In the top 10 reasons why I enjoy blogging I would place this somewhere near the top - I like being challenged by blogging events. Granted I haven’t participated in any of the really challenging ones yet like Paper Chef – but even trying to come up with a different way to cook with herbs, healthy foods or from your favorite cookbook can be a challenge. It’s like an assignment for school and I am a nerd at heart.
This weekend my assignment was to make a salad from one of my cookbooks for the weekend cookbook challenge hosted by Tami from Running with Scissors. I chose the Barefoot Contessa cookbook because it is one I haven’t quite got a sense of yet and wanted more. I hosted a couple people for dinner last week with some of her recipes and was highly successful so I was expecting good results.
The recipe below is verbatim from the book – but when I made it I had to make a few changes. For one, I couldn’t find any sugar snap peas so had to concede to use regular snap peas and halved them to make it more manageable. Also I am grill-less so taking a pointer from Helen from Beyond Salmon I used my broiler to cook the chicken. Lastly rather then cutting the lemon into thin slices I chose to remove the rind and used mini wedges instead to avoid the rind – plus that way you eat it whole.
So? Conclusions. I wanted to love it. I really really did and I think it would improve if it was grilled and also the sugar snap peas may have improved it but I was still underwhelmed. The chicken post grilled simply tasted like it had had fresh lemon juice squeezed over it. So it seemed like a waste to go to all that trouble. Plus I found that the salad itself was a little too chunky to be manageable. In order to get a bit of everything in one bite you needed to have a rather large mouth which I do have but not really in the literal sense. That said, it was really fresh tasting and I am totally in love with lemon in salads as a part of the salad. I might make it again, but I would definitely modify it. The recipe is below directly as it comes from the book.
¾ cup lemon juice, freshly squeezed
¾ cup olive oil
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves, minced
2 lbs boneless chicken breasts, halved and skin removed
1. Whisk together the lemon juice, oil, salt and pepper and thyme. Pour over the chicken breasts and refrigerate for 6 hours or overnight.
2. Heat a charcoal grill and cook the chicken breasts for 10 minutes on each side, until just cooked through.
Lemon Chicken Salad:
(serves 6)
2 lbs Grilled Lemon Chicken, see recipe
¼ cup lemon juice, freshly squeezed
¼ cup olive oil
1 cup raw sugar snap peas
½ red pepper, julienned
½ yellow pepper, julienned
1 lemon, thinly sliced
¼ teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1. Slice cold chicken diagonally into 3/8″ thick slices. Toss them and their juices with the lemon juice, olive oil, peas, peppers, lemon slices and salt and pepper.
2. Taste for seasoning and serve cold or at room temperature.
