Looking to mix up your chicken options? This recipe is a great mix of different textures, flavours and colours - and perfect for a summer BBQ or light lunch. Yes, it’s kale, but you could just as easily use a fresh spinach or lettuce base (skip the roasting!).
Use this recipe as a base and adapt to your own tastes - I adapted it myself from one featured in The Women’s Weekly’s ‘Almost Vegetarian’ book. Speaking of vegetarian, instead of chicken, you could easily substitute in some grilled tofu or haloumi, or roasted chickpeas for a meat-free meal.
You could also substitute some feta for the dressing if preferred.
It’s low-carb meal, but you could add in some cooked quinoa, brown rice or roast sweet potato to boost the carbohydrate content.
Serves 3-4
Preparation time – 5-10 minutes
Cooking time – 30 minutes
Ingredients:
1 bunch green curly kale
3tbsp extra virgin olive oil
500g Dutch baby carrots, trimmed and peeled
500g chicken breast fillets
½ small red onion, quartered
2tbsp sunflower seeds
Parsley to garnish
Lemon dressing:
4tbsp mayonnaise
2tbsp lemon juice
2tsp dijon mustard
Method:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees C and line 3 baking trays with paper.
Cut kale leaves from stems, discarding stems. Spread kale over 2 trays and drizzle with 1 tbsp oil, and make space to place sunflower seeds at one end to roast with the kale.
Place carrots on the other baking tray and drizzle with 1 tbsp olive oil. Place carrots in the oven to roast for 30 minutes or until tender.
Add kale to the oven for the last 5-10 minutes of cooking time for the carrots, taking care to avoid leaves and sunflower seeds from burning.
In the meantime, cut chicken fillets in half horizontally and cook the four thin fillets on a pre-heated and lightly oiled grill plate or fry-pan until browned and cooked through. Slice thickly.
Make the lemon dressing while the roast vegetables and chicken are cooking by combining the mayonnaise, lemon juice and Dijon mustard.
To serve, place roasted kale and carrot on plates with quartered onion broken into pieces (you can roast the onion with the carrots, or include raw depending on preference). Top with sliced chicken, sprinkle with sunflower seeds and parsley, and drizzle over dressing (or serve dressing in a small pot).
