Grilled chicken with Greek salad

As promised... one of my favorite standbys, for any occasion. It's actually one of my favorite things to prepare in advance and take to work for a delicious lunch: grilled chicken with greek salad. Again.. I know we're not crossing any culinary equators with this one, but it's fast, it's fresh and it's really delicious, so I thought I'd share. Plus, we have all those lemons in the fridge, you know.

And, as a shout out to my cooking pal Shan, I'm going to try to include full recipes from here on out.

What you need for...

The Chicken:

2-3 chicken breasts or 5-6 tenderloins

1/4 C olive oil

lemon juice, from two lemons

1-2 t oregano

dash of cayenne (if you like a bit of kick!)

salt & pepper

The Salad Dressing:

1/4 C olive oil

1/4 C red wine vinaigrette

1/2 t dijon mustard

1/2 t oregano

salt & pepper

dash of sugar or splenda (optional)

The Salad:

a few leaves of romaine lettuce

half a cucumber (I prefer the long, skinny english kind)

tomatoes (grape or pear tomatoes are particularly delish with this-- sweet and tangy!)

kalamata olives

feta cheese

roasted bell pepper

To Do:

Basically you want to start with your chicken; if using full breasts, slice them in half lengthwise so you end up with two thinner filets. If you have tenderloins, you are good to go. Toss them all in a bowl or large ziploc bag. In another bowl (or liquid measuring cup) put the lemon juice, olive oil, and spices and whisk them like mad. You don't need to get full emulsification, but thickening it a bit does help it stick to your chicken. Pour it over your eagerly awaiting chicken, roll up the ziploc tightly or wrap your bowl, stick it in the fridge, and fuh-gedd-aboudit. For any where from 30 minutes to a few hours, anyway.

When you are ready to serve, warm up the grill and get ready to toss that salad. This is where I typically will put my husband on grill duty while I toss everything together, but you can multi-task. Just watch the chicken like a hawk: when it's sliced thin like this, it grills quickly and goes from a delectable, moist little morsel (thank you, lemon juice!) to a hard little bark bite in just a few minutes. I mean, literally, a few minutes per side. So if you don't have back up, get your salad all good and pretty and toss the chicken on when you can give it your full, undivided, and loving attention. Isn't that nice?

I like to pull together the dressing first-- emulsification is more important here, because you don't want the oil separating and making your salad all oily on the bottom and herby and wet on top. To help this along, the mustard is a miracle worker. Also, if you like a more smooth dressing, you can add up to 1/4 t of sugar (I use splenda) to just take the tang down a notch. Toss all the ingredients into a bowl, and once again, whisk like mad. Some folks prefer to drizzle the olive oil in while whisking, but frankly I'm not sure I'm that coordinated, so I like to just put them all in a liquid measuring cup and hover over the sink so I can splash away. Hey, it works.

Chop your lettuce up, and toss it with the dressing. I think doing it this way gets nice coverage of the lettuce and then you can layer all your ingredients on top-- feta, roasted pepper, cukes, tomatoes, olives, you name it.

Now... a few words on your salad ingredients. There are some things that are just really, really worth getting right, and I feel most strongly about that with things that you eat so close to their natural state. When it comes to feta and olives, I simply don't mess around. For about the same price, you can go to a nice middle east market or greek market and get drastically upgraded feta and olives. At Melita's on Lincoln, you can get feta from France, Bulgaria, or Greece, and it is NOT the dried out, salty and texturaly weird stuff you buy at the your regular grocery store. This stuff is soft, smooth, brined, and out of this world. It will make or break your salad. So next time you're cruising around town, and you see a greek or middle east market (try Colorado Boulevard, near Iliff) pop in and buy a half pound of the feta-- it will literally cost you just a few bucks, and it will rock your world!

So... there you have it. We've used up two lemons from the limoncello experiment, and created a quick and delightful meal that you can take to work tomorrow and be proud to stick in the fridge. Just be careful that somebody doesn't snag it!

And if you're not eating at work, who am I to suggest that maybe a nice little shot of Ouzo might wash it all down rather nicely? Or, perhaps a nice sparkling vhino verde from Portugal? Then again, you could always do a nice light Prosecco....