No cook wants to make the same dish every day all year long. Sometimes, though, you come up with a recipe that's so good that everyone - whether your family or your customers - keeps asking for it over and over again.

That's what happened to me with chicken salad, a perfect year-round dish that's especially good to serve now as the weather starts warming up.

Back in the late 1970s at Ma Maison, where I had my first job as a head chef in Los Angeles, I came up with a chicken salad that was a huge hit with my customers, including such celebrities as Dinah Shore, Sean Connery, Diana Ross, and the Douglases - both Kirk and Michael. It seemed that the salad was all they wanted to order, so I sometimes tried to give it a rest from the menu. But after just one or two days, I'd get so many complaints that I had to offer it again.

What was so good about that chicken salad?

One of simplest parts of its success was the dressing: a mixture of mayonnaise, whole-grain mustard (sold under the French name of Moutarde de Meaux), lemon juice, and a splash of mustard-flavored vinaigrette. That's so much more interesting than the more common chicken salad dressing of plain old mayonnaise with some salt and pepper and maybe lemon juice.

Next came the other ingredients: crunchy celery, sweet-tart cubes of apple, and tangy-salty capers (though the film director Henry Jaglom hated capers and always asked me to leave them out). That combination offers what I think is a perfect, interesting balance of tastes and textures to complement the chicken.

Most important of all, however, was the fact that I didn't use leftover chicken. Instead, I boiled a whole chicken fresh for the salad, letting it cool in its cooking liquid before removing the skin and then tearing the meat from the bones in bite-sized shreds. Tossed with the dressing and then served immediately, the chicken is so moist and tender that you won't believe how good it tastes, and it absorbs the flavors of the dressing more readily. Of course, you can then refrigerate any leftovers so they won't spoil.

Try the recipe yourself the next time you plan a special weekend lunch for friends or family.

Serve the salad on a bed of lettuce, surrounded by sliced tomatoes, sliced hard-boiled egg, cooked and, if you like, chilled green beans - or any other garnishes that strike your fancy.

Or offer the salad as a filling for good quality toasted bread or crusty bakery rolls.

And I bet you'll find that whichever people are lucky enough to eat it will complain if you don't serve it to them the next time they come over!

First, boil the chicken. Put the chicken in a soup pot with the celery, carrot, onion, bay leaves, salt and peppercorns. Add enough cold water to cover the chicken completely. Put the pot over medium-high heat and bring almost to a boil, skimming regularly; reduce the heat to maintain a gentle simmer and cook until the chicken is done, about 45 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat, cover, and leave to cool until the chicken is cool enough to handle, about 1 hour.

Remove the chicken from the pot. Strain the broth and reserve it in the refrigerator for another use. Pull the skin from the chicken and then, with your fingers, pull the meat from the bones in bite-sized shreds, transferring the meat to a mixing bowl and taking care to leave all the bones behind. Discard the skin and bones.

Peel and core the apple and cut it into 1/2-inch (12-mm) cubes, adding them to the chicken. Cut the celery stalk into 1/4-inch (6-mm) cubes, adding them to the chicken. Add the capers and mustard. Toss with enough of the mayonnaise to coat the ingredients lightly. Taste and adjust the seasonings with salt, pepper and lemon juice.

To present the salad, put the balsamic and sherry vinegars and the Dijon mustard in a salad bowl and whisk until thoroughly combined. Whisking continuously, slowly drizzle in the olive oil. Season to taste with salt and pepper and toss the lettuce leaves with this dressing. Arrange the lettuce leaves in the center of a serving platter or on individual serving plates. Top with the chicken salad and garnish with the sliced eggs and tomatoes. Serve immediately.

MA MAISON CHICKEN SALAD
Serves 4

BOILED CHICKEN
1 chicken, about 3 pounds (1.5 kg)
1 stalk celery, cut into 1-inch (2.5-cm) chunks
1 carrot, cut into 1-inch (2.5-cm) chunks
1 yellow onion, quartered
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon whole black peppercorns

CHICKEN SALAD
1 medium-sized Golden Delicious apple
1 stalk celery
1 tablespoon capers, drained
2 tablespoons Moutarde de Meaux
1/2 cup (125 ml) good quality mayonnaise
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Lemon juice

PRESENTATION AND GARNISHES
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon sherry or red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
Freshly ground white pepper
2 small heads Boston lettuce, leaves separated, rinsed, and patted dry
2 hard-boiled eggs, shelled and sliced
2 ripe Roma tomatoes, cored and sliced