No Matter How Much You Dress It Up....

Tonight confirmed something that has been bothering me for a fair amount of time.  I really just don't like chicken breasts.  I have made perfectly cooked, juicy, and flavorful chicken breasts, but I just don't like the texture anymore.  There are now only a few recipes left that concern chicken breasts, so I'm doing my best to just pound my way through them to get them out of the way.  Thus, for tonight it was the Citrus-Avocado Chicken Breasts on page 247.

I liked this recipe for its complexity, though.  The first step was to zest all of the citrus.  Luckily, I acquired a microplaner a few years ago.

The trick is to get the zest from just the very outermost layer of the fruit.  Do not get any of the white pith that lies just underneath, as it is rather bitter.

With all of the citrus zested I had the required two tablespoons of mixed zest for the marinade.

A number of posts ago, I struggled with sectioning citrus fruit.  Today I was much more successful.  I think the biggest difference maker was to use the paring knife to remove the skin and pith instead of trying to peel the fruit.

See?  It looks much cleaner and the membranes that separate the sections are even more visible.

This makes cutting out the wedges rather easy and neat, especially compared to that first disaster.

From this point all I had to do was to cut the sections into salsa-sized bits.

I cruised through all of the fruit, making sure to reserve some of the juice for the marinade.

I did make a minor substitution, using a New Mexico chile pepper and small jalapeno from my garden instead of the serrano pepper that is listed in the recipe.

I now combined all but the last two ingredients for the salsa.

I skinned and boned the chicken and prepared the marinade, and set both bowls (salsa and marinating chicken) in the fridge for a couple of hours.

An hour before dinner, I pulled the salsa out of the fridge, diced up the avocados, and added them and the currants to the salsa.

I made another executive decision; I grilled up a leftover pita shell.  Otherwise, I would just have chicken breast and salsa, which I didn't find all that appealing.

First, add some salsa.

Then add some chicken.

 Some more salsa covered the chicken as a third layer.

 Finally, some more chicken topped it all off!

Never before have I had a meal that had such a broad and interesting flavor spectrum that I did not enjoy.  This was spicy, tangy, sweet, well-textured, and I still didn't like it.  The herbs played interestingly in the background, the honey perfectly balanced the grapefruit, the pita was a terrific call, and yet, I didn't like it.  The overall effect of the dish was refreshing and is simply an ideal meal on a hot summer day, but again, I just didn't like it.  Blame the chicken breast, I guess.  Perhaps if this was done with chicken thighs I would have enjoyed it.  So, overall I highly recommend this recipe, but I it just wasn't for me.