Brisbane, I love thee in all thy seasons, but I love thee best in Spring. Sadly my waxing lyrical on the wonders of Brisbane in Spring will have to wait for another post, however what I will tell you now is that no city does a storm like Brisbane in Spring. Our climate is deemed "Sub-tropical" which means our storms typically brew all day, gathering moisture from the dense humidity on the ground then, as the horizon-bound sun begins to ease it's heat abuse on the atmosphere, all that humidity gets thrown back down on us with wild winds, flash floods, apocalyptic lightning, ear-splitting thunder and deluges of warm rain.
Stunning.
So I was all cavalier and glibly unconcerned about my picnic plans when the weather app predicted this for Saturday:
Allow me to interpret the above image into Brisbanese for you. It means a balmy, sunny day & a ferocious end-is-nigh storm at about 4pm. Really, for a Brisbanite, the above image is actually an excellent picnic omen...as long as one plans to wrap things up before 4pm.
You could imagine my surprise, then, when I woke on Saturday morning to find the weather looked exactly like this:
No swag, Brisbane.
Luckily I was not so glib and cavalier as to not have a back up plan. The picnic was moved indoors to my delightful friend Carling's incredibly delightful home where a dozen or so girls ate food and played board games. Moral of the story; When life gives you lemons, say "Why thank you, Life!" and use them to make the dressing for this Chicken & Dill Pasta Salad which was my contribution to the picnic food.
Chicken & Dill Pasta Salad.
Difficulty: Smurfs could make it.
Ingredients
- 500g Dried Pasta
- 2 Free Range Chicken Breasts
- 5 stalks of Spring Onion, stringy bums removed
- 1 Pink Lady Apple
- Generous Handful of Dill
- Juice of 1 Lemon
- Loads of Olive Oil
- 1.5 tbs Sesame Seed Oil
- Salt & Pepper to Taste
Directions
Firstly, smother the chicken breast in oodles of the delicious sesame seed oil. Jesus invented this stuff. Yum.
Oh BTW apologies for the dodginess of my pics, I've only my iPhone :'(
Let the chicken marinate in the fridge for 10mins at least, longer if you have the time.
Next, check your pasta for directions, if you're jiggy with the cheap stuff, more power to you. That stuff takes longer to cook so maybe pop it on first up. Regardless of the hoity-toityness of your pasta make sure you put LOADS of salt in the water, think Dead Sea. Throw in a good splash of olive oil too so that the pasta won't stick together. The very first thing I did was get this oily, salty water heating up.
The planning of the pasta only matters if you want to have this salad warm, which I can vouch for as a delightful way of having it. Should this not matter, then neither does the timing. I used a quality semolina pasta which takes under ten mins to reach al dente so I didn't put mine on until the chicken had already been on for 10 mins.
Which brings us to the chicken! Do you have a steamer? Oh, I hope you do! They make excellent house guests for the time-poor, fuss-adverse & health-concious. Pop the chicken in the steamer for 18mins, trust me on the 18 mins...don't get all avant garde with those precious mins and round it up to 20, this will dry the chicken out. Sad. Face.
This is what I'm talking about when I say steamer BTW:
If you're using one of those hipster bamboo thingis, fantastic, I'm kinda jel. Sadly however, I've nothing to contribute by way of suggestion for timing. You're on your own kiddo. If you've got neither hipster bamboo nor yuppy steamer, you could try poaching the breasts. These guys claim to be able to do so perfectly - best learn from them.
Once the chicken is on, it's time to get slicing. The remaining ingredients are all quite distinct in their flavours. I am very unfond of large chunks when it comes to strong flavours, it's much better to keep it small so that you can get an even blend in each mouthful.
Apple (Avoid the core, or pre-core it if you're all diligent like that. Once sliced, set it aside in a bowl and cover w lemon juice so it doesn't brown):
Shallots (I used 3/4 of each one from the white to the green, basically I stop slicing when the ends get ratty):
Dill (Oh how I love the aniseedy goodness of Dill, what an unsung hero this lil guy is! Pretty fronds like these look too nice for chopping and the flavour is released without it, so I tore the fronds from their stalks instead.):
The water was good and boiling so I threw my pasta on about now, but there's no pic of that because the mathematical equation for concentrating on pouring pasta whilst taking a photo looks something like this:
(1 x iPhone + 1 x Pot of Boiling Water) - absolute value of my concentration = -1 x iPhone
Pa-Ding! That's the noise my steamer makes when he's done with whatever task I set him. So I transferred the chicken onto a cutting board and started shredding (chicken, not Slash solos....oh oh oh OH! Sweet Child 'o Mii-I-iiine). I don't know how the pros do this but I just get two forks and cut sick like so:
Now everything comes together....right now...over me. lol jks....over John Lennon.
If John Lennon were the name of my serving bowl.
Once the pasta is al dente, strain and refresh with cold water. Let drain for a minute or two (no one likes a soggy salad), then pour into your serving bowl. Add in all the other ingredients and toss together, when you transfer the lemon soaked apples, be sure to include the liquid. Then add ooodles and ooodles of olive oil and salt & pepper to taste. I use Himalayan Crystal Salt because of it's health benefits and brilliant flavour. Fresh cracked black pepper is my preference.
There you go. Delicious goodness of yummy yumminess in my little red bowl. Tastes excellent hot or cold.
This is just a lil somethin' somethin' that I created from what I had available at the time. Other ingredients that would be delicious:
Basil (rather than dill), Cherry Tomatoes, Lebanese Cucumber, Parmesan, Fresh thinly sliced Chilli, Mint....take free reign my friend. The WORLD is your oyster....though I don't support the use of oysters in this dish.
J xxxo
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