Orange Marinated Chicken Breasts
and Roasted Yellow Beet Salad

Serves 4

Both components of this dish use oranges and mint. This may seem to be too redundant, but their flavors come through in a very different way in each component and play off each other comfortably in the final dish. The addition of feta cheese and purple onions to the beets makes a feta-ching combination. We made this dish in the dead of winter in San Francisco on a stormy, rainy day in early February. The bright flavors and colors made us feel like spring was coming. . .

Chicken Breasts:

1/3 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled and the sprout removed
Zest and juice of 1 large Valencia orange
Handful of fresh mint leaves
Sea salt and white pepper, to taste

• Bone and remove skin from 2 whole chicken breasts. Cut each in half to make 4 pieces. Slather the processed mint mixture over the prepared chicken breasts on both sides and refrigerate covered with plastic wrap for 8 hours or longer if time permits. (Starting the marinating Saturday afternoon would be best.)

Beet Salad:

The Salad:

2-3 large yellow beets
3 blood oranges
8 small purple onions (the size of small white boiling onions)
Feta cheese

The Dressing:

1 Valencia orange (for zest and juice)
Olive oil
White wine vinegar

• Put the whole yellow beets in a shallow, ceramic roasting pan and add just enough water to cover the bottom of the pan. Cover with aluminum foil and bake at 350 deg. for about 45 minutes, or longer depending on the size of the beet. (The beets are ready when they are slightly soft, but still firm.) Remove from the oven; remove foil and let the beets cool. When cool, peel and cut into 1/2" cubes (or whatever small shape suits your fancy).
  
• Peel the blood oranges. First cut them crosswise into 1/4" thick slices, then cut each slice into 6 wedges.

• Peel the purple onions and cut them into thin half-moon slices.

Assembling Sunday Supper:

• Put the beets, onions and oranges in a large salad bowl and crumble the feta cheese over the mixture. Zest the orange over it. Mix together lightly.

• Make the dressing using the juice of the orange, olive oil and white wine vinegar. Salt and pepper to taste and mix with the salad. Garnish the salad with sprigs of frisee lettuce (or escarole) and a few fresh mint leaves, julienned.

• Grill the chicken breasts on mesquite or in your broiler. After cooking, let them rest for a few minutes to allow the juices to retract. Then slice them on the diagonal.

• Put a serving of beet salad with lettuce and mint garnish into your bouillabaisse bowl. Arrange chicken slices on the side.

• Cut a few wedges of warm focaccia and arrange around the bowl.

Notes:

Small purple onions: If these are not available, use 1 medium-sized purple onion. Don't substitute small white onions for purple ones. The dish needs purple to give it a spectrum of color to compliment the yellow of the beets and the red of the blood oranges.

Beets: Roasting beets instead of boiling them brings out their hidden sweetness. Boiling often brings out an undesirable earthy flavor that makes many people shy away from eating beets. A roasted beet has a delicate, sweet flavor that will fool even the most die-hard beet-hater.

Half-moon slices: To make half-moon slices:

• Hold the onion with the root end on your cutting surface.
• Place the point of the knife at the center of the top. Slice down from top to bottom.
• Rotate the onion to make the next slice and continue in this way, using the top center of the onion as your pivot point. You should get about 10 - 12 thin slices from a small purple onion.
• If your onions are a little old and have a green core, slice around it and discard the core.

If you're using a regular medium-sized purple onion, you should first cut the onion in half (crosswise) and then proceed to cut each half into half-moon slices. You should get about 20-25 thin half-moon slices from each half of a medium-sized onion.