Grilled Chicken Cobb Salad

If you're looking for something to do with that leftover BBQ chicken, why not make a Cobb Salad? It's a good excuse to use those perfect summer avocados and tomatoes, and it is low in fat and carbo's.

Cobb salad was created at the Brown Derby Restaurant in Hollywood. As with many "how this began stories" we don't know how much is actual fact, but here is the official story from the Brown Derby themselves:

"One night in 1937, Bob Cobb, then owner of The Brown Derby, prowled hungrily in his restaurant's kitchen for a snack. Opening the huge refrigerator, he pulled out this and that: a head of lettuce, an avocado, some romaine, watercress, tomatoes, some cold breast of chicken, a hard-boiled egg, chives, cheese and some old-fashioned French dressing. He started chopping. Added some crisp bacon -- swiped from a busy chef.

I use chopped smoked ham instead of bacon, and remove one or both of the egg yolks from the hard-boiled eggs to reduce the fat and calories.

Cobb Salad

Ingredients

• 3 slices smoked ham, diced

• 1 ripe avocado, split, pitted, and diced

• 2 ripe tomatoes, diced

• 2 hard-cooked eggs, chopped after yolk(s) removed

• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

• 4 cups mesclun greens

• 2 cups cooked chicken

• 1/2 cup blue cheese

Directions

Dice the smoked ham, chicken, egg, tomatoes and avocado, seasoning them with salt and pepper, to taste, as you go. Mix the greens with your favorite balsamic vinaigrette or blue cheese dressing and layer them on the bottom of a plate. Top the mesclun greens with rows of smoked ham, chicken, egg, tomatoes and avocado, then scatter crumbled blue cheese on top. (Optional: you can also top the salad with crumbled bacon bits.)

Serve with some grilled french stick if you want some carbs.