dinner date - spanish spiced chicken breast with hot chorizo and chickpea salad

My friend, Ash, presented me with this recipe, which comes from Nosh. I served it up for dinner on Sunday night, much to the delight of my flatmates. We bought the chorizo in a 60g piece from the deli section of nosh, but I guess you could use any variety of chorizo. It's a simple dish to make, and oh so delicious and satisfying. I loved the combination of flavours and textures, and it was just as good for lunch the next day. I think it will become a regular in our dinner repertoire.

Ingredients
salt
olive oil
4 x boneless chicken breasts
4T flour
1½ T paprika
1 pinch cayenne pepper
60g pamplona chorizo, cut into lardons
60g traditional chorizo, cut into lardons

1T fresh oregano, finely chopped
1 can chickpeas, drained
1 can baby roma tomatoes, drained
1 large onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 lemon, zest & juice
120g pkt baby spinach

For the hot chorizo and chickpea salad: Add chorizo lardons to a saucepan with a little olive oil and cook until the lardons start to crisp. Once the chorizo has let off a bit of the paprika infused oil add your oregano, onion, garlic, celery, carrot and cook for 2 minutes. Add the lemon zest, lemon juice, chickpeas and drain the baby roma tomatoes. Cook for a further 10-15 minutes or until the vegetables are tender. Once the ingredients are cooked turn off the heat and stir in the baby spinach.

For the Spanish spiced chicken: In a large bowl mix together the flour, 2 tablespoon of paprika, 1 pinch of Cayenne pepper and salt. Lightly oil your chicken fillets and dredge in the spiced flour. Heat your heavy based pan to a medium high heat and cook the breasts on each side for 5 min or until juices run clear. Season again and set aside to rest for 3 min.

Present the salad on a white plate topped with the chicken breast and served with a wedge odlemon, extra lemon zest and unsweetened yogurt.

dinner date - bulgur wheat salad

I've been a rather absentee blogger of late. I had been doing a psychology internship and much of my time over the past couple of months was spent finishing (or starting) assignments and preparing for oral exams. Hence my lack of blogging. Thankfully all went smoothly with my exams and I am now qualified as a Health Psychologist, with two new jobs at North Shore and Middlemore hospitals.

Now that I have reclaimed my weekends and evenings, I'm hoping to try out new recipes and keep up the blogging. Thanks Libby and Becky who have keep the blog ticking along nicely in my absence.

This bulgur wheat salad was not so much a new recipe but rather a freestyle creation made using whatever I found in the cupboard, pantry and garden.


After the above harvest of courgettes and fresh herbs I inspected the pantry and fridge and found a few veges that would roast well (including onions from the garden, potatoes, kumara, red pepper and some rather sad looking mushrooms). These seemed fitting to some sort of salad, so chopped up the veges and coated them with olive oil, some macadamia paste, salt and pepper and roasted them until cooked.

There was a packet of course bulgur wheat in the pantry which I soaked hot water for around 20 minutes until cooked. I stirred through the roast veges along with the fresh herbs and generous amounts of some basil pesto I made earlier in the day. The salad was garnished with sunflower and pumpkin seeds and extra pesto.

This was a delicious throw together kind of meal, with great textures, flavours and colours. The seeds add a lovely crunch and the nutty flavour of the macadamia paste also adds a nice dimension. I really rate bulgur wheat as a base for salads (far more than buckwheat which always tastes to me like it's not quite cooked properly). Although we ate this for dinner it would be a great salad to take to work for lunch.... lucky I made lots so there was leftovers for lunch.