Carmelita's Cookitaly

Chicken, Apricot and Pine Nut Salad

Here's a fresh and zing-y easy salad that is low calorie, colourful and delicious, so long as all your ingredients are super fresh. If you poach the chicken and prep. the carrots the night before, you can assemble the salad in minutes for a light lunch the next day.

Here's what you need:

a boneless, skinless chicken breast

a small Cos lettuce

about 200g of Lamb's lettuce or baby spinach leaves

2 small carrots

5 plump dried apricots

a small handful of pine nuts

The grated zest of 1/4 of an orange

optional: 500 ml vegetable stock

evo and salt for dressing at table

And this is what you do:

The night before peel the carrot then continue peeling ribbons stopping when you reach the hard core. Place the ribbons in a bowl of water and set in the fridge so they crisp up and curl.

Clean the lettuces and gently spin dry. If keeping overnight wrap loosely in kitchen paper and then place in a plastic bag, which you press to exclude air. Keep in fridge overnight.

Poach the chicken at a gentle simmer in the hot vegetable stock or water. As soon as it is done (how long will depend on how thick it is but don't overcook it), place the chicken breast in cold water for 10 minutes then remove, wrap in plastic food film and refrigerate.

Toast the pine nuts slowly and carefully in a dry pan over medium low heat until toasted all the way through. When you can easily smell their slightly bacon-like aroma they are done.

Slice the apricots. Just before assembling the salad, slice the chicken breast neatly against the grain when it is still cold from the fridge.

Use a potato peeler to cut thin strips of pith-less zest from the orange, then slice into julienne strips using the tip of a small sharp knife. Alternatively use a ring zester if you have one.

Assemble the salad on a wide shallow platter. Make a bed of the two kinds of green salad leaves, top with the chicken and apricots, scatter over the pine nuts and orange zest and finish with the drained curly carrot ribbons.

Dress at table with excellent evo and salt.

Ring the changes:

No apricots or almonds in your store cupboard? You can use celery, raisins, walnuts and apples with the chicken breast and include a few red salad leaves for a change. Or try combining with sliced red onions or spring onions, pineapple pieces, sliced radishes and some sweet corn kernels.

Fennel and Orange Winter Salad

I was only in Bologna's Mercato del Mezzo to take photos for my Facebook Cook Italy page when it hit me,  the fragrance from the Tarocco oranges I was shooting.

Instant decision: I just had to make an Insalata di Tarocco e Finocchio, my absolute favourite Italian winter salad, the fennel and orange salad from Sicily.  When the weather conditions are right to produce a thermal shock -  very cold nights after relatively warm clear sky days -  the Tarocco oranges turn from "blond" to red, and these were just turning, judging by the two sliced orange halves in the display.

Making this winter salad is a simple matter. Remove the first leaf of the fennel bulb and slice as much of it as you like in the way that you prefer. Peel the oranges to remove skin, pith and the membranes enclosing the fillets, here's a nice Link to The Kitchn that shows you exactly how . Finely chop some flat leaf parsley, assemble and drizzle with olive oil.

There are a few traditional additions of which I sometimes add one or more: finely sliced green leek tops, black olives, or very tiny slivers of salted herring or anchovy, the winter fish for days when the sea was too rough for the fishermen to go out.

Simple but spectacular to look at, and it is also very refreshing with that crisp crunch from the anise flavored fennel. Let me know if you like it or if you have other orange salads you enjoy.

Polenta, Sausages and Broccoli Rabe

It was lightly snowing most of today in Bologna. The snow was melting as soon as it hit the ground, but it powdered the roof tiles, trees and statues, very pretty and Christmas-y. It also covered the bikes for the human pedal power energy that lights up Bologna's Christmas tree in the Piazza - wonder if anyone will be keeping warm by pedalling hard there tonight?

On to food matters. After my Skype interview with Carli in Tasmania, I put on my coat, gloves and hat and went to the market to see what looked good. I came back with pork Luganega sausages, which are narrower and leaner than the usual kind, some pre-cooked polenta, a bunch of lovely fresh Cime di Rapa and a bag of  Tarocco oranges.  Cime di Rapa is translated as mustard greens, turnip top greens and/or broccoli rabe. You get the idea. At this stage it is still very leafy and there were just a couple of early florets in among the leaves.

Back home and I made my purchases into lunch. I cleaned up the greens removing the tough stems. I cut up the sausages and the polenta and made up a couple of skewers alternating polenta and sausage, and then put them to cook in a little ceramic lined  pan with a little olive oil as they take longer than the greens.

I decided against garlic and shelled 3 lovely Lara walnuts to go with my greens which  I squeezed out a little and put in a larger pan, and then I broke up and added the walnuts. Once the greens had lost their water I added just a touch of olive oil. The greens seemed ready before the nuts were properly toasted through so I moved the pan off to one side leaving only the walnuts over the heat, then when I was happy with them I mixed the two back together. No extra salt, I'd put enough in the cooking water for the leaves.

I nursed the skewers turning over them regularly, adding a little oil, picking up the nice crusty bits that stick to the pan and sticking them back on the polenta cubes. Only one polenta cube broke, really pleased it was only one!

And I peeled an orange " to the quick" as they say in Italian, and put the juicy fillets on a plate for dessert.

Nice lunch: the polenta was crispy crunchy, the sausages juicy and tasty. My contorno was but not enough,  I wish I'd made more of it! And my lovely unadorned fresh orange was the perfect finish to a delciously simple little Italian meal.