Well, despite my best efforts, including driving Ninja Kid past the houses mansions of all the wealthy orthodontists in town once a day, she’s still dead-set on becoming a chef. My recruitment efforts will continue unabated, but in the meantime I might as well enjoy myself a little cooking, right? Right. I present Chef Ninja Kid’s most recent meal.

Cilantro-Lime Chicken with Avocado Salsa
adapted ever-so-slightly from Cooking Light

For the chicken:
1 pkg boneless chicken tenders
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, minced
2 1/2 tablespoons fresh-squeezed lime juice
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
cooking spray

For the salsa:
2 Roma tomatoes, chopped
2 small or 1 large avocado, chopped
2 teaspoons fresh-squeezed lime juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

To prepare chicken, combine first four ingredients in a large bowl; toss and let stand 3 minutes. Remove chicken from marinade and discard marinade.

Sprinkle chicken evenly with 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Heat a grill pan over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add chicken to pan; cook 6 minutes on each side or until done.

To prepare salsa, combine tomato, lime juice, salt, and pepper in a medium bowl. Add chopped avocado and stir gently to combine. Serve salsa over chicken.

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Yes, that’s a paper plate in the last picture. Don’t judge.

Once again, Chef Ninja Kid has produced a winner. We did make a few minor adjustments to the original recipe.

• We used chicken tenders instead of chicken breasts, simply because the tenders cook faster and we were really hungry.
• We omitted the 2 tablespoons of finely chopped onion from the salsa because we don’t like raw onions.
• We used a skillet rather than an actual grill pan.

This was really delicious. We served it with saffron rice out of a box, which was surprisingly good and much cheaper and easier than if we had bought saffron threads and tried to make it ourselves, and black beans. I can’t remember now what the poundage was on the chicken tenders that we bought, but this ended up being four meals in all (two at dinner and two for lunch leftovers) and it was just as good warmed up the next day as it was the first night.

If you click on the original recipe link above, you’ll notice that in their picture the avocado salsa looks prettier, as in not so mushy. I guess our avocados were riper, or maybe Chef Ninja Kid over-stirred the salsa. Regardless, it tasted great.

Future possibilities:

• The salsa would be great with salmon or pork.
• Might try letting the chicken marinade longer in order to infuse  more of the cilantro-lime flavor, which got a little lost in the avocado salsa.
• And, because I believe that everything tastes better with a little gaaahlic, might try either some minced garlic in the marinade or some garlic powder/salt in the salsa. I do love me some garlic.