Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Chinese Chicken Salad

I made a Chinese Chicken Salad for Boat Club last week, and meant to post this a few days ago, but Real Life has a way of rearing its head sometimes and tripping me up.

And Tapas Night was just the other day as well.

I swear the older I get the faster time flies and sometimes I have trouble catching it, well, most of the time I have trouble catching it.

At any rate, I did make a yummy salad, and I want to share how I did it with you.

To start with, I used Ina Garten's little trick for cooking the chicken.  Although, if you have a rotisserie chicken, use that, but I didn't and I wanted to make this with chicken breasts so I did this.  Ina showed how to bake chicken for dishes such as this, by baking them in the oven.  I used to poach breasts, but you know they got kinda 'dry' and really, the flavour wasn't all that great either.  Boneless, skinless breasts are actually moist and tasty now.

Place your chicken breasts (you can use other parts of the chicken if you want) on a greased rimmed baking pan.
Brush the chicken breasts with olive oil, or just do what I do, drizzle on a little olive oil, season accordingly, and place in the oven for about 20 minutes or so, until the internal temperature reaches 160 deg.


Take them out of the oven, let cool and cut them up however you want.

Simple, and good.   Since Ina shared that little secret, I no longer make 'dry as dust' and tasteless boneless skinless chicken breasts.     I make up a bunch like this when they are on sale, and always try to have some cooked chicken in the freezer, comes in so handy, in so many recipes.

Ideally you should use a Napa Cabbage in this salad, but the ones in the store the other day looked too tired to use.  So I grabbed a Savoy cabbage and just cored it and sliced it very thinly.   Savoy cabbage is somewhere in between Napa and regular green cabbage in flavour.
Added some sliced Water Chestnuts for crunch as well as a bunch of green onions, sliced up and then to top it off, I added a can of Bamboo Shoots, totally optional, but good.  I've also added fresh bean sprouts to this when I've made it in the past.    Crumbled up a package of Ramen Noodles, (uncooked), and then dressed it with an awesome dressing.  Recipe just below. 
And I almost forgot, I chopped up some almonds at the last minute and threw it in there.  As well as the chicken, I figured I should mention adding the chicken at least once.



I made a nice dressing using some of the Ken's Asian Sesame dressing as well as some of this Cape Cod Toasted Sesame dressing,  I tried to replicate the Soy Vay Chinese Chicken Salad dressing I used to buy.
  I added lots of toasted Sesame Seeds as well as some Sesame Seed oil, and then also added just a teaspoon of sugar, it needed it.  And it was very good.

1/4 cup Ken's Asian Sesame with Ginger and Soy
1/4 cup Cape Cod Toasted Sesame dressing
1 teaspoon of toasted Sesame Seeds
1 teaspoon of Sesame Seed Oil
1 teaspoon sugar
mix together and pour over the salad and let sit for about a half hour so that the flavours can get to know each other, they get along much better that way.
Toss together and enjoy.

And by the way, there was a little left at the end of the night, so I took it home, and heated it for breakfast the next day.  It actually tasted pretty darn good.  hmmmm, I think I have an idea...

Sidsel Munkholm - Author
Sidsel Munkholm - Author

Sid loves to cook, feed people and have fun in the kitchen. She shares her successes and the involuntary offerings she sometimes gives the kitchen goddess as well. And she's still looking for the mythical fairy to help her clean the kitchen after a marathon cooking session. Currently working on a cookbook showcasing the recipes from her Danish heritage.

2 comments:

  1. I love chinese chicken salad food. Thanks so much for sharing!
    Reference: chinese food near me

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks,it's been a long time since I've made this salad, about time to take it out for a spin again.

      Delete

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