Watercress Grilled Chicken Salad with Valentine Pummelo Vinaigrette
Starting off March with a simple and seasonal recipe with this peppery watercress and leftover grilled chicken salad with valentine pummelo vinaigrette.
Watercress Grilled Chicken Salad with Valentine Pummelo Vinaigrette
I’m in love. With a fruit.
Valentine Pummelo’s are easily the best discover thus far in 2019. A hybrid of blood oranges and mandarins, until last week I wasn’t even aware that these large and in charge heart shaped beauties existed. Needless to say, I am obsessed. With low acidity, extremely sweet juice with a smidge of a tart aftertaste, they’re a wonderful addition to recipes as well as being a great substitution for grapefruit. If you can find them. Fun fact: Valentine Pummelo’s are typically harvested around Valentine’s Day. 😍
Before I started my TBI treatments, one of my favorite vinaigrettes for simple winter salads used grapefruit juice. Unfortunately my treatments came with one major restriction: no more grapefruit juice because it interfered with the ingredients in my treatments. Que crying face. It’s a sad state of affairs when things meant to be good for you or treat something serious don’t play nice with each other. That’s meant I have been forced to find suitable alternatives for grapefruits in everything from salad dressings to cocktails. Until finding valentine pummelo’s, the quest for a suitable replacement has always come up short.
Which brings me to this salad. A simple bed of peppery watercress, juicy slices of valentine pummelo, leftover grilled chicken topped off with a drizzle of a yummy vinaigrette. Yes, this salad is simple but it’s that way by design. You can always add arugula or another leafy green to the base, but try not to disguise the pepper flavor of the watercress with too many other flavors. The pepperiness and the valentine pummelo’s are a perfect pair.
I am a ginormous fan of infusing citrus into simple green salads for some eye candy and boosted flavor. The beautiful and bright slices of the valentine pummelo grabs your attention right from the start — is it a grapefruit? A blood orange? Some weird experiment gone wrong?