless chicken breasts rolled in 1 cup chopped pecans. A recipe at Tasty Kitchen.com uses two beaten eggs to help the pecans cling to the chicken.
The boneless, skinless chicken breasts provide almost 27 g protein, 13 mg calcium, 196 phosphorus, 220 mg potassium, and almost 12 mg niacin to each serving of your salad. The chipped pecans add 16 g of protein, 125 mg calcium, 228 mg magnesium, 507 mg phosphorus and 734 mg potassium to the dish. If you don't want the 93 mg cholesterol per serving, separate the egg yolks and use only the whites to dip the chicken before you coat it.
Fats and Oils
Use egg whites to coat the chicken, rather than the cup of creamy garlic dressing in the All Recipes article, and you drop the fat content of the salad by 19 g. Reduce the cup of ranch dressing in the salad to just 2 tbsp. per serving and you lower the fat content of the salad by more than two-thirds.
Greens
Use fresh kale instead of romaine lettuce for a boost of 45 mg calcium, 40 mg vitamin C and 5151 IU vitamin A per 1/2-cup serving. Romaine provides only 8 mg calcium, no vitamin C and less than half the vitamin A.
Gorgonzola
Gorgonzola is a blue cheese made in Italy, sometimes using goat's milk. It adds about 178 mg calcium per 1/2 cup to each serving, and 471 mg sodium. Tack on another 258 IU vitamin A and 25 mg cholesterol per serving.
Member Comments