Clodagh McKenna's grilled chilli and lime chicken salad with tahini dressing

The perfect summer salad

With weather this beautiful we all want to cook outside – the streets in London are perfumed with the smells of BBQs this week.

Grilling this delicious lime and chilli chicken on the BBQ will have a great charred texture and flavour especially if you are using charcoal. In my recipe below I use an oven in case you don’t have a garden or BBQ. It’s the perfect supper to cook up while catching up on Wimbledon this week.

The textures in this salad are so delicious – creamy avocado, with fresh peppery watercress, earthy chickpeas, juicy chicken, crunchy radishes and pistachios finished with refreshing slithers of cucumbers. The Lebanese style dressing is creamy and nutty in flavour from the tahini, freshened with the yoghurt, mint and lemon, and all brought to life with the peppery flavours of the fresh watercress.

If you’re not a fan of tahini you can just leave it out and replace it with extra virgin olive oil. You can make the dressing and marinate the chicken a day ahead - so when you get home after work pop open a bottle of chilled lightly oaked chardonnay while you finish off this delicious supper. Finish up with a refreshing lemon sorbet – they are so simple to make, it’s just a matter of squeezing, stirring, and freezing.

Grilled chilli and lime chicken salad with tahini and watercress dressing

Clodagh McKenna

Serves: 2

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

For the lime and chilli chicken marinade

  • 2 chicken breast fillets, trimmed
  • 1 tbsp olive oil 
  • sea salt and cracked black pepper 
  • juice and zest of 1 lime
  • 2 small red chilies finely chopped or 1 tablespoon of chilli flakes

For the rest of the salad

  • 60g watercress
  • 1 avocado, sliced 
  • 400g can chickpeas, drained and rinsed 
  • 4 radishes, thinly sliced 
  • ½ cucumbers, thinly sliced lengthways
  • 35g toasted pistachios, chopped 

For the tahini and watercress dressing

  • 50g Greek yoghurt 
  • 40ml water 
  • 30g watercress
  • 1 tbsp mint, chopped
  • 1 tbsp tahini 
  • juice of ½ lemon

Method

1. Start by marinating the chicken. Place the chilli, zest and juice of lime, and olive oil in a bowl – season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and whisk together. Put the chicken in bowl and pour the marinate over the chicken and rub the marinade into the breasts.

2. To make the tahini and watercress dressing, place the yoghurt, water, watercress, mint, tahini and lemon juice in a food processor and blend until smooth.

3. Preheat a char-grill pan over high heat and cook the marinated chicken for 4–5 minutes on each side or until cooked through. Remove from the heat and thinly slice.

4. Place the watercress, avocado, chickpeas, radish, cucumber and chicken in a large bowl and toss to combine. Divide the salad between two plates and top with the pistachio and drizzle with the dressing.

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