I made the delicious chicken and bread salad from Meghan Markle’s show. It taught me how to be a better home cook.

• Chef Samin Nosrat showed Meghan Markle how to make a chicken and bread salad on “With Love, Meghan.”
• I tried the recipe, which features homemade croutons and a passion fruit vinaigrette.
• The delicious salad is filled with ingredients, and making it helped me become a better cook.

While watching season two of “With Love, Meghan,” one recipe immediately caught my eye.

In the fourth episode of Meghan Markle’s Netflix show, James Beard Award-winning cookbook author Samin Nosrat shows the Duchess of Sussex how to make a roast chicken and bread salad.

Inspired by a dish from the iconic Zuni Café in San Francisco, the salad was packed with colorful vegetables, homemade croutons, and a passion fruit vinaigrette.

It was unlike any salad I had made before, and it looked incredible.

The chicken and bread salad is a cornucopia of veggies, fruit, and cheese.

To make this roasted chicken and bread salad, you’ll need:

• A few slices of sourdough bread, cut or torn into large pieces, for the croutons
• ½ of a leftover roast chicken, shredded and cold
• 5-6 cups of fresh lettuce, cut irregularly
• Radicchio, chopped into bite-sized pieces
• Fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
• Dates, pitted and chopped into small bite-sized pieces
• Toasted pine nuts, to taste
• Parmesan cheese, broken into chunks with a knife, to taste

If you have time the night before, I recommend shredding your leftover roast chicken while it’s still warm. Not only will it be easier, but it’ll also save you time while making the salad.

If you’re looking for a good chicken recipe, you can try this “engagement roast chicken” that Meghan swears by.

“I have done it so many times; I can do it with my eyes closed,” she says during the “With Love, Meghan” episode. “I roasted a chicken the night my husband proposed to me. Roast chicken is what we served at our wedding. I make it at least once a week.”

For the vinaigrette, you’ll need:

• 3 ripe passion fruit, the fruit and the seeds
• 1 small shallot, minced
• 1-2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• ½ cup of extra-virgin olive oil
• Freshly squeezed juice from one lemon
• A splash of persimmon vinegar
• Honey, to taste

As you’ll see, many ingredients don’t have precise measurements listed alongside them. This was how the recipe was written, not my attempt to make your life harder!

If you’ve read Nosrat’s cookbook, “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat,” you’ll know she is a big proponent of tasting every step of your recipe. It’s a great reminder for this dish, which is all about playing with different textures.

My advice is to layer the salad carefully and thoughtfully. How many dates do you need before the bite becomes too sticky? How much Parmesan is required for a satisfyingly salty bite?

I began by making the homemade croutons.

After preheating the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, I chopped pieces of sourdough from three slices of bread (I couldn’t find a boule at my local supermarket) and arranged them on a baking sheet. Nosrat recommends lining the sheet with parchment paper, but my aluminum foil worked in a pinch.

I drizzled olive oil on top, tossing the sourdough to coat it before evenly spreading the pieces on the baking sheet.

I popped my croutons in the oven for 25 minutes.

Nosrat says you should shake the croutons every five minutes or so. You’ll know they’re ready when they look crispy and crunchy.

While the croutons were baking, I toasted my pine nuts.

I threw my pine nuts into a dry skillet over medium-low heat. It can take about three to five minutes for the pine nuts to toast, but make sure you stir frequently so they don’t burn!

When the pine nuts were ready, I transferred them to a cool bowl so they wouldn’t continue to cook.

When I took my croutons out of the oven, I realized I had almost burned them.

Nosrat recommends baking your croutons for 15 to 25 minutes. Mine had barely changed by the 15-minute mark, so I added 10 minutes to the timer.

The croutons still tasted good, but I recommend keeping a closer eye on them after 20 minutes to ensure you capture that golden sweet spot.

Once my croutons were ready, I prepped my veggies for the vinaigrette.

I minced my shallot and crushed my garlic, using my knife to smash each clove.

Since the garlic cloves will be removed from the vinaigrette, try not to smash them too hard. It’ll save you time digging around for the chunks in the vinaigrette. (I speak from personal experience.)

It was around this time that I realized I had bought the wrong main ingredient for the vinaigrette.

I have to be honest with you — I had never seen or tasted a passion fruit before I made this recipe. So when I walked by a farmers market stand and saw a sign advertising them, I excitedly grabbed the first box I saw.

When I sliced into these little things, I realized they looked nothing like the juicy fruit Nosrat had used on Meghan’s show. I sent a picture to one of my friends who immediately replied, “I’m afraid you got bamboozled, those are figs.”

