Thursday 19 September 2013

Blood Oranges Part 2

 I love having fruit with chicken, particularly oranges or mango. In summer, I think we live on variations of warm chicken salad with mango.

Tonight I wanted to use some more of the beautiful blood oranges I had, and figured that chicken was the perfect match. I like my salads to have plenty of flavour and be nice and filling, especially when it's not the middle of summer and you still want a relatively hearty meal.

In my mind, nothing works better than pan fried chicken, sweet juicy orange, salty fried haloumi, toasted pinenuts, rocket and roasted sweet potato. That's exactly what we had! And it was delicious, even if I do say so myself :-)

This salad was very quick and easy to put together and doesn't really require any ability in the kitchen. If you can use an oven and a fry pan, then you can master this.

Make sure you don't over cook the chicken, because you still want it to be nice and juicy. The haloumi though, is best when it's nice and charred and golden.



Chicken, Blood Orange and Haloumi Salad

2 chicken breasts, sliced into tenderloin sized pieces
1 blood orange, segmented, juice reserved for dressing
100g haloumi cheese, sliced into 1/2cm slices
1 sweet potato, peeled, halved lengthways and sliced into 1cm pieces
A handful of toasted pine nuts
A few handfuls of mixed rocket and baby spinach (or mixed lettuce)
Olive oil, salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
Prepare sweet potato and mix with salt, pepper and oil to lightly coat and roast for 20 mins or so until cooked to your liking. Set aside to cool.
While the oven is on, place pinenuts in a small oven proof tin and toast until golden brown. Keep an eye on them as they can burn very easily.
Segment orange by cutting off the rind and pith with a sharp knife and then removing each segment into a bowl. Reserve the juices in the same bowl with the fruit, squeezing as much out as you can.
Heat a fry pan with oil on medium heat and when hot, add the chicken in a single layer and season with salt and pepper. Fry on one side until golden, then turn to cook the other side. Make sure the chicken is cooked all the way through, but not overcooked and dry.
In a separate pan, heat a thin layer of oil until hot and fry the haloumi slices until golden and gooey. Flip with a spatula and cook the other side.
While the chicken and cheese are cooking, mix the sweet potato with the orange, rocket and pinenuts and drizzle with the reserved juice and a little olive oil to make a dressing.
Pile the salad on to dinner plates and artfully arrange the chicken and haloumi over the top.

Bon appetit!


A nice meal wouldn't be complete in my book without a glass of wine to go with it. We have no shortage of wine in this household, so there are plenty of drinking options to go with dinner. I'm also lucky enough that my brother in law's family have a vineyard on the Mornington Peninsula, called Five Walls, so local wine is often prominent on the table. Tonight we matched our chicken salad with a Pinot Noir. Normally I wouldn't have a red with chicken, but to go with the sweet acidity of the orange, the salty goodness of the cheese and the charred sweet potato, it was perfect. Lots of red berry and plummy flavours washed it all down a treat!


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