Mediterranean Barley Salad with Chicken

Adapted from www.retnem.dk

Serves 2-3

Preparation and Cooking Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:
- 2 chicken breasts
- ½ TBS cooking oil
- Salt and pepper

Salad of pearl barley:
- 175g pearl barley
- 400ml water
- 250g broccoli chopped into small florets
- 25 g pine nuts
- ½ clove of garlic squeezed
- ½ TBS olive oil
- 1 TBS lemon juice
- ½ onion finely chopped
- 2 TBS raisins
- 2 TBS dried apricots
- 2 TBS or 10g sundried tomatoes chopped
- a few fresh mint leaves chopped

Directions:
1. Rinse barley well under cold water and boil in lightly salted water for 20 minutes until cooked and depending on how much crunch you want in them.

2. When the barleys are cooked, pour off excess water.

3. Blanch broccoli with boiling water for 2 minutes and drain them into bowl.

4. Heat pan, season chicken breasts with salt and pepper and fry for 1 minute until brown on each side.

5. Reduce to medium heat (no. 4 on my stove) and fry until cooked for 3 minutes on each side.

6. Toast the pine nuts golden in a dry pan.

7. To make the barley salad, in a mixing bowl, add barley, crushed garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, chopped onions, raisins, apricots and sun-dried tomatoes and mix well. Add broccoli florets, pine nuts and chopped mint, salt and pepper to taste and mix well.

8. Cut chicken breast into slices and serve with the barley salad.

Additional Information:
My best friend, J, was just talking about how she is feeling resentful having to cook for the family everyday. I thought I was the only one who suffers from cooking fatigue. It was not the cooking actually for both of us, we analyzed, but having to plan the menu for each dinner. We decided to both try out the home ingredient delivery www.retnem.dk, which was recommended by my friend Merete Knudsen.

Today was the first delivery, and I was very excited. It was very fun to try out the ingredients and the recipe that comes with it. Florian gave a 4-5 out of 5, but Joshua wasn't so fond of it, and he gave a 2 out of 5. I gave a 4-5 points too.

This is the first time I made barley this way, and it is a very healthy and tasty recipe to make barley. I adapted the recipe a little to suit us. I did not use the stock they provided and it turned out very tasty too, without it.