Roast Chicken with Lentil & Avocado Salad

This Lentil & Avocado Salad recipe is packed with protein, energy, and fibre to help you finish off your day! You can enhance the garlic flavor of this recipe with Garlic Olive Oil.

Roast Chicken

Ingredients

• 2kg free range chook
• 24 cloves of garlic
• 1 lemon
• Sea salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 125ml Verjuice
• 50ml Extra Virgin Olive oil
• 125ml water
• 3 sprigs rosemary

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 230c. Remove the chook form the fridge approximately 1 hour prior to roasting to bring it to room temperature. Please a small pot of water over a high heat and bring to the boil, blanch the unpeeled garlic for 5 minutes and drain, set aside.

Squeeze the lemon juice into the cavity of the chook and season with salt and pepper. In a mixing bowl mix together 50ml verjuice, the olive oil, sea salt and pepper to taste and brush over the chicken skin.

Sit chook breast side up on a trivet in a shallow baking dish and place into the pre heated oven on middle shelf and cook for 20 minutes.

Reduce the oven temperature to 180c. Combine the remaining Verjuice and water in a jug, then carefully turn the chook over so the breasts are facing down and pour over half the Verjuice mix. Add the garlic cloves and rosemary to base of baking dish, return to the oven to cook for a further 30 minutes.

Reduce the oven to 120c and add the remaining Verjuice water mix, cook for a further 20 minutes. Turn over the chicken so breasts are up and cook for a final 10 minutes. Remove from the oven, cover with foil and rest for 25 minutes.

Refrigerate the cooking juices to separate fat. Remove fat and warm cooking juices to serve over the chook alongside the Lentil & Avocado Salad and a spoonful of creamy mayonnaise.

Lentil & Avocado Salad

Ingredients

• 100g raw brown Australian lentils
• 100g raw quinoa
• 250g brown onions
• ½ cup cornflour
• 1/2 cup plain flour
• 3 ripe avocados, medium diced (drizzle with Verjuice if cutting ahead of time)
• 1 ½ cups flat leaf parsley, picked leaves
• 50g pumpkin seeds
• ½ cup mint, plucked leaves
• 120g Persian fetta
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil to serve
• Sea Salt and freshly ground black pepper to season

Verjuice Vinaigrette

• 4 tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 4 tablespoons Verjuice

Instructions

Place the lentils into a pot and cover with double volume of water, place over a high heat bring to the boil. Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer, cook for 20 minutes or until just cooked through, remove from the heat, strain, add a little salt flakes and Extra Virgin Olive Oil, and set aside to cool.

Place the quinoa into a pot and cover with 4 litres of cold water, place over a high heat bring to the boil and then reduce the heat to a gentle simmer, cook to instruction or until just cooked through, remove from the heat, strain and set aside to cool. Drizzle with a little Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Preheat a deep fryer to 170C. To make the crispy onions, cut the onion in half-length ways then slice approx. 3 to 4mm thick and set aside.

Place the cornflour and plain flour into a mixing bowl and mix together well.

Place the onion slices into the flour mixture and toss around to coat all sides, dust off excess flour, place into the deep fryer and cook until light brown then remove and place onto kitchen towel to drain. This may need to be done in a number of batches. Once they have cooled to room temp, place back into the deep fryer to crisp up and cook for 2 minutes, or until medium dark brown. Remove from the oil and place onto kitchen towel to drain and cool.

To pull the salad together place the lentils, quinoa, avocado, parsley, pumpkin seeds, mint and crispy onions into a mixing bowl, season with sea salt & freshly ground black pepper to taste and toss together well.

To make the vinaigrette, combine the Extra Virgin Olive Oil & Verjuice in mixing bowl and whisk together.

Dress the salad just before serving and mix together well. Top with Persian fetta and drizzle with Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Photo and recipe from:MaggieBeerFoundation.com under theCreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.