Vietnamese Vermicelli with Chicken and Green Papaya Salad

It's hot. It's been about 40ºC with the humidex for over a week and not surprisingly, a heavy, hearty meal isn't what I'm looking for nowadays. I still love love love noodles, though, so here is a recipe for something I get pretty often in Vietnamese restaurants.

Vietnamese Chicken and Vermicelli

• 2 Chicken thighs
• 1/2 tsp five spice powder
• 1 1/2 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 servings vermicelli (I buy the kind that comes knotted in single servings. Easier that way)
• 1 large lemon
• 1/4 cup fish sauce
• 1/2 tbsp honey
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• fresh chilis
• bit of water
• Optional: shredded lettuce, cucumber, or other raw veggies

Let's Do It!

1. For the chicken, simply marinate in the five spice powder and soy sauce for a little while. Then fry it on the stove (or grill it on the bbq) until it's done. Maybe 4 minutes a side. I'm not the best at cooking things to completion and have on more than a few occasions eaten raw chicken. But my stomach can take it. Don't risk salmonella. If you're not sure if a chicken is cooked, pierce it with a knife and see if the juices run clear. If they do, you're good.
2. Let the chicken cool then rip the meat off with your hands. Save the bones in the freezer for soup. This makes it easier to eat at work.
3. For the nước chấm (sauce), juice and seed 1 whole lemon and mix with the fish sauce, honey, garlic, chopped chilis (as much or as little as you want) and a bit of water. I didn't really measure it anything, but rather added stuff and tasted often until I got the flavour balance as I like it (just a little sweet, very sour, a little salty, very spicy).
4. Cook the vermicelli according to the package directions, making sure to rinse well in cold water and strain after.
5. Whenever I go to the restaurants, they also serve the dish with shredded veggies to mix with the noodles. I made a salad instead.

Lunch it up!
I had the fish sauce in a little screw top jar, the chicken in its own container and the vermicelli in its own container. To eat, heat the chicken up (if you want), swish the vermicelli in some boiling water and drain well. Put the noodles and chicken together and pour the sauce over it all.

Green Papaya Salad

My friend Keith once said "lettuce isn't a vegetable. It's a carrier for salad dressing." That's how I feel about this salad. I love fish sauce and limes. I could drink nước chấm instead of water. The first time I had this was in Thailand, and it was the spiciest thing I had ever had. You.. you don't need to do that.

• 1 green papaya
• fish sauce
• limes
• 1 clove garlic, finely minced
• fresh chilis

Let's do it!

1. Cut the papaya in half and scoop out the seeds and soft pith with a spoon. Careful, the little white seeds will get EVERYWHERE. Maybe do it in a bag or something.
2. Peel the papaya.
3. If you have a food processor with a grater, use it. If not... happy grating.
4. At this point, I squeezed the grated papaya with my hands just to soften it a bit. Don't know if that helps.
5. Add fish sauce and the juice of a lime (or two) to your taste preference. Mix in the garlic.
6. Add fresh chilis to your taste.

Just realized that although I couldn't find any recipes for this online yesterday, I'm seeing a bunch now and they call for all sorts of fun stuff like sugar and cilantro. You could put those in, I guess. 

Easy Roasted Chicken with Chinese 5 Spice Powder

Chicken is probably the easiest meat in the world to make. Put some spices on it and bake.

Ingredients

• 2 chicken thighs, separated
• 1 tbsp Chinese 5 Spice Powder
• 3 tbsp light soy sauce

Let's do it!

1. Put everything into a big bowl and coat the chicken well. Let marinate for as long as you can. Me, I marinated for about 20 minutes.
2. Set the toaster oven for 350ºF. Put the chicken in a toaster oven-safe container (careful, some things are only good for the oven, but not the toaster oven) and put in the oven.
3. Set for 20 minutes.
4. After 20 minutes, turn it over, check to see if it's done (probably not). Ovens vary. Maybe cook it for another 10, or another 20 minutes. Pierce it with a knife and if the juices run clear, it's ready.

