While many of you are bidding summer goodbye, we here in the Southern Hemisphere are welcoming it with open arms. Well, semi-open. You see, spring is my ultimate favourite season. I love that the blooms are blooming and the birds are chirping. I love that my toes don’t feel like they’re going to freeze off and I love the abundance of new fruit and vegetables in my supermarket. What I don’t like is when global warming happens and we go from freezing winter to hot-as-hell summer in a matter of hours. What is even up with that?
However, I can’t complain too much because the warmer temperatures also mean that I get to make even quicker dinners in the evenings. My ultimate quick, throw-together-dinner is a good salad. Last night I had a few chicken breasts in the fridge and knew they would be turned into a salad of some kind but I didn’t want the usual poached/roasted chicken. I wanted a POW of flavour and then I spotted it. My beloved Sriracha. Man, that stuff is good. So I made a little saucy-marinade of sorts to pour over the chicken before I popped the breasts into a hot oven. 20 minutes later, out they came looking gloriously caramelised and the flavour was just out of this world. In fact, I am going to re-work this recipe a little and turn it into a full roast chicken. Watch this space.
Anyway, back to the salad: I served the sliced chicken on a bed of baby lettuce leaves and added sliced avocado, charred corn, perfectly ripe tomatoes and soft goat’s cheese. To add texture, I sliced ciabatta thinly and gave them a quick toast. And then the dressing. Would it be a simple lemon vinaigrette or perhaps something with mustard? I just couldn’t decide but I knew the salad needed some acidity and so I decided to make the simplest dressing in the world. Lemon zest, lemon juice, cream, salt and pepper. That’s it. And the end result? Sooooo good. Like “I-could-eat-this-salad-everyday” good. In fact, this might be one of those recipes that go into regular-rotation at our house. But this time, it won’t be because I’m lazy but because it’s just so damn delicious.