I felt pretty embarrassed, but I realized I was in good company when I rewatched the episode.

“I don’t think I had fresh passion fruit until a few years ago,” Nosrat tells Meghan as they cook. “And then I was like, ‘What is this thing!'”

Thanks to an emergency DoorDash order, my passion fruit quickly arrived.

If you had any questions or doubts, these are what your passion fruit should look like.

With the correct ingredients on hand, it was finally time to make the passion fruit vinaigrette.

Nosrat says to add the shallot and passion fruit “into a mortar and pestle and grind.”

Unfortunately, I lack a mortar and pestle, so I added them to a sturdy bowl and used the end of my French rolling pin to grind them instead. It seemed to work!

I added the lemon juice, stirring with a spoon, before throwing in a splash of persimmon vinegar.

This is also when I added the smashed garlic cloves, which should steep in the vinaigrette until it’s time to dress the salad (then just remove them with a spoon).

I slowly whisked the extra-virgin olive oil into my dressing before adding the honey.

Nosrat recommends adjusting the dressing as needed with more olive oil, salt, vinegar, lemon juice, or honey, making sure to “work in small amounts until it is just right.”

I followed her advice to taste every step of the way. When I tried the dressing right after adding the ½ cup of extra-virgin olive oil, it completely overpowered every other flavor in the vinaigrette. So I added small splashes of everything — a little persimmon vinegar here, some lemon juice there, a hearty pinch of salt. When I tasted it again, I realized it still needed more acidity, so I added another splash of vinegar. Then it needed more sweetness, so I drizzled in a bit more honey.

When it finally tasted perfect, I couldn’t even begin to tell you how accomplished I felt knowing I had built the dressing myself.

It was time to build the salad! But first, I needed to dress the chicken…

In “With Love, Meghan,” Nosrat explains that she likes building this salad in layers. I’ll let her explain.

“I want every bite to be the best bite,” she tells Meghan. “So I like making sure that all the parts individually taste good. Things absorb dressing differently — the right amount of dressing for the chicken might not be the same as the right amount of dressing for the lettuce.”

Nosrat also notes that leftover chicken often “needs a little perking.” So I added a pinch of salt before tossing it with some of my passion fruit vinaigrette.

… and the croutons.

I put one-third of my homemade croutons in a bowl and drizzled them with some vinaigrette before tossing them together.

“I like having multiple textures in the salad, so if I’m having bread salad, I don’t want it to all be too crunchy or all be too soggy,” Nosrat tells Meghan while dressing the individual ingredients, adding that you “need some sog, some crunch.”

I chopped my lettuce and radicchio before adding them to a separate salad bowl.

Nosrat recommends chopping the radicchio, which adds some lovely color, into bite-sized pieces.

I threw in some chopped parsley, dates, pine nuts, Parmesan, and another third of the croutons.

Nosrat has a trick for the Parmesan chunks, which she showed Meghan during the episode.

“You just flick off these little bits,” Nosrat says, using her knife to create small chunks of the cheese.

After seasoning the salad with vinaigrette and salt, I tossed everything together. Then I added the dressed chicken and tossed again.

Nosrat recommends using your hands, which she calls “your most incredible tools,” to toss the salad.

“I can feel when the lettuces are dressed. I can feel every piece of this in a way I would never feel with tongs,” she tells Meghan during the episode. “A lot of people have feelings it’s gross to use your hands, but to me, there’s nothing gross about it — we’re going to eat it.”

I added more of the dates, Parmesan, and croutons before serving with the remaining vinaigrette.

A note of caution — don’t go too heavy-handed on the dates. I threw in about six chopped dates, and their sweet flavor and gummy texture overpowered some bites of the salad. I recommend starting with three and tasting before adding any more.

The chicken and bread salad is a delicious journey full of different flavors and textures.

Nosrat describes this salad as a “panzanella with a passion fruit vinaigrette,” which I think is selling her own dish just a bit short. The dish has been constructed to provide so much for your taste buds with every bite. It’s fresh and crisp, crunchy and soggy, sweet and salty.

The depth is unlike any I’ve achieved in a salad I’ve made at home, and it feels all the more rewarding since Nosrat’s recipe gently guides you to find the perfect balance on your own. My one addition would be some avocado, which I added to leftovers the next day to balance out some of the sweetness from my extra dates.

Full transparency — this salad takes some time, and there are a lot of bowls that end up in the sink. But if you’re looking for a recipe that tastes delicious and will improve your skills as a chef, I can think of no better one than this.

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