A slightly spicy chicken breast atop a green salad with slices of oranges will surprise your taste buds. In this Citrus Chicken and Greens Salad, crunch is followed by hot and extinguished by the citrus.
Why is it that we seem to be paying more attention to how much and how often we exercise when the weather improves? Is it that we feel cooped up during the winter? Is it that the heebie jeebies are getting the best of us? Or is it that our spring and summer clothes are thinner and more revealing and we feel not ready to reveal ourselves?
I don’t know what your rationale is, but I certainly feel the need to shift some of my exercise to outside. Breathing fresh air always feels good and it makes me stronger, mentally and physically. I need to shed some of my ‘winter coat’, before I feel more comfortable.
I try to work out at least 3 days a week, to stay in shape as best as I can. But I don’t always get to 3 days; the intentions are there, every week again. The older you become the harder that is; the longer it takes to get back in shape and to catch up when you missed a work out. Running my own business can really consume all my time and thus it is not always easy to exercise, but I know I have to do it. As said it makes me stronger, physically and also mentally. The more I exercise, the more I am able to overcome the stress and worries and it helps me to feel better about myself.
If you know me, you know that I am a little obsessed with food. Wanted to start my own restaurant, my catering business, wanted to teach people how to eat healthier, without too much compromise. I still believe that. I believe that we can eat whatever we want, of course within reasons and with some limitations. In principle, I don’t believe so much in healthy and unhealthy food, I believe there are healthy and unhealthy choices and lifestyles.
This Citrus Chicken and Greens Salad is a great lunch or light dinner salad. It is tasteful and combines crunch, spice and refreshing citrus. Serve it with bread, rice, potatoes or just eat the salad by itself. The recipe is pretty simple. I comes down to rubbing a chicken breast fillet with a spice concoction (salt, black pepper, cumin, coriander, allspice, curry, and cayenne pepper) and cook it.
Cut the oranges into skinless wedges. Make a dressing in the skillet by adding orange juice, mustard, honey, olive oil and salt and pepper to the left overs after cooking the chicken and allow to cool. Clean and chop celery and mix with salad greens and then toss with dressing. Time to transfer to a dish. Salad first, then slices of chicken breast, alternating with the orange wedges. Sprinkle with Parmigianno Reggiano Cheese.
In this Citrus Chicken and Greens Salad recipe, I used blood oranges. Of course you can use normal oranges, grapefruit, lemon and lime or a any combination. I like the blood oranges because of their contrasting color.
Citrus Chicken and Greens Salad
Ingredients
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon cumin
- 1/4 teaspoon coriander
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon curry powder
- 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1/8 teaspoon allspice
- 8 ounces chicken breast no skin, no bone
- 2 oranges
- 2 tablespoon olive oil
- 1/4 cup dry white wine
- 1 teaspoon honey
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 2 stalks celery
- 4 ounces mesclun salad
- Parmigiano Reggiano cheese grated
Instructions
- Combine and mix first 7 ingredients and rub chicken breast fillet with spice mix.
- Peel oranges, so there is not white pith visible. Then cut the slices out of oranges, from between the membranes. Hold the fruit over a bowl, so you save the juice that runs out of the fruit during the cutting. Squeeze the left over oranges; this juice is part of your dressing.
- Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a skillet and add chicken breast. Cook over medium heat for about 1 minute and then flip the chicken. Cook 1 minute on the other side. Add wine and some orange peel, and heat to boil. Immediately turn heat to low and cook for approx. 10 minutes. Take the chicken out of the pan, wrap in aluminum foil and place foil in warm oven for about 10-15 minutes. Total time depends on thickness of your chicken breast.
- Allow juices in skillet to cool down. Add orange juice, wine, mustard, honey, 1 tablespoon of oil and salt and pepper and mix. This is your dressing.
- Clean celery and slice thinly. Mix with mesclun salad. Add the dressing and mix again.
- Transfer salad to a serving dish or divide over 2 plates. Cut chicken in thin slices and place atop the salad. Place the orange wedges in between the chicken and sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese.
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