Lunch it up!

This is great with any starch and loads of veggies, like brussel sprouts cooked with bacon!

Barbecued Chipotle Chicken and Mashed Potato Salad

First, apologies for taking FOREVER to write a new post. It's been an insane two months with new projects and our first-ever home purchase. Lunch Lady Lainey and the Hubster are now homeowners.

Due to the deliciously unseasonable weather, I was able to barbecue a couple of days ago and came up with an amazingly tasty recipe for spicy chicken.

Chipotle Chicken Thighs
24 chicken thighs (I had guests over. Scale the recipe down as you need to. This fed six people, plus leftovers for a couple of day's lunch and dinner. I'm sure you could freeze them after they're cooked as well.)
1/2 7 oz. can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
3-5 cloves of garlic
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp vinegar
3 tbsp or more orange juice

Let's do it!
If you're cooking on a grill, it's important to trim the excess fat off the chicken, otherwise, the grease will drip down and catch on fire, resulting in less tasty, burnt chicken.

Put the rest of the ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. You may need to add more orange juice to keep things spinning.

Put all the ingredients in a large bowl and toss to mix. Let this marinate for at least 20 minutes. The longer, the better.

Turn on the grill, let it heat up and clean it. My grill gets incredibly hot, so I keep it on the lowest setting. Splash some water on the grill to see if it's hot. If it sizzles, you're good to go. Place the chicken on the grill top, skin side down. Cook for maybe 5 minutes, close the lid, then turn over and cook for another 5, with the lid closed. If the chicken is sticking to it, it means that you need to let it cook a little longer. Cut the chicken along the bone to see if it's cooked. If not, keep it on for longer. I tend to undercook things, so I'm not really the best judge of cooking times. If you're not sure, cut open a piece and take a look.

The chicken came out tender, really juicy with a spicy kick to it. If you can't handle hot wings, then this recipe is too spicy for you. If not, yachtzee! The marinade will probably also work great with pork, in a slow cooker or oven. But that's a recipe for another day.

This chicken reheats well and is also amazing cold (if you like eating chicken cold), which means it will probably make an appearance at quite a few picnic pot lucks this summer. The Hubster took the meat off the bone and ate his in a wrap with veggies, which he raved over via text. Clearly, this recipe is a crowd pleaser.


Mashed Potato Salad
4 potatoes, washed, skin on
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1/4 onion, minced
2 sundried tomatoes, diced (I used the kind that comes in oil, not the dried variety)
1 tbsp relish

Let's do it!
Cut the potatoes into thick slices and cook in boiling water until easily pierced with a fork. Drain and set aside to dry a bit.

In a large bowl, combine the mayo, onion, sundried tomatoes and relish. Add the potatoes to the mixture and toss to combine. The potatoes will start breaking up on their own, giving it a mashed consistency. Leave it as lumpy as you like. I find this less stressful than regular potato salad, where I really try to keep them in cube form. Yes, I realize how ridiculous it is to get stressed out about the consistency of potatoes.

This dish tastes great warm or cold, making it my go-to for BBQs. It's also dead easy. You can put whatever you want in it: capers, olives, fresh herbs. I always use mayo and relish as the base and add whatever I have on hand for extra flavour.

Dairy-free butter chicken

Okay, I used actual butter. I try not to think of butter as dairy. To me, it's a fat. A non-dairy fat. If you are serious about your dairy allergy, you can use butter-replacer.

Ingredients:
4 chicken thighs, fat removed and separated by drumstick and thigh

Marinade:
1/2 cup plain, unsweetened, non-dairy yoghurt (I used Wildwood Soyogurt)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cayenne/red chili powder
1 tsp tandoori masala
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp coriander seeds
a few squeezes of lime, I just squeezed half a lime a bit. I didn't completely squeeze it dry.

