Eat to the Beat - Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds and Marmalade Chicken

Elly Says Opa! is hosting a fantastic blogging event called Eat to the Beat! For this event, Elly wants us to make and blog about a food or drink that relates to a song, an album, a band, or anything else musical. As Elly says, the possibilities for this are endless, and I had a hard time choosing. However, I wanted to select a song that I love rather than just choosing any old song that had a food reference.

The Beatles and Crowded House are my two favourite groups, and I cannot separate them in my affections. Accordingly, I wanted to choose a song by one of those groups as the inspiration for my dish.

As my food appears to be taking on an orange hue of late, it seemed very appropriate to make a dish inspired by Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by The Beatles, of which the opening lines are:

Picture yourself in a boat on a river,

With tangerine trees and marmalade skies ...

Unfortunately, I can't get tangerines, but I certainly have marmalade, which is the feature ingredient of my dish. As a change from my usual sweet bent, I have made Marmalade Chicken. The dish is by Antony Worrall Thompson, and you can find the recipe here.

I used blood orange marmalade in my dish, and the deep orange colour of the orange skins looks great against the paler backdrop of the chicken. The chicken is not overwhelmed by the sweetness of the marmalade, as there is a sufficient mix of other flavours to balance it out. I served the chicken with a warm potato salad that will feature in a future post.

A fitting dessert to accompany the Marmalade Chicken is some candied orange slices. I originally made these to decorate Boris's cake, then changed my mind. However, as it happens, they work perfectly here. These candied orange slices taste great just as they are, but if I was feeling energetic, I would have dipped the lower half of each slice in chocolate, just like the ones you can buy at Koko Black. If you would like to make your own candied orange slices, you can find the recipe that I used here. However, I boiled my orange slices in the syrup for about 10 minutes rather than just 3 to ensure that the skins were soft and permeated by the sugar.

For those who are following my To Market, To Market post, I used half of the chicken and some of the garlic that I purchased at Prahran Market to make this dish.

Thanks to Elly for hosting this event, and you can check out all the great Eat to the Beat! dishes here.