Grilled Citrus Chicken with Citrus Butternut Squash Mash and Citrus, Celery, and Shaved Fennel Salad! Who likes citrus here?

Keeping with the EASY, TASTY, HEALTHY mantra I now have for cooking dinners, last night I utilized the (precooked) Grilled Lemon-Pepper Chicken Breast from Trader Joe's and went to town on the vegetables.

And I finally got to use my mandoline. It was cool. I made a Citrus, Celery, and Shaved Fennel Salad (recipe at bottom). It was delicious but kind of a pain in the ass, especially compared to the preparation for the rest of my meal. The biggest pain in the butt part was removing the pith and peel and then removing the orange and grapefruit segments from their membranes and keeping the juices from going all over the place. But it was worth it. Sam and I LOVE fennel and I especially love citrus. It was good, the vinaigrette was nice, the texture lovely, but honestly I think an even simpler fennel salad with some lemon juice would have been even more to my liking.

I need to remember to buy fennel more often. I love having a salad but I kind of hate most lettuce!! Well I don't hate lettuce it's just usually my least favorite part of a salad. But fennel - wow - you get the crunch of lettuce with this lovely light anise/licorice flavor. Yum. Actually, one of my favorite preperations of fennel (when not in a salad) is in a fritto misto. I will eat fried food (something I do not generally do very often) just to taste fennel this way. One of our favorite restaurants does it very very well - Marzano in Oakland.

But once again, I digress...

I used leftover orange and grapefruit juice and poured the juice over the chicken breast and then put it in the microwave to heat it up with some moisture and flavor. When it came out, I poured some more juice over the breast, almost like a sauce. It was soo damn good. But I share the credit with Trade Joe's. The addition of the juice was good, but the basic seasoning was already there in the package. I will definitely buy this again.

Then I took another Trade Joe's special - pre-peeled and cut butternut squash - zapped it in the microwave for about 8 minutes, poured some juice on the squash, added salt and pepper, and then mashed it with a masher and voila! DELICIOUS butternut squash mash flavored with NO FAT!! It was so sweet and delicious. We were both surprised at how yummy it was without any addition of butter. And so frickin easy!!!

Here is the Citrus, Celery, and Shaved Fennel Salad recipe from Gourmet magazine:

• 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon whole-grain or coarse-grain mustard
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 3 navel oranges
• 2 grapefruit (preferably pink)
• 2 medium fennel bulbs (sometimes called anise; about 1 3/4 lb), stalks cut off and discarded
• 3 celery ribs, cut diagonally into 1/8-inch-thick slices

• Special equipment: a Japanese Benriner* or other adjustable-blade slicer

preparatio

Whisk together vinegar, mustard, salt, and pepper in a large bowl. Add oil in a slow stream, whisking, until combined.

Cut peel, including all white pith, from oranges and grapefruit with a paring knife. Working over a bowl, cut segments free from membranes. Squeeze juice from membranes into a small bowl, then whisk 3 tablespoons juice into vinaigrette. Drain citrus segments, then add to vinaigrette.

Quarter fennel bulbs lengthwise, then cut lengthwise into paper-thin slices (about 1/16 inch thick) with slicer. Add to fruit along with celery and toss gently to combine