jerk chicken sandwiches and roasted carrot salad

Shopping at the Wegman's today, as I do every Friday, and wondering what the heck to make for dinner tonight.  I feel like we eat so many of the same meals over and over.  I decided to go with a new salad recipe, and a warm sandwich.   I subscribe to a recipe-a-day email from various websites and this one came a while back.  I held onto it, thinking it sounded interesting... 

Utterly delicious.  So flavorful. When you roast the carrots, they get so sweet and the flavor contrast between the sweet carrots, bitter arugula and blue cheese is fantastic.


At Wegman’s, in the cheese department, they sell a Danish crumbled blue cheese with dried cranberries in it. Perfect for this recipe!

Serves 6, but I didn’t use this much carrots or arugula, kept everything else the same and it was a hearty 3 or 4 servings.   Would be great to take to a picnic, there's nothing that would spoil and its really pretty with the orange carrots and deep green arugula.  I wish I had taken a photo but we ate it all!


Roasted Carrot Salad


• 2 pounds carrots, peeled and thinly sliced on the diagonal

• 1/2 cup slivered almonds

• 2 cloves garlic, minced

• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

• salt and ground black pepper to taste



• 1 teaspoon honey

• 1 tablespoon cider vinegar

• 1/3 cup dried cranberries

• 1 (4 ounce) package crumbled Danish blue cheese  (this seemed like a lot to me, I used maybe 2 or 3 oz and it was perfect and not too overbearing)

• 2 cups arugula



1. Preheat an oven to 400 degrees F.

2. Combine the carrots, almonds, and garlic in a mixing bowl. Drizzle with the olive oil, then season to taste with salt and pepper. Spread out onto an ungreased baking sheet.

3. Bake the carrots in the preheated oven until soft and the edges turn brown, about 30 minutes. Remove and allow to cool to room temperature.

4. Once cool, return the carrots to the mixing bowl, and drizzle with honey and vinegar; toss until coated. Add the cranberries and blue cheese; toss again until evenly mixed. Combine with the arugula and serve immediately.

Jerk Chicken Sandwiches
I cooked 3 chicken breasts in my crockpot on high for 4 hours with 1 can of chicken broth.   Shredded the chicken with a fork, and added this AWESOME jerk sauce (made by Tropical Pepper Company, who also makes my new favorite condiment, which is also great on this sandwich!).   Got some fresh delicious sandwich rolls at the Wegman's bakery and wa-la, dinner was served.    Yummy, yummy, yummy.
 
By the way, I love cooking a few chicken breasts in chicken broth in the crockpot and shredding it up... it shreds so easily and is so moist (as moist as eating dark meat but much more healthy), and you can do so many things with it you can't go wrong.   Use it for chicken salad, add some salsa for shredded chicken tacos, chicken tortilla soup, enchiladas, the list goes on...  Just spray your crockpot with nonstick spray, add a can of chicken broth for every 3 chicken breasts, you can't screw it up and clean up is so easy.