Summer citrus and chicken salad

I love my CSA, and I will try to find good recipes for all these veggies I’m getting and post the results. 

Last week, Geeky Alpaca and I made a super tasty salad, using the fresh greens included in our CSA box (mesclun, they called it), as well as some pea greens.  I think, not counting marinating the chicken, we spent about 20 minutes on the whole thing.

First, I took two old oranges that were starting to get squishy–still tasty, but the consistency was a bit off–and marinated a large chicken breast for a day in the juice from 1.5 of them.  

The other half orange was held back to make dressing.  I got about 1/4 cup of juice from it, added an equal amount of honey, and threw in some spicy brown mustard until I liked the taste and consistency of the mix (I’d guess it was between 1.5 and 2Tbsp)–admittedly a bastardization of this recipe.  It was spicy and sweet, all at once, and I loved it.

Next, I put a little bit of olive oil and an even smaller bit of basil-infused olive oil on a nonstick pan, heated it, and threw the chicken on there.  I then liberally sprinkled each side with dried basil and more gently added dried tarragon and powdered cayenne.  I cut the chicken into bite-size pieces while it cooked, and when it had a minute or so to go, I drizzled a tiny bit of the dressing onto it.

While I was doing all of this, Geeky Alpaca washed and cut the greens (and some other vegetables, for other meals) into bite-size pieces.  He also pulled out and drained a can of mandarin oranges.  

Onto the plate went the greens, the mandarin oranges, the chicken, and the dressing, and the result was fantastic.  There might be things one could add to make it even more exciting–almond slices, dried cranberries, some kind of fancy cheese–but it was quite tasty on its own.

~ by dyslexicalcapa on June 24, 2008.