orange – The Kitchen Illiterate

Spicy Citrus Shrimp and Spinach

I don’t use a lot of citrus in the kitchen, though I have been eating clementines nearly every day this winter. I don’t actually use a lot of fruit in my cooking at all. Fruit is sweet and therefore my savory-loving self has a hard time intuitively understanding how it fits into dinner. But when I saw this recipe for Grilled Shrimp with Citrus-Sambal-Oelek dressing in April’s Food & Wine, I was intrigued. The idea of something bright and spicy is very appealing this time of year, when summer taunts at every turn. What I ended up with was slightly different from the original recipe, based on what I had in the kitchen, but holy moly, it was so good I think I’m going to try introducing citrus to my pots and pans more often.
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Spinach and Clementine Salad

So far, February has been a little hectic. I’ve been traveling a lot for work (who knew being a librarian would involve so many hotel rooms?), and luckily I’ve been able to combine that work travel with visits to friends and family. I got to spend a week in the Bay Area, and even got to go to Santa Cruz for a quick day trip, a place which still has the ability to make me blissfully happy, even though they are doing massive construction on my old dorm. Oh nostalgia, you are a powerful beast.

Of course, all this traveling has involved a lot of restaurant meals, and I don’t complain about that. But I do miss my kitchen when I’m away, and frankly, when I return I’m not usually in the mood to be wildly experimental with my food. No, I’m a homebody at heart, and being away makes me long for familiar dinners, like my very favorite chicken enchiladas. But the days of heavy restaurant food also make me crave light, fresh salads, and this winter-friendly spinach and citrus salad absolutely does not disappoint.
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Chicken with Green Olives, Orange, and Sherry

At the beginning of every month, I go through my back issues of Bon Appetit for that month and mark recipes that look interesting. I take note of things I want to try, and am always amused to find that something that looked great to me a few years ago no longer seems intriguing, and something I had no interest in the first time through the magazine suddenly stands out. This is one of those recipes: The January 2005 issue featured this Chicken with Green Olives, Orange, and Sherry in the FastEasyFresh column, and I breezed right by it four years ago and never gave it a second thought. And I didn’t know what I was missing.
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