Crunchy Chicken Noodle Salad with Peanut Dressing

Like many of you I'm sure, I like to travel.  That said, I don't think I'm much of a tourist.  I usually don't have too much interest in popular tourist attractions, preferring instead (wherever I maybe) to search out the local food markets and making interesting food discoveries.  Returning from an overseas trip you are more likely to find my suitcase weighed down with jars of olive oil, tins of anchovies, or slabs of nougat, than bulging at the seams with souvenirs and clothes.  Case in point, I recently returned from a trip to Bali with blocks of peanut sate sauce and 50 beautiful vanilla beans.   Whilst on my stay in Bali I did a couple of great cooking classes (my other favourite thing to do when I'm travelling anywhere), and whilst we learnt how to make the delicious peanut sauce that you frequently finding accompany sate sticks or used in Gado Gado (an Indonesian salad of assorted steamed vegetables, often served with tofu and eggs, and liberally doused in peanut sauce), it turns out that most of the locals don't actually bother making their own peanut sauce, but use the concentrated blocks of it.  It keeps really well, is easy to use - simply break off a large chunk and dissolve in boiling water - and tastes every bit as good as making your own.

So now I have a stash of peanut sauce blocks, and I've been looking for different and interesting ways to use it.  Inspiration this week came from Erin at The Spiffy Cookie.  Erin's blog was my Secret Recipe Club assignment this month and her Crunchy Thai Chicken Salad with Peanut Dressing was the perfect dish to not only use up some leftover roast chicken, but to also provide a home for some of my peanut sauce.

But before I move onto the recipe, let me tell you a little bit more about Erin and the Secret Recipe Club.   The club has over a hundred members, divided into four groups, and each month one member is assigned (in secret) to another member from their group.  That person then selects a recipe (or more) to make, photograph, and prepare a blog post - all in secret.  Then everyone in the group posts their recipe on the same day, and of course the secret is then out.  It's always a thrill to find out who has posted something from your own blog, and is a great way to meet and discover some new blogs.   If you are a food blogger and interested in joining the Secret Recipe Club, be sure to check out the Join SRC page.   As I mentioned this month I was assigned to The Spiffy Cookie, hosted by Erin, who has a PhD in Microbiology - yep, this girl is really smart - and loves to cook and bake for her family and friends.  She tries to stick to the healthier side of things foodwise, but admits that her favourite "food group" is dessert.  Erin also likes to keep herself fit with a regular work out regime, and to get crafty painting on canvas as well as ceramics.  She is a very prolific blogger, and so offered literally hundreds of recipes to choose from, and I've bookmarked a few to try at a later date:  Peanut Butter & Chocolate French Toast (yes, really!), Dark Cherry Chocolate Almond Granola Bars (what better way to start the day?), Gnocchetti with Asparagus & Garlic-Gorgonzola Sauce (it being asparagus season here, this one was a serious front runner), but it was the Crunchy Thai Chicken Salad with Peanut Dressing that ticked all the boxes for me.

I varied some of the ingredients in the salad a little simply to suit what I had on hand or was readily available - for example, Erin used radicchio in her salad which was not available, so I added some baby spinach leaves in with the lettuce, and used some purple carrots for the colour.  I also subbed in some rocket leaves (arugula) for the coriander (cilantro) which I couldn't get, and replaced peanuts with cashew nuts because that's what I had on hand.  I'm also giving you here Erin's recipe for the peanut dressing, though I did (as I mentioned) sub in some of my Balinese peanut sauce.  In terms of the actual salad ingredients here, I don't think you need to be too fussy with quantities here - use what you have in whatever proportions you like and depending on how many people you need to feed.

Crunchy Chicken Noodle Salad with Peanut Dressing
Adapted slightly from this recipe
at The Spiffy Cookie

salad
cos lettuce
baby spinach leaves
orange carrot, very finely julienned
purple carrot, very finely julienned
red pepper, very finely sliced
cooked chicken, shredded
rocket leaves, roughly torn
roasted, unsalted cashew nuts
crispy noodles

dressing
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
1/4 cup honey
2 tablespoons soy sauce
juice of 1 lime
1/8 teaspoon sriracha or hot sauce
hot water

Begin by making the dressing.  Whisk together peanut butter, honey, soy sauce, lime juice and sriracha in a medium bowl.  Slowly whisk in hot water until you reach the consistency you want.  Set aside.

