Another lesson learned

 

Asian chicken salad

Ask my friends. They know and bemoan that I’m not a big fan of Asian food. If we’re going out to dinner together, don’t tell me about your favorite Thai restaurant. And don’t try to persuade me that I can order the spices mild—I don’t trust that. Mostly, though, my antipathy is based on lack of knowledge and exposure.

I think I remember as a kid having what went by the name of chop suey—mushy vegetables and chicken or beef in a sauce over rice and topped with those canned chow mein noodles. I can’t imagine that my meat-and-potatoes father much liked it. (I forget about chow mein noodles, but Christian and I agreed the other night they would be good in place of croutons in a salad—they are, I think, pretty high in sodium though.) I’ve thought about recreating that chop suey for us—you can still buy canned vegetables, but I don’t think they would go over well. I could use fresh veggies—this idea appeals—but I guess I’d use carrots, onion, broccoli, and bean sprouts, most of which aren’t well received in this house. And, basically, what’s the difference between the stir-fry we make today and the chop suey I ate as a kid, except that the vegetables are fresh. I do like the flavor soy sauce gives to everything from meat to vegetables. I am leery of fish sauce though—something I should maybe try in recipes.

Now that I’ve written that, I want stir-fry. Christian does a mean job with it. He also recently made fried rice that was excellent. But I digress. I started out to write about my learning lesson. I found a recipe for an Asian cold salad and thought that would meet Jordan’s wish for light summer meals and Christian’s taste for Asian. Besides it was fairly straightforward and simple.

Chicken salad

1 rotisseries chicken, boned and diced

8 oz. dried rice noodles

Iceberg lettuce, chopped

3 green onions

Sesame seeds, toasted

Dressing

3 Tbsp. brown sugar

2 tsp. soy sauce

1 Tbsp. sesame oil

3 Tbsp. rice vinegar

Make the dressing ahead of time and set aside. Toast sesame seeds, watching closely so you don’t burn them and have to do a second batch. Cook the rice noodles—and boom! That’s where I got in trouble.

The noodles looked like strips of cellophane, but they were stiff, crisp, hard. The recipe said to heat a bit of neutral oil in a skillet and toss the noodles in by handfuls. They would, the printed page promised, turn white and puff up. Well, some did, and some didn’t. We would never need chow mein noodles on our salad, because most of what we came up with was still crisp. (The recipe warned that if not properly puffed and white, they would be like eating needles—good description.)

In a fit of exasperation, Jordan picked up the noodle package, reached for my glasses, and read the directions. It said to pour boiling water over them, let stand three minutes, and drain. “Where did you get the idea of frying them?” she asked, her tone clearly implying that it was some bit of idiocy on my part. I waved the recipe in front of her.

But with reconstituted noodles, not fried, the salad made a lovely meal, with some leftovers. Just toss it all together—chicken, noodles, lettuce, sesame seed, and the dressing. Easy. Barely any cooking required.

This may be something many of you already know, and my blunder was due to my being relatively uninformed about Asian recipes. I will say in my own defense, I like sushi, particularly salmon sashimi but also some sushi rolls with salmon. I don’t branch out to other fish much, though as much as I like tuna, I should.

And I’m still working on that chop suey idea.