Moroccan Spiced Chicken Salad

So I became a member of Pinterest some time ago but I did not really post anything or look at other things people had posted. Well.....all that changed last weekend. I was bored and ended up on Pinterest and it snowballed from there! Bless my heart is all I can say!! But I ended up on one particular website, Bev Cooks and and thoroughly enjoying reading her blog. But this one looked easy and tasty. My step-mom came in to town this past week and when I showed her all the recipes that looked good and she honed in on this one. So I got all the stuff to make it but it just never fit intou our plans. So I decided to make it today for lunch for just me. And it worked out pretty well if I do say so myself.

Recipe:
1T each cumin, cinnamon, coriander, and tumeric
1 sweet potato, diced or julienned
3 medium carrots, diced or julienned
2 chicken breasts
1/4c chopped fresh parsley
3T fresh orange juice
1t fresh orange zest
1/2t cardamom
1/2c olive oil
salt and pepper
salad greens

*the dressing here didnt have enough bite for my taste so I added about 1-2T of apple cider vinegar to my dressing and it gave me the bite of a vinaigrette dressing I was looking for.

*adding in dried cranberries or golden raisins gives the salad a nice sweet chewiness.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Mix together your cumin, cinnamon, coriander, and tumeric in a small bowl. Place your sweet potato and carrots on a baking sheet and drizzle some olive oil to lightly coat. Sprinkle some salt and pepper and half of your spice mixture over the veggies. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until chicken is cooked through and veggies are soft. I butterflied out my chicken breast so it would cook quicker. I also julienned my veggies because I thought they looked better that way.



While all of that is cooking go ahead and make your dressing. Whisk together your parsley, orange juice, orange zest, cardamom, salt and pepper. Slowly drizzle in your olive oil to keep it emulsified. If you like a tart vinaigrette feel free to add the vinegar at this stage.

Place your salad greens on your plate. top with roasted veggies and roasted chicken. And drizzle over your dressing. If you want the cranberries add them under the dressing.

This was a very light and easy meal. With it being so hot you just dont want to put a lot of heavy foods in your stomach. And at night I just do not feel like cooking so it made for a very nice easy lunch. I will do a few things differently next time. I had the idea of maybe using sweet potato fries that you can buy in the freezer section. I think they would add a nice crunch to the salad that I was missing. And it could be that I used butter lettuce instead of a crunchier lettuce. And while the spices were ok in the salad they were not as strong as I was hoping for. It is a good starter salad. Or something different but it didnt feel like Morocco to me. So keep that in mind when making this and you will have a very easy and refreshing salad for these hot summer days!!