Assemble all your salad ingredients, except the cashew nuts and noodles, in a large bowl.  Toss together well, then arrange on a serving platter, or in individual bowls.  Drizzle the dressing over the salad liberally, and top with the nuts and noodles.

Serve immediately.

I hope you enjoy this dish as much as I did, and visit the links below to check out all the other great dishes my Secret Recipe Club friends made.

An InLinkz Link-up

Burmese Chilli Prawns with Hot & Sour Asian Slaw - Salad Days # 8

This week at I Heart Cooking Clubs we're exploring the theme "East Meets West", choosing Diana Henry fusion dishes with a global influence.

Living here in New Zealand, I'm no stranger to fusion food - I'm sure the same can be said for most of my "neighbours" on the Pacific Rim.  It has always fascinated me, in just about any country, the influence that its immigrants has on the local food culture.  When I was growing up, Chicken Chop Suey at the local Chinese restaurant was about as exotic as it got.  In the last 20 years, however, increasing numbers of Asian immigrants has had a huge influence on the New Zealand culinary landscape.  Previously unheard of ingredients are now readily available;  Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Malaysian, Burmese, Bangladeshi, and Indonesian restaurants abound;  and even the pantries of this nation's most unadventurous cooks would boast a bottle of soy sauce at the very least.

Looking through Diana Henry'd book A Change of Appetite, I thought her Burmese Chilli Fish with Hot & Sour Salad was the perfect dish to fit the brief.  The hot and sour salad, which is essentially an Asian take on a classic cole slaw seemed like the epitome of fusion food to me.  I made quite a few changes to the recipe ... For a start I replaced the fish with prawns, and tweaked the curry paste a little.  And I rang a few changes to the salad as well - adding in some red cabbage along with the white, and adding carrot, green papaya, cherry tomatoes, mint and peanuts to the slaw, and as I did with the curry paste I tweaked the dressing a bit.

This dish definitely had the wow factor - an absolute explosion of flavours and textures, and just enough heat to leave my lips tingling at the end of it ... in a good way.  If you like Asian flavours, I urge you to give this a try the next time you have cole slaw on your mind.

Burmese Chilli Prawns with Hot & Sour Asian Slaw Recipe
Inspired by recipe from Diana Henry
from A Change of Appetite
Serves 2 as a substantial meal

For the Burmese Chilli Prawns:
300g raw prawns, shells removed and deveined
1x clove garlic, roughly chopped
generous pinch of salt
piece of fresh ginger about the size of your thumb, grated
1/2 red chilli, roughly chopped (deseed if you like less heat)
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon lime juice

For the Hot & Sour Asian Slaw:
1x cup finely shredded white cabbage
1x cup finely shredded red cabbage (plus extra leaves for serving)
1x carrot finely shredded (a julienne peeler is ideal)
1x cup finely shredded green papaya
2x radishes, thinly sliced (a mandoline works perfectly if you have one)
12x cherry tomatoes, halved (use different colours if you can)
generous handful of mint leaves, roughly chopped
large handful of roasted peanuts, roughly chopped
1/2 red chilli, roughly chopped (deseed if you like less heat)

For the dressing:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 teaspoon lime juice

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C (350 degrees F).

Place garlic, salt, ginger, chilli, turmeric, olive oil, sesame oil and lime juice in a mortar and pestle, and grind to a paste.  Add paste to the prawns, and toss until all the prawns are well coated in the paste.  Put prawns in a single layer in an ovenproof dish, and bake in the preheated oven until cooked through - depending on the size of your prawns this will take between 5 and 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, place the dressing ingredients in a small jar and shake vigorously until well combined.  Taste and then adjust to your liking - you want a good balance of sweet-sour-salty, so play around with the ingredients until you get the flavour just right.

