Asian Chicken Noodle Slaw Salad

(this photo is terrible - I swear it looked really good in person and tastes delicious too!)

As a kid, I was a pretty picky eater. I didn't eat most vegetables, I hated spicy food (which is extremely unusual as a Korean) and I wouldn't touch most traditional Korean banchan (i.e. kimchi) with a ten-foot pole. It didn't really help that my mom had no problem with making three different meals for dinner and rarely challenged my specific tastes. So it was a long time before I started venturing out and trying things that I (thought I) didn't enjoy as a kid.

There are quite a few things that have started to grow on me probably in the last 5 years or so. Spicy food, red peppers, bean sprouts are all on the list. A fairly recent one is cabbage and slaws in general. I always thought the idea of letting a salad sit in dressing, getting soggy to be completely disgusting. Yes I know cabbage isn't the same thing as salad but it was basically the same thing in my head.

So anyway, I like cabbage now and I bought a head for coleslaw one night a few weeks ago. The thing with cabbage is that a little goes a long way. I buy some for one meal and then I'm left trying to figure out what to do with it for the rest of the week!
This noodle salad is a bit more heavy on the veggies (read: cabbage) and light on the noodles. The beauty of recipes like this is that you can really use whatever combination you like, as long as you have enough dressing for it. And you can sub in other veggies...bean sprouts, carrots, zucchini...you can't really go wrong. And its a perfect leftover meal for the next day!


Asian Chicken Noodle Slaw Salad
adapted from Serious Eats

1 boneless chicken breast (or about 1 cup of cooked chicken meat)
5 ounces soba noodles
1/2 a red bell pepper
1/4 a red cabbage
1/2 a cucumber
2 scallions, thinly sliced

Dressing
5 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp seasoned rice wine vinegar
2 tbsp canola oil
1 tbsp Asian sesame oil
2 tbsp crunchy peanut butter
2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
1 tbsp minced fresh ginger
1 tbsp sugar

1. Make the dressing: combined all ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat and bring to a boil for just a minute, whisking while it cooks. Remove dressing from heat.

2. Prepare the chicken: between two pieces of saran wrap, pound chicken breast with a mallet until it's about 1/2 inch thick.

3. Drizzle with some olive oil, salt and pepper and cook in a skillet over medium heat. Let it cook for about 3 minutes on one side, then flip and brush with a bit of dressing. Repeat a couple times until the chicken is cooked through (should really take no more than 10 minutes since it's been pounded down). Remove from heat and set aside.

4. In the meantime, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook noodles according to package instructions, stirring occasionally so they don't stick. Drain and rinse well under cold water.
5. Using a mandoline if you have it, julienne the bell pepper and cucumber into very thin strips. Slice the cabbage and green onion thinly.

6. Shred or chop chicken breast into bite sized pieces.

7. In a large bowl, toss the chicken with the noddles, veggies and peanuts (if using). Drizzle with dressing to taste. I personally prefer to dress the individual portions as I eat vs. dressing the entire salad though I find that it keeps beautifully with the dressing on as well. Serve immediately.

Eating Light....ish?

Cooking in warm weather can be so difficult for a comfort food addict like me. It just doesn't seem right to make the baked pastas, casseroles and savoury pies that I love to make in colder weather. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of summer foods that I love but it just isn't what I crave after a long day that leaves me wanting nothing but fatty carbs (there is no logical reasoning for this - it's just what I do).

Fortunately, living in Canada there isn't a very long time span that this is actually a real problem. Especially this summer, there have been plenty of cold, windy, rainy days where I don't have the least bit of a problem with whipping up some soup or mac and cheese for dinner. But...still. I find I have a greater tendency to fall into cooking "ruts". Especially without access to a barbeque.

Luckily I've recently discovered quinoa. A friend of a friend made a delicious quinoa salad awhile back, and since then we've made a few variations of it for dinner. This recipe has an asian feel to it with the shrimp, ginger and sesame, plus a bit of sweetness from the pineapple. It's nice in that I can still feel like I'm getting my carbs (since it's a GRAIN salad) without feeling like I've just gained 5 pounds nad is great as leftovers for lunch (it actually tastes better after its been sitting in the fridge for awhile and the flavours have had a chance to soak in). And apparently it's good for you too. Score!

Summer Shrimp Quinoa Salad

1/2 cup quinoa (about 2 cups cooked)
2 cups frozen edamame beans
1/2 cup canned or fresh pineapple tidbits
2 stalks green onions

Shrimp (I think I used about 12 but I'm really not sure)
salt and pepper to taste
sesame seeds, for garnish

Dressing
1 tbsp minced ginger
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp brown sugar, packed

1/4 cup water

1 tbsp pineapple juice

1. Whisk dressing ingredients together until combined, and set aside

2. Bring 2 cups of water to a boil, and add quinoa. Cover and let cook over medium heat for about 20 minutes. Remove from heat, fluff with a fork, re-cover and let sit for about 10 minutes.

