Dec 02: Chicken Wing Salad

Chicken drumettes were on sale which got me thinking of fried wings or buffalo wings.
However, after feasting for Thanksgiving I was thinking of a "healthy" way to have the chicken.

Part of the fun with cooking is to try new recipes and making up stuff on the fly.

My inspiration is a spinach salad where I replaced the bacon with the chicken wings.

The drumettes (about 1 lb) were marinade with two cloves of crushed garlic, 3 T of soy sauce and 1 minced green onion.

The drumettes were fried at 370 F for 10 minutes. I probably could have cooked for about 7 to 8 minutes, but 10 minutes was a nice round number.

My idea as to fry the chicken, coat with a flavorful liquid and add the spinach so the ambient heat wilts the spinach.

The flavorful liquid...
2T Ponzu Sauce (since I didn't have lemon)
1 T Red Wine Vinegar
1T Olive oil
1 Garlic, crushed
1 Green Onion, minced
1/4 C Red Onion, thinly sliced

1. Toss the just fried chicken in the dressing. You can see the wisp of steam.


2. Add the salad greens and mix. Give it a minute to wilt the veggies. :-)


3. Plate and eat


The salad greens absorbed the ponzu dressing and the wings picked the extra flavor.
A flavorful way to eat deep fried food with less guilt... lol!

Dec 06: Simple Macaroni Salad

Today, craving macaroni salad.
Everyone and every family has their take on what they like to add to a macaroni salad. Dill pickles or sweet pickle relish? Heavy mayo or light mayo? Dill or not? etc...

Here's a simple mac salad

Macaroni Salad
8 ounces (dry) Salad Macaroni
2 T Chopped Olives
1 Hard Egg, Chopped
3 T Celery, Chopped
2 T Onion, Sweet preferred [I used a red onion]
1 1/2 T Relish, sweet pickle
2 T Mayo
1/4 t Mustard
Salt and Pepper to taste

1) Cook and drain (well) the macaroni in salted water.
Why salt the water?
I've heard two reason why pasta water is salted. 1. to raise the boiling temperature of the water. 2. To season the pasta since the pasta will absorb water while cooking.
I believe the latter reason than the former. Salt does raise the boiling temperature, but the amount of salt added only increase the boiling point a fraction of a degree. That's not going to help the past cook faster. The "seasoning" the pasta reason makes more sense.

2) Mix the dressing and add the pasta.


2a) I wanted to add more celery and a little mustard for flavor, 1/4 t or less.


The finished macaroni salad...


Also, for today... I posted an update to my vinegar experiment.
http://eat4fun.blogspot.com/2008/11/nov-09-experiment-making-vinegar.html

Sep 09: Ramen Cabbage Salad

During my college years, ramen was an inexpensive staple, but my repertoire was very limited to just cooking in water and adding a veg or meat. Ramen was a soup dish.

However, after college and pretending to be an adult, I went a potluck where a Japanese couple brought a cabbage slaw with ramen noodles. Interesting... I've never seen that before. The salad was delicious.

Here's my attempt at a Cabbage Salad with Ramen.

Since I was experimenting around, I kept the portions small. Just in case it didn't work out. Also, I kept the dish vegetarian by using fried tofu.

The Fixins'
-The Base
1 C Cabbage, thinly sliced
1/2 C Nappa Cabbage, thinly sliced
1/2 Package of Ramen, crushed

-The Topping
1/2 C fried Tofu (marinaded in soy sauce, toasted sesame oil and garlic powder)
2 T Waterchestnut, julienned
2 T Carrot, julienned
Lime Juice
Toasted sesame seed oil

Mix. I purposely kept the tofu topping lightly seasoned since I was adding a reduction on top.

-Soy Ginger Garlic Reduction
4T Soy sauce
2T Green onions, minced
1t Ginger, minced
1 clove Garlic, minced
Lime Juice (1 lime about 2T)

Lightly saute the garlic, green onion, ginger.
Add the lime juice and the soy sauce... mix and gently reduce the mixture.

-Dressing
Lime juice and Red wine vinegar... enough for 2T
1T Chive oil
1T Vegetable oil
1/4t Toasted Seasame Seed oil
couple pinches of sugar.

The Dressing - I like my dressing to be tart so I just used a couple pinches of sugar cut back on the tartness of the red wine vinegar.


The Dressing Mixed


The Salad
The Cabbage forms the base.
Uncooked ramen act as the croutons.
Tofu Salad topped with the soy sauce reduction.
Salad dressing drizzled around the salad.


The salad reminded me of a Chinese style chicken salad with a tart dressing. I think I smashed the ramen too much. :-)

The reduction is very intense. Has a strong garlic and green onion flavor. The soy is very present and pleasant. The lime juice adds the acidity that cuts through the strong flavors.

Mix everything together before eating makes for just the right amount of salt from the reduction.

Overall, not bad, but needs some more work. Next time I may add just a touch more sesame seed oil.

Using uncooked ramen!
Ramen is actually cooked before packaging. When made in the factory, the fresh noodles roll off the assembly line into a deep fat fryer. The deep frying dries the noodles for packaging. That's why a whole package of ramen is 400 or 500 Calories.