Place all the slaw ingredients in a large bowl, drizzle liberally with the dressing, and toss gently until everything is well combined.

Serve immediately piled into red cabbage leaves, and arrange prawns on the side.

If you would like to get to know Diana Henry a little better, and to see what everyone else has cooked up this week, then do go and visit my friends at I Heart Cooking Clubs and check out the links (who knows, you might even want to join the journey and cook along with us) ...

... or check out A Change of Appetite and Diana's many other great titles available from Amazon USA, Amazon UK, or Fishpond NZ.

I'm also sharing this at Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammie) Sundays, hosted by my very lovely friend Deb at Kahakai Kitchen, and at Weekend Cooking, hosted by the lovely Beth at Beth Fish Reads.

This is salad number 8 in my Salad Days, 28 days of salad project.   What's that you ask?  Well,  I've said it here a dozen times or more ... I love salads.  A big bowl, substantial salad is hands down my favourite meal any time of the year.  Such is my love of salad, that I'm challenging myself to come up with a different salad every day for the month of February - that's 28 days of salads - and I plan to share as many of them as I can with you.  I'll also be doing some flashbacks to some of my favourite salads I've shared in the past.

What's more, I'm giving you the opportunity to share some of your favourite salads with me too.  Have a favourite salad you'd like to share?  Simply link up your salad recipe using the linky tool at the bottom of this post.  The linky will be open all month, and you can join in any day or every day, and link as many recipes as you like.  Feel free to grab the Salad Days badge from the sidebar to include in your post if you'd like to.  There's really no rules around linking up, other than please, use your manners and link your post back to this one.  Linking old posts is fine too, just please edit them to include the back link.  Thanks for sharing your favourite salad with us.

Pink Grapefruit, Prawn & Toasted Coconut Salad

I've spent a lot of my time over the last few weeks decluttering.  Like a woman possessed, I have bit by bit gone through every room and cupboard in the house, having a major clean-out of all that stuff I've been hanging onto "just in case" it's ever needed one day.

I have spoken to my yoga students often about staying in the present, living in the moment, and yet despite that I have managed to surround myself with a whole lot of stuff because of some attachment to a time long past, or possible need in some uncertain future.  It's ridiculous, it doesn't amount to staying present, and it's all been suffocating me.

I have to say I'm surprised how long it's taken to work my way through the house, and I'm not finished yet (there's still the bathroom and kitchen cupboards) to go, but I guess I'm not going to deal with 40 years of accumulated clap-trap in five minutes.  Now don't get me wrong, it's not like I would have made an ideal candidate for "World's Greatest Hoarders", but there was a lot of stuff.

There's no doubt this is an incredibly freeing process - it's given me a real sense of lightening the load, and allowing space for change.

So what does all of this have to do with this dish?  Well, part of my decluttering process has extended to trying to give the freezer a bit of a clean-out, wherein I found a bag of prawns that needed to be used up.  Since we have another Mystery Box Challenge this week at I Heart Cooking Clubs, which requires us to make a dish from anyone of our IHCC chefs using at least three of these ingredients: potatoes, buttermilk, flour, paprika, onion, leafy greens, lemon, honey, prawns, and feta - it seemed like the ideal time to use those prawns.

I'd had Diana Henry's recipe in A Change of Appetite for A Warm Salad of Pink Grapefruit, Prawns, and Toasted Coconut bookmarked for quite a while, and since with a little adaptation the recipe enabled me to use prawns, leafy greens and honey, this looked like the perfect dish to meet the mystery box challenge.

I made only very minimal changes to the recipe, briefly oven-roasting the prawns instead of pan frying them, since I always look for any opportunity I can to avoid standing over a frying pan, and for a bit of extra kick I added some red pepper flakes to the prawns while the roasted.  I also replaced sugar in the dressing with honey, and replaced groundnut oil with a combination of olive oil and sesame oil.

