Over the past week or so I have been making dinnertime meals that have ended up with fruit of some sort which is not usually my style; watermelon and fetta, fig and proscuitto, date with middle eastern spices. They will all end up in this blog once I feel happy with the results.
This recipe is from my new favourite TV cook, Rachel Khoo. I think she is fantastic! And I love her approach to food. This dish is straight from her Little London Notebook and is a dish inspired by her partial asian heritage. To be honest you could actually use your own tried and tested honey soy chicken marinade if you have a particular favourite recipe.
The use of pineapple in the salad is so refreshing and tart and sweet, covering all the senses when combined with the chicken to create a thoroughly moorish dish that is also super healthy!
We have this meal as a mid week healthy dinner, the cuts of chicken are up to you, but make sure they have a bone in and skin on to keep the meat moist and skin crispy. You could make a bundle of drumsticks and serve with the salad as part of a BBQ or buffet meal if it suited but I’m not sure that using any other meat would work with the pineapple, pork perhaps.
So I am teaching myself to take better photographs with more interesting composition and while I am learning a lot I’m not sure the evidence is there just yet but its a working progress and I feel it a good justification to buy some nice home wares to make the food ‘pop’ 🙂
- 1 whole chicken cut into 8 pieces or 8 cuts of chicken with bone in and skin on
- 1 large cucumber or 2 smaller lebanese cucumber, diced, seeds removed if too watery
- ½ sweet fresh pineapple, diced, Rachel Khoo likes to keep the core in for crunch and so do I
- ½ small red spanish onion thinly sliced
- ¼ cup light soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon fish sauce
- 1 small chilli finely diced (I remove seeds ), optional
- 3-4cm piece of ginger, grated
- 1 large garlic clove, crushed
- 1-2 tablespoons honey, to taste, I like it a bit sweeter
- handful of fresh coriander, chopped
- juice of a lime
- sesame seeds to garnish
- Pre heat oven to 180 degrees celcius
- In a large ovenproof dish, mix soy sauce, fish sauce, honey, ginger, garlic, chilli
- Add chicken pieces to marinade and coat, even putting some under the skin
- Place chicken in oven and roast for 35-40 minutes, basting every 10 minutes. I crank up the heat to 200 degrees for the final 10 minutes to ensure a nice dark and crispy skin
- In a large serving dish, combine pineapple, cucumber, onion, coriander, pinch of salt and the lime juice and toss.
- Once the chicken is cooked, arrange on top of the salad, garnish with sesame seed and a few sprigs of coriander.
- Dig in!
Thank you very much for posting this recipe! I’ve been looking for this since I saw Racheals show about a couple of weeks ago.
Looks just like Rachel Khoo’s, Bravo!