3. If the shrimp that you're using is frozen (as mine was), run it under cold water, and leave for about 10 minutes to drain. The shrimp should start thawing out pretty quickly. Or if you actually think ahead (as I rarely do) you can take it out and defrost it in the fridge for a few hours.

4. Stir fry the shrimp over medium heat in a skillet until cooked through. I poured some of the dressing over it while cooking so that it absorbed some of the flavour.

5. Cook the edamame beans until they're not frozen anymore. The ones I use are pre-cooked so they don't actually need to be cooked, per se. I just microwave for less time than I normally do (like...1 minute instead of 4). Remove the beans from the pod if you're using ones in the shell.

6. Slice up the green onions up to the dark green parts

7. Throw the quinoa, shrimp, green onions, pineapple tidbits and edamame beans in a large bowl

8. Add dressing, a bit at a time, until it looks wet enough for you. This would be completely to your preference so just keep going until it looks and tastes right. Season to taste and garnish with sesame seeds

Cooking for One

Okay...this post includes a recipe, but that isn't really what I want to talk about. It's more of a side note.

Adam and I went to a barbeque at a friend's yesterday and I decided, in trying to break away from that Taco Dip rut, I would try something new - Potato Salad. I had seen a pretty tasty looking one on Pioneer Woman last week so I thought I would adapt that one. The particular recipe involved ricing the potatoes rather than using chunks. This seemed odd to me so I just chopped up the potatoes*. I also decided to add some apples and corn, and lemon to lighten up the flavour a tad, but not too much so as to take away from the base recipe and that fact that this WAS supposed to be potato salad, after all.

So I made this salad. And it was good - but not great. It definitely wasn't the best thing I've ever made. But, and this is the lesson here - there were so many things about it that were great, and it turned out that those things were the additions that I was hesitant to add too much of in the first place.

First off, the apples. This may sound disgusting, but when I was younger my mom would serve apple chunks slathered in mayo as a "salad". My dad loved it, and to be honest I did too. And though I may no longer eat this "salad" I thought it was perfectly acceptable to add apples to this one, and it was delicious!

And...the corn. Oh God the CORN. Just as a bit of background information, corn in general is one of my favourite foods. I love it in pretty much any form - out of the can, frozen, fresh corn on the cob. I'll add it to pretty much anything - salads, quesadillas, turkey sandwiches, or eat it mixed with mashed potatoes. It's even good on pizza, or omelettes. Anyway, I digress. Even with my lifelong love of corn, I've never, for some reason, cut corn off the. cob for other uses before. Maybe the frozen and canned versions were just too convenient, or cutting corn off the cob seemed too difficult. Either way, I had a couple of fresh corn cobs lying around so I figured I would try it (I won't lie - this was motivating. The directions in here are very helpful as well, so if you're going to try this at home follow these instructions!). And it's actually sad how happy it made me. The corn tasted SO MUCH BETTER than the other stuff. And cutting corn off the cob was so much easier than I expected, even possibly FUN (okay, I realized I sound like the world's biggest dork now, but whatever).

So anyway...I think that what I'm trying to say, is that sometimes it's okay to adapt a recipe to the point that it's a brand new dish. In this case, the next time I make this, it won't really be a "potato salad" as it will have quite a bit more of the apples and corn. I'm not really sure what it will be, per se. But that's okay. It will be delicious because there are delicious things in it, and it will be something totally new. And maybe no one else will want to eat it because I've overloaded on my favourite things and no one else's, but that's okay too - all the more for me.

*Although I've never made potato salad using riced/mashed potatoes before, I can see the appeal of it. This salad in particular seemed a bit bland, and I think largely because the potato chunks themselves had no flavour. I'm not sure if this could be improved by adding more salt to the water while the potatoes are boiling, but I do think that this is partly the reason for the ricing. The small pieces of potato you have, the more room there is to impart seasonings and flavour, and for the dressing to seep into every crevice. Regardless, I do like some chunks so I'll probably try ricing half the potatoes and using chunks for the other half next time.


Potato Salad
3 medium russet potatoes, washed, peeled and cubed
2 small macintosh apples, washed, peeled and cubed
3 stalks green onion
3 eggs
1 cob corn
1 lemon
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 tsbp yellow mustard
fresh dill
salt and pepper to taste

1. Hard boil eggs - put eggs in a small pot of water and bring to a boil. Remove from heat, cover and let sit for 12 minutes. Remove eggs and chill in ice water bath until cool.

2. Bring a large pot of water to a boil - add potatoes and corn.

3. After 3 minutes, remove corn and chill in ice water bath to stop the cooking. Once corn is cool, hull corn off the cob using a sharp knife. Use the dull edge of the knife to rub off the rest of the corn nubs as well. You can use Ree's step-by-step instructions from this recipe here.

4. While potatoes are cooking, cut up green onion and apples and chop up dill.

5. Peel and roughly chop hard boiled eggs

6. Mix mayo and mustard together

7. Once potatoes are fork-tender, drain and add to a large mixing bowl. Add eggs, green onion, apples, corn and dill. Add in mayo-mustard mixture and squeeze in juice of half a lemon. Add salt and pepper and mix to combine. Season to taste as needed.