This made a wonderful light meal, absolutely bursting with flavour and interesting texture - soft, velvety leaves provide a cooling background to spicy prawns and the citrusy, sweet-tart burst of the grapefruit, accompanied by the crunch of the coconut, peanuts and sesame seeds.  This is definitely a dish I can see myself repeating often over the remainder of summer - I can even see it inspiring a few variations.

Pink Grapefruit, Prawn & Toasted Coconut Salad Recipe
Adapted (barely) from recipe by Diana Henry
from A Change of Appetite
Serves 2 as a light meal

for the dressing:
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon sesame oil

for the salad:
2x pink grapefruit
1 cup shaved coconut from a fresh coconut
1 tablespoon olive oil
350g (12 oz) fresh prawns, shelled & deveined
red pepper flakes
flaky sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
leafy salad greens
bunch of fresh mint leaves
1x red chilli, deseeded and finely sliced
large handful roasted peanuts, roughly chopped
sesame seeds

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C (360 degrees F).

Begin by making the dressing.  Place all the ingredients in a small jug, whisk to combine, and set aside.

Prepare the grapefruit - remove the peel and all the white pith from the grapefruit, then, working over a bowl, remove the segments by running a sharp knife between the membrane and the flesh on each side of the segment to release the segment.  Discard the membrane, set the flesh aside.

Using a hammer or the back of a heavy knife, break the coconut shell open and prise out the flesh.  Using a vegetable peeler, shave the coconut into thin slices.  Dry fry the shaved coconut in a pan over medium heat until golden.  This happens quickly, so don't leave the kitchen.

In a bowl toss together the prawns, olive oil, generous pinch of red pepper flakes, flaky sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.  Spread prawns in a single layer in an ovenproof dish and roast in the preheated oven until cooked through - this only takes a few minutes.

Remove from the oven and immediately toss with the grapefruit segments, red chilli and half the dressing.

Arrange salad greens and mint on serving plates, and arrange prawns and grapefruit amongst the salad leaves.  Scatter toasted coconut, peanuts, and sesame seeds over the top, and drizzle with the remaining dressing.

Serve immediately.

If you would like to get to know Diana Henry a little better, and to see what everyone else has cooked up this week, then do go and visit my friends at I Heart Cooking Clubs and check out the links (who knows, you might even want to join the journey and cook along with us) ...

... or check out A Change of Appetite and Diana's many other great titles available from Amazon USA, Amazon UK, or Fishpond NZ.

Chunky Monkey Cookies

I've spent the last month snooping around inside the blog Baking and Creating with Avril, that being my assigned blog for Secret Recipe Club this month.  As the title of her blog might suggest, Avril likes to bake, so there was no shortage of sweet treats here to tempt my taste buds, along with a healthy serving of family friendly savoury dishes as well.  In the end, since I still had some chocolate and (now very ripe) Fair Trade bananas on hand from this hamper I told you about a couple of weeks ago, it was Avril's Chunky Monkey Oatmeal Cookies that won me over.

There are a few things I learned from making these cookies, most of which in fact has nothing to do with cookies.  Firstly, I really should not get out of bed before 10.00 am on a Sunday morning.  Secondly, if I must be so foolish as to rise before midday, I should not operate heavy and potentially dangerous machinery before I've at least had breakfast!!

Long story cut short ... we were headed out for lunch today, so I decided to get up earlier than usual and make these cookies before going out;  I also decided, somewhat foolishly, to skip breakfast.  In the interests of haste, because I am not one of those women who can get dressed and ready and out the door in half an hour flat, I decided to shortcut things a little and use the food processor to cream the butter and sugar for the cookies.  "Nek minnit" as we say in New Zealand, two inch gash across the palm of my hand and me hollering for the medic as if I was a contestant on Masterchef.

Anyway, hoping that I haven't completely skeeved you out by now, back to the cookies.

I made very few changes to Avril's recipe, which she in turn adapted from a Martha Stewart Recipe.  When I think Chunky Monkey, I think bananas, chocolate, and peanut butter, so I swapped out pecans for some roasted, unsalted peanuts.  I also cut the oats back a bit - by the time I had mixed the dough together it was feeling as though the full measure of one cup of oats would make it too stiff, so I cut it back to about one-third.  There's still enough oats in here, in my opinion, to kid yourself that this is health food, or excuse yourself for having them from breakfast!

