Kathy Huschka loves Chinese chicken salad, but she wanted to lighten up her recipe for it.

"The dressing scares me. Can you slim it down?" she wrote me. "Half a cup of oil sounds like so much."

I started by adding more vinegar to the dressing and reducing the amount of oil. Baking the chicken with some soy sauce and a bit of toasted sesame oil pumps up the salad's flavor so that the dressing doesn't need a lot of oil. I also substituted Splenda for the sugar and cut out the extra teaspoon of salt because the chicken seasoning packet comes loaded with sodium.

Many Chinese chicken salads include a generous amount of almonds for extra crunch, but I used some shredded carrot instead to cut hundreds of calories and more than 50 fat grams from this recipe.

You can have a serving of my Chinese chicken salad for 314 calories and 11.4 grams of fat.

Kathy's Chinese

Chicken Salad

For salad:

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breasts

½ head Napa cabbage, thinly sliced

¼ head red cabbage, thinly sliced

1 large carrot, shredded

3 scallions, thinly sliced

1 (11-ounce) can mandarin oranges packed in water, drained

For dressing:

1 packet chicken seasoning from package of Ramen noodles

2 tablespoons Splenda

½ cup white vinegar

3 tablespoons canola oil

Preheat oven to 350 F. Combine soy sauce with sesame oil and brush onto chicken breasts. Arrange chicken breasts in a glass dish and bake until juices run clear, about 15 minutes. Remove chicken from oven, cool completely and cut into ¼-inch slices.

In a large bowl, combine cabbage, carrot, scallions, mandarin oranges and chicken. In a small bowl, whisk together chicken seasoning, Splenda, vinegar and canola oil. Pour dressing over salad and toss to combine. Divide evenly among four bowls. Serves 4.

Per serving: 314 calories, 750 mg sodium, 11.4 fat grams, 69 mg cholesterol, 30 g protein, 18 carb grams, 3.3 fiber grams.