First, start grilling your chicken…

. . . or more precisely, first marinate your chicken – the grilling comes later! With the warmer weather now upon us, salads start to take centre-stage, and adding some grilled, barbecued or pan-griddled chicken can turn a side dish into the main event.

My personal favourite is a chicken Caesar salad, which although easy to make, is also easy to get spectacularly wrong!

It should be just grilled chicken, sitting on a salad made with hearts of romaine (long) lettuce, dressed with good olive oil, a little lemon juice and Worcester sauce, then sprinkled with Parmesan and garlicky croutons.

The original Caesar recipe included a coddled, or very lightly boiled egg. Modern recipes seem to have dispensed with that. Some people like to add anchovies to the dressing, but they weren’t in the original recipe.

You would think with those simple ingredients, a good chicken Caesar would be easy to find, but it is surprisingly elusive. One horror I was served with, memorable for all the wrong reasons, was a pile of overcooked, rubbery chicken sitting on a salad of limp lollo rosso lettuce, beetroot, onions and sweetcorn. But we’ll forget the horrors and concentrate on a few salads which will hopefully give happier memories.

Looking round the world searching for inspiration, the first I’ve come up with is Mexican. It’s a colourful salad, or more precisely salsa, of peppers, avocados, sweetcorn and chillies – all good things that originated in that part of the world – topped with spicy grilled chicken. I like to serve mine with patatas bravas, or brave potatoes, although they come from Spain, not Mexico – but they all speak the same language so I don’t think that matters.

Then off to the Middle East. Tabbouleh, made with bulgur, or cracked wheat, is eaten pretty much everywhere in that part of the world, but it is a particular speciality of Lebanon.

You can decorate it and serve it how you like, but the basic recipe should always contain lots of olive oil, lemon juice, mint and parsley. I usually dress it up with tomatoes, peppers and olives, and although you have to soak it for an hour, its slightly nutty flavour makes a nice change from couscous.

My warm Italian salad is oily and delicious. Fry some aubergine slices, add some peppery rocket, borlotti beans and baby plum or cherry tomatoes, then top with juicy chicken steeped in a garlic marinade then drizzled with balsamic glaze.

Finally, off to Greece. The poor Greeks are suffering all sorts of hardships at the moment, and I imagine they’re eating lots of comforting traditional Greek salad made with cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, olives and feta cheese. Serve it with chicken that has been marinated in garlic, lemon juice and fresh thyme.

Although these recipes are all with chicken, vegetarians can replace it with halloumi cheese which is available from most larger supermarkets. It grills beautifully, and very quickly, but if you can’t find it, white kefalotiri cheese grills well too, and is available pretty much everywhere.