The cookies smelled wonderful as they baked, and they certainly didn't disappoint.  We couldn't wait for them to cool completely, and enjoyed a couple of warm ones for a mid-morning treat before heading out to lunch.  These were everything a good cookie should be - crispy on the outside, slightly chewy on the inside, and loaded with goodies.

Chunky Monkey Cookies Recipe
Adapted only slightly from recipe from
Baking & Creating with Avril
Made 19 large cookies
Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

170g (6 oz) butter
1/2 cup Fair Trade organic cane sugar
1/2 cup soft brown sugar
1x free range egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1x medium-sized, All-Good Fair Trade ripe banana, mashed
1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup wholemeal flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
250g (9 oz) semi-sweet chocolate, roughly chopped
(I used Whittaker's Fair Trade Creamy Milk Chocolate)
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/3 cup roasted, unsalted peanuts

Preheat oven to 190 degrees C (375 degrees F).

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar, until light and fluffy.  Beat in the egg, then add the vanilla and mashed banana.  Mix well.

Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt, then add the dry ingredients to the banana mixture, and mix until only just combined.

Add the chocolate, oats and peanuts, and mix to combine.

Line a baking tray with non-stick baking paper, and place spoonfuls of cookie dough on the tray, spacing them 5cm (2 inches) apart.

Bake in the preheated oven for 12-13 minutes until golden.  Cool on the baking tray for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Hope you enjoy these cookies as much as I did, and visit the links below to check out all the other great dishes my Secret Recipe Club friends made.

This post will also be shared at Foodie Fridays hosted by Designs by Gollam, and at Weekend Cooking hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

An InLinkz Link-up

Pan Fried Tarakihi with Green Chilli Noodle Salad

Some of you might recall that when I put up last week's post for this fabulous Salmon with Mango, Edamame & Pink Grapefruit Salad, I was waxing lyrical about the latest summer issue of Donna Hay magazine.  Now, I'm the first person to admit that I will often buy a foodie magazine such as this, spend hours reading it cover to cover, and then, often as not, actually end up making nothing from it.  Not so this issue.  I have already made several dishes, and have several more bookmarked.  Although this is the summer issue, there is plenty on offer here that will still be perfect now that we're drifting into slightly cooler autumnal weather.  In fact, I recommend buying this issue for the Beetroot Salmon Gravlax with Tahini Flatbread alone - soooooo ridiculously good (and ridiculously easy to make), I've made it three times in the last two weeks - I just can't get enough of it.  Seriously, as soon as you've finished reading this post, rush out and buy a copy before they're all gone.  If you live in Australia or New Zealand, it's a pretty small investment, and well worth every penny.  A bit more extravagant, I know, if you live in the northern hemisphere, but if you have an iPad you can get it online for a fraction of the price.  And, don't just take my word for it ... ask Sidewalk Shoes ... Pam reckons it's worth every pixel too.

Anyway, all of that was a very round about way of telling you that when it came to choosing a recipe for this week's theme of "Noodles, Noodles, Everywhere!", this magazine was the first place I turned.  Actually, not just in this mag, but in her vast array of books, Donna has so many noodle dishes on offer that it was hard to choose.  Broaden the scope of that to include pasta as well, and you'll find that she literally has dozens and dozens of quick and easy, yet inspiring, dishes to tempt your tastebuds.

Still, I'm digressing a little again .. back to the "issue" at hand (ok, I know that was bad - really, really bad - but I just couldn't resist).  I happened to have a nice piece of fresh tarakihi on hand, so I wanted something "noodley" to accompany it.  Donna's crispy skinned fish and green chilli noodle salad seemed perfect.

I'm not going to reproduce the recipe here exactly, as I didn't make any changes to it, and actually you really don't need to be too attached to specific quantities here.   Begin by putting some rice vermicelli noodles in a bowl and covering with boiling water, allowing to stand until the noodles are soft (about 5 minutes).  Drain and refresh under cold water.  Mix together fish sauce, lime juice, caster sugar and chopped green chillies (leave seeds in or remove according to your tastes) - taste and adjust according to the salty, sour, sweet, and hot balance that suits your palate.  Using a peeler, shred carrot and telegraph cucumber into long, thin ribbons.  Add vegetables and noodles to the bowl of dressing and toss everything well to combine.  Pan fry fish in a little peanut oil until cooked through.  Arrange noodle salad in serving bowls, top with the fish, and sprinkle over chopped salted peanuts and fresh, chopped coriander.  (You can find the original recipe on page 39 of the magazine.)  Great flavours, great textures - definitely a make again dish.

If you would like to get to know Donna Hay a little better, and to see all the fabulous noodle dishes my friends have come up with, then do go visit I Heart Cooking Clubs and check out the links.

I'll also be sharing this post this week at See Ya In the Gumbo hosted by the lovely Michelle at Ms. enPlace, Weekend Cooking hosted by Beth at Beth Fish Reads, and at Foodie Fridays hosted by Designs by Gollam.

          

Tangy Peanut-Avocado Salsa

So, if you've been reading here the last couple of weeks you'll know that I, and my friends at I Heart Cooking Clubs, have been getting to know Rick Bayless.  Despite my initial reticence, after a couple of dishes, I've warmed to him slightly, so with our theme this week being "Feel the Heat!" I was wondering just how warm things were going to get.  We were challenged to break out the chillies and dial up the heat.

Quite a challenge indeed, as I do have chilli issues - not that I have a problem with chillies, it's just that getting anything that packs a bit of a punch here is not so easy.  I wasn't sure what I was going to make, but I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be a big pot full of chilli.  Funny thing, but I'm pretty sure that if someone made chilli for me I would love it and scoff down every single mouthful, probably even go back for more, but it's not something I've ever felt inspired to make myself - and still don't - but never say never, maybe that will change before we're done with Rick.

Anyway, trawling through his website for some inspiration, I came across his recipe for a Tangy Peanut-Avocado Salsa and, incredibly, I actually had all the necessary ingredients on hand.  Well ... actually ... not exactly.  The recipe did call for a couple of serrano chillies, which are not available here, so I used one of the long skinny ones I showed you in this post last week (seeds and all), and the little round one from the same post, which turned out to be quite hot, without the seeds.

Now, looking at the photos, you probably don't need me to tell you that in the looks department this is probably the least appealing thing I've ever posted.  Still this "salsa" which is really more like a sauce or dip, certainly makes up for its unfortunate looks in taste, and packs quite a punch.  Just how much punch will of course depend entirely on the chillies you use.

I had a friend for dinner last night and served this salsa with a simple piece of pan roasted salmon, and a fresh green salad with fennel and avocado.  The salsa was perfect to cut through the richness of the salmon, and at the same time the fats in the salmon seemed to balance out the heat of the salsa.

This is a great quick accompaniment to make to go with almost anything, and chances are you'll almost always have all the ingredients on hand, ready to quickly liven up a piece of fish or even (as I discovered tonight) roasted vegetables.

Tangy Peanut-Avocado Salsa Recipe

Adapted (hardly at all) from this recipe by Rick Bayless

Vegetarian

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

2 tablespoons roasted, unsalted peanuts

2 chillies, stemmed (deseeding, optional), roughly chopped

large handful fresh coriander (cilantro), roughly chopped

1/2 cup water

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon fresh lime juice

1 ripe avocado

flaky sea salt

 Put the peanuts, chillies, coriander, water, and lemon and lime juices into your blender, and blitz until smooth.

Remove the pit and skin from the avocado, and discard.  Roughly chop the flesh and add to the blender  Pulse until well blended.

Add salt to taste, and add extra water if necessary.

If you would like to get to know Rick a little better, then do go and visit my friends at I Heart Cooking Clubs and see what they've all cooked up ...