Sauce (separated by steps):
1/2 cup butter
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 large onion, chopped roughly
1 tbsp garlic, chopped roughly
1 tbsp ginger, chopped roughly

1 can whole tomatoes, drained and seeds rinsed out (rip each tomato open with your hands and pull/rinse out the seeds)
1 tbsp tomato paste

1-2 bay leaves
2-3 cloves
2-3 cardamom pods (crushed a bit)
1 tbsp tomato paste

1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp red chili powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp Demerara sugar (you can use any non-white sugar)
1/4 cup unsweetened almond milk
black pepper
salt to taste

Let's do it!

To make the marinade, buzz all the spices and salt in a spice grinder until it's powdery. If you're old school, use a mortar and pestle. Mix all the ingredients together and put it in a container with the chicken, stirring well to incorporate. Put this in the fridge and let it sit for at least an hour.

To make the sauce:
Melt the butter in a big pot under medium-high heat. Add the onion and cumin seeds. Let soften for maybe three minutes, then add the garlic and ginger. Cook for another couple few minutes, then transfer in a slotted spoon to a blender and blend. Try to leave as much butter in the pot as possible. This is your onion paste. Put it aside.

Add the tomatoes to the pot and let them saute in the butter for a few minutes. When they look softer (they're already cooked, really) transfer them with the slotted spoon to your blender. I didn't wash it in between, so it still had onion paste in it. I don't think this is a problem. Blend it into a puree.

Add the bay leaves, cloves and cardamom pods to the pot. There should still be plenty of butter in there. This is NOT a healthy recipe. Fry for about a minute, then add the chicken, reserving the marinade. I tried to brown it a bit, but I lost my patience and just dumped the rest of the chicken in there, and covered it with the remaining marinade, onion paste, tomato puree and the tomato paste. Simmer uncovered for about 10 minutes.

Add the turmeric, red chili powder, cinnamon and sugar and let cook for another 15 minutes, covered.

Swish the almond milk in the marinade container, the blender and the thing you put the onion paste in to get every single little bit of the marinade and pastes, and pour it into the pot. Stir and simmer uncovered for 15 minutes.

Hit it with some black pepper at the end. Salt to taste.

Serve with rice.

I am RIDICULOUSLY pleased with this dish. It may be one of the most indulgent, delicious things I've made in a while, and it's (mostly) dairy-free!!  Wheeeee!!!

Fajita-rama

Note, the white things are leftover brown rice thrown in.

Fajitas are always a winner in our house, due to the husband's fondness for wraps. They're also pretty easy to make. Here's a recipe I made yesterday that yields about 4-5 servings.

Ingredients

3 large red peppers, seeded and sliced into strips

1 large green pepper, seeded and sliced into strips

2 medium red onions, peeled and sliced into strips

2 chicken thighs, deboned and sliced into strips

1 cup diced smoked sausage

3 tablespoons or more of Tex-Mex seasoning mix (recipe to follow)

Tex-Mex seasoning mix:

1 part paprika

2 parts cumin

1 part cayenne

1 part oregano

2 parts garlic powder

Put it all in a jar with a tight fitting lid. I like to keep a batch of this in the kitchen to quickly throw together tacos, fajitas or chili.

Let's do it!

Put the meat in a container with a tablespoon of Tex Mex powder. Mix well and let marinate while you're cooking the veggies.

Heat a large pot/wok to medium high and add enough oil to lightly coat the bottom. 

Throw in the veggies and saute, stirring until really soft. This took an agonizing amount of time because I started with low heat. Don't make my mistake. Start high and keep stirring! I also threw the bones in with the veggies for added flavour.

When the veggies are soft, throw in 2 tablespoons of seasoning and stir until well mixed. Add the meat and cook until cooked, maybe another 10 minutes. At this point, taste and adjust for salt and seasoning. Add hot peppers if you like it spicy.

Lunch it up!

I pack the fajita mix in a tight-fitting container and put a couple of tortillas in a ziploc bag. To eat, heat them up separately. The tortillas take about 10 seconds, the filling will take about two minutes, since it's got meat in it.

Optional: If you're a fancy pants, bring along some sprigs of parsley, a couple wedges of lime and an avocado (cut it up at work to reduce grossness)

Enjoy!

Roast Chicken - The meal that spawns more meals

Roast chicken is the perfect Sunday dinner. Throw together some veggies on the side, like steamed carrots or peas, a grain, like brown rice, and you're DONE. After dinner, you can sit in front of the tv and shred the meat off by hand and put in a container for lunches for the week.

Here are some basics on how to make a roast chicken

Brining
There is some conflicting thought about how effective brining is for keeping moisture in your chicken. I like to do it. Here's how:

In a small pot, boil some water.
Add:
1/4-1/2 cup of salt (I don't measure this, I just dump salt in)
1/4-1/2 cup sugar
a few bay leaves
some peppercorns
dried or fresh thyme, rosemary and sage (once again, I don't measure. Maybe I use 1/2 tsp of each)

Boil for a few minutes and let cool a bit.

If your chicken came trussed, cut the strings. They will slow down the cooking. Think about it: do you want a pretty chicken, or a half overcooked, half undercooked chicken?

Place your chicken in a sealable container that will hold the whole thing. Fill halfway with cold water. Pour in the brine mixture and add more cold water until it covers the chicken. Put the lid on and let the chicken sit overnight (or at least 6 hours)

Roasting

Set the oven for 350ºF.

Drain and rinse your chicken. Pat it dry with paper towels. Cover the chicken breast with two layers of greased tin foil.

(I realize that all these pics look kind of gross, I blame it on the chicken being frozen before cooking. I found chicken on sale and didn't have a plan for it right away!)

Place the chicken in some bakeware that will fit it. If you like, you can roughly chop some carrots, celery and onions to sit the chicken on. That adds to the deliciousness and gives you chicken-flavoured veggies as well.

Roast the chicken for 30 minutes for each pound. Every half an hour, open it up and turn it 180º so it cooks evenly. When it's halfway done (according to your calculations), take off the foil.

Half an hour before you think it's done, take the dish out and tip it towards the opening. If the juices come out clear, it's done. If it's still bloody, it's not. Put it back in. Ideally, you have an instant read thermometer and use that. Stick it in thigh, close to the body. It should read 150ºF. If so, take it out and let it rest on the counter (on a trivet!) for about 15 minutes to finish.

That's it. Roast chicken. Time consuming, but ultimately easy, and ultimately delicious.

You can use the chicken in the following LLL recipes:
Chick'n Chicken Salad
Crunchy Chicken Salad Sandwiches
or dress up just about any salad or pasta. In the top pic, I just threw the chicken on some field greens, chopped up some avocado and poured balsamic vinaigrette over it.

Chicken and Red Peppers with Rice and Sauteed Asparagus

I don't want to alarm anyone here, but I need to tell you all something very important: it is currently asparagus season. Asparagus is woody and gross the rest of the year, but in June, it is amazing. Go buy some now!

This recipe is a way simpler Chicken Basquaise, though it would seem that it takes the same amount of time. But, I stress, that it's still way easier.

Chicken and Red Peppers
Ingredients
1 chicken thigh
3 red peppers, seeded and sliced thinly
1 onion, sliced thinly
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tsp paprika
water
cooked rice. I should note that this was my first successful attempt in making basmati rice. The key? Read the package and follow the directions. What a crazy world!

Allons-y!
Heat some oil in a pan on low and throw in throw in the red peppers, onion and garlic. We want to caramelize these, so keep the stove on very low and stir it every once in a while. This step takes maybe 30 minutes. If you have the confidence, go read a book or something, but keep your ears and nose sharp for loud sizzling or a strong pepper smell. This means that it's burning, or very close to it. If it's about to burn, add some water to the pan and scrape up the brown bits. Actually, you're going to want to do this the entire time.

When everything is nice and soft, and the onions are little tangled messes, stir in the paprika and put in your chicken, skin side down. If everything looks very dry, add maybe 1/4 cup of water. Cover and let this slowly cook for about 10 minutes. Check for burning and turn the chicken every 10 minutes until cooked, maybe another 30 minutes. It should be falling off the bone.

When that's done, extract the bone (I used a pair of tongs and a fork) and shred the meat a bit. Stir it around so that it's covered in sauce. Serve with rice!


Asparagus!
There are a lot of ways to make asparagus, but first, some basics. When buying asparagus, try to get the thinnest ones. Also, make sure they are nice and green, and don't look like they're going to crumble in your hand as soon as you get home.

When you're ready to cook them, break off the bottom ends. This will ensure that you actually break off the woody parts, otherwise you'll be chewing this stuff forever. I like to give the stems a good peel, as well.

Heat a pan with some oil and toss the asparagus in. Toss to cook evenly, sprinkle with a dash of salt and put on a nice plate. You can also cook these on a grill or in the oven. Squeeze some lemon on it before you're ready to eat.

I like it chopped up in salads, or just as a nice side dish. Just make sure you're not giving any urine samples in the next couple of days, or you will make some lab technician's job even more unpleasant than usual.

Chicken Nuggets!!

Did you know that McDonald's chicken nuggets have dairy in them? They do. And I LOVE chicken nuggets. My mom used to buy frozen chicken nuggets by the bag that we could heat up ourselves after school. But all chicken nuggets have dairy for some mysterious reason. And they all probably have some gross preservatives as well. Here is an easy recipe for ones that don't.

Ingredients
Two chicken thighs, deboned, deskinned, defatted and cut into equalish-sized pieces
1 cup bread crumbs
A glug of olive oil
Seasoning - I used Montreal chicken spice, but you can use whatever spice mix you like, or make your own. The holy triumvirate of chicken spices is rosemary, thyme and sage. If you're making your own seasoning, make sure to add salt.

Let's do it!

First thing, mix the seasoning, chicken and olive oil together and let marinate for at least half an hour. I put them in a ziploc bag, pressed the air out and mixed it around.

After marinating, set your toaster oven (or regular oven) to 350ºF. Take each piece and dip it in the bread crumbs and put on a toaster-oven safe dish, or a baking sheet if you're using an oven. Set the timer for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, turn them over and bake for another 10 minutes. After that, put the thing on broil for maybe 5 minutes to crisp them up all nice.

Chick'n chicken salad

I really wanted to have some nice Asian-style chicken with my salad in an effort to slowly wean myself off the bad eating I've been doing lately. I mean, grilled chicken is pretty good for you, right? So what if it's a thigh piece and you don't trim ANY of the fat off?

Ingredients

1 chicken thigh, bone removed
1/4 cup Japanese soy sauce
1 tbsp honey
splash of sesame oil

2 handfulls baby spinach
some white onion, thinly sliced
some cabbage, thinly sliced
1/2 a tomato, cut up
1 hard boiled egg

Your choice of dressing. I used 1:1 white vinegar and veggie oil, which was kind of gross, even after I squeezed half a lime into it. I mean, I was still able to eat it and all, but it wasn't as awesome as I'd like. Next time I'm using vinegar and olive oil. That always seems to work.


Let's do it!
Chicken: Put the soy sauce, honey and sesame oil in a shallow dish and stir. Taste and adjust to your liking. Place the chicken in the dish and poke some holes in it with a fork. Let marinate for at least 15 minutes.

Grill on a panini press (if you're lucky enough to own one) for about 15 minutes.. I really wasn't keeping watch. Maybe 10 minutes? I don't know. I pierced it to make sure it was cooked all the way through. If you don't have a panini press, you can bake in the toaster oven at 350ºF for 15-20 minutes, or fry on the stove. Let it rest on a cutting board for about 15 minutes or cool enough to handle. Slice into... slices.

Egg: For perfect hardboiled eggs, cover the eggs with cold water in a small pot. Put the pot on the stove on high, uncovered. As soon as the water boils, turn off the stove and cover the pot. Let it sit for 10 minutes.

I'm certain you're smart enough to put the rest together. I put all the veggies in a dish with the spinach, and all the meat in another dish while transporting to work. The salad dressing is applied at the very end so it doesn't get all mushy.

Elaine's Mom-style Chinese Chicken Curry

I love my mom's curry. It is amazing. But since I am not my mom, I can only make half-amazing curry, despite following her every direction as she hovers over me in the kitchen. Someday she will bequeath whatever secret she has to amazing curry (it better not be love) and I will be able to do it. But until then, here's how I make mine.

Ingredients
1/2 onion, quartered
3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
1 inch piece of ginger, peeled. Sliced, if you don't mind finding all sorts of ginger in your food
2 small potatoes, peeled and cut into roughly 1" cubes
8 chicken wings including tips, separated into the three chicken wing pieces
1 can coconut milk
1-2 tbsp yellow curry powder. Like soy sauce, I have 4 kinds of curry in my house. I use Jamaican yellow curry for this recipe
Roughly 1-2 tsp fish sauce or soy sauce to taste
salt

Let's do it!
Stir fry the onion, ginger and garlic in some oil in a pot with a lid. Stir fry until the onion is soft.

Add potatoes and fry for a little while longer.

Add curry paste and stir around for a couple of minutes. Everything is going to start to stick to the bottom of the pot. Add coconut milk, stir, scraping the bottom of the pot (with a wooden spoon, obviously) and cover. Simmer on low until the potatoes are half done.

Add chicken wings, add a pinch of salt and cover and simmer until the chicken is done. Add soy sauce/fish sauce to taste.

Serve over rice.

This recipe is pretty easy, and not very spicy (unless you get spicy curry). It's one of my comfort foods. I particularly enjoy mashing the potatoes into the rice.

Unfortunately, my husband is not into curry, so UNFORTUNATELY I have to eat it all by myself. Right now I have some in the freezer. I'll let you know if it freezes well.

Chicken Basquaise on Rice

This recipe can be described as one of the greatest hits in this house. Nathan's a fan, I'm a fan and it reheats really well. It's based on this recipe from Chow. It consists of chicken cooked in a pipérade.

Ingredients:

2 strips of bacon, chopped
1 onion, peeled and sliced into thin strips
2 red peppers sliced into thin strips
3 cloves of garlic roughly chopped
3 tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
1 bay leaf
1 tsp thymee
2 tsp paprika

1 chicken leg, deboned, bone reserved

Cooked rice

Let's do it!
Heat the bacon in the pan to extract the oil.

Cook the onion in the oil for about 5 minutes.

Add peppers, herbs, and garlic. Saute for 5 minutes. Add chicken bones, cover and simmer until peppers and onions are soft.

Add chicken meat (chopped), cover and simmer for another 10-15 minutes until it's cooked.

Lunch it up!

Put some rice in a container and top with the sauce, taking out the chicken bones and bay leaf.

Chicken and bean tacos/rice

No exaggeration, I got a phone call from my coworker, demanding that I tell her what I was having for lunch, since it smelled so delicious. Let me tell you, it tastes as good as it smells.

Ingredients
1 chicken leg (or big chicken breast, whatever), skin separated and reserved, meat diced
1/2 red onion, diced
1/2 green pepper, diced
1/2 jalapeno pepper, diced
3 garlic cloves chopped
1/2 cup pinto beans
2 tbsp chili powder
3 tbsp chopped cilantro
1 tbsp oil
1/4 cup tomato sauce

cooked rice and/or tortillas

Let's do it!
Mix the meat, chili powder, cilantro, oil and a bit of salt in a bowl and set aside to marinate (in the fridge, preferably)

Heat a pan on medium and put the chicken skin in it. Cook until the fat renders out and you have some oil for frying everything else. (If you're thinking "ew", perhaps you should know that the key to making things delicious is salt and fat. Because you're getting some fat in you, your body will probably register as fuller earlier and for longer.) Throw in the onion, green pepper and jalapeno. Stir fry until soft. At this point, you can take the skin out and toss it. Unless you're a disgusting person like me, in which case you will keep it in to keep the fatty goodness in the meal.

Add the garlic and beans and saute for another