Originally published by The Clifton Courier, June 27, 2018

In my household growing up, “salad” was a few slices of tinned beetroot, tinned pineapple, shredded lettuce, grated Bega and grated carrot, all arranged on your plate by Mum. Sometimes she’d personalise it by subtracting beetroot, adding cucumber or with an artistic sprinkling of sultanas, but it was pretty standard in essence.

This is not one of those salads.

This is an extremely wanky salad, which I threw together while trying to make my health kick less depressing. Some people would argue that cabbage and kale salad is extremely depressing, but I’ve been right into my kale lately and I had a buttload of cabbage to get rid of.

Pickled ginger also happened to be on special at my supermarket last week, which caught my eye as I hovered in the Asian food aisle. It has a flavour so punchy that it could make you forget that you’re eating responsibly.

And since I was being so ostentatious as to make a salad with bright pink ginger, I decided to be even more extra and get some sesame seeds, toasting them like the culinary diva I am. I viewed the tiny seeds as glitter, sprinkling it through my food like I was throwing a parade for my intestines.

Please enjoy the following recipe, for a salad that tries its very best to convince you that you’d sill eat it even if you were faced with a bowl of hot chippies.

Step 1: Toast like two tablespoons of sesame seeds in a hot, dry frypan.

Step 2: Question why you going to all this effort for a damn salad.

Step 3: Remind yourself that you deserve to have nice things and that you’re worth the weight of a chubby four-year-old in toasted sesame seeds.

Step 4: Put the seeds/granules representing your self-worth aside.

Step 5: Slice two chicken breast fillets and set aside. Try to cut them on a diagonal and slice as thin as possible, because they’ll cook faster. Cut them into fat chunks if you like, but they will only represent fat chunks of your life you’ll never get back. You could use those fat chunks of time to scroll numbly through Instagram or stare at the wall, but if you want to fritter that time away by cooking juicy chunks of chicken, that’s your call.

Step 6: Thinly slice a big-toe-sized nub of ginger and half an onion.

Step 7: Add to the frypan with a fair whack of sesame oil on a medium heat.

Step 8: Once the onion starts going translucent, add the pieces of chicken, laying them out flat like tiles. This might seem like it would take longer because it’s more fiddly than just tipping the meat in like a load of used nappies from a dump truck, but if you sliced the chook up as thinly as I told you to, it will be quite fast.

Step 9: Flip the chicken like little meaty pancakes, sprinkling on about a quarter of the sesame seeds and a good squeeze of honey.

Step 10: Tip this goop into a bowl and wipe out the fry pan with as much vigour as you can muster up – this will depend on the night of the week.

Step 11: Thinly-slice a quarter of a cabbage. And look, I really do mean for you to slice your cabbage thinly. I’m done mucking around. Follow my instructions or starve. I mean it.

Step 12: Add sesame oil to the clean-ish frypan, bringing it up to a medium-high heat.

Step 13: Cook the cabbage in batches for a few minutes at a time, topping up the oil as needed. The idea is to coat the cabbage in the oil. You want the cabbage to retain its crunch and dignity as a vegetable. Letting it wilt will bring shame to your household.

Step 14: Tip the cabbage into one of those large salad bowls you like owning but rarely use, making sure there is no dust coating the inside. Tip in the sesame seeds gradually with each batch along with torn strips of pickled ginger.

Step 15: Rip the leaves from about five stalks of kale, then tear them into pieces like you’re ripping up apology letters from all the lovers who wronged you, laughing wickedly while imagining yourself wearing an old Hollywood style dressing gown with flowing sleeves.

Step 16: Cook the kale like the cabbage, tossing it into the salad bowl with the remaining sesame seeds and as much pinkled ginge as your heart desires.

Step 17: Add two thinly-sliced shallots.

Step 18: Mix the salad well, then chuck in the chicken.

Step 19: Eat as much as you can physically stomach, tipping the leftovers into containers for lunches.

Step 20: (this step is only for the people who thinly-sliced their chicken like I bloody well told them to) Savour staring at the wall with the five minutes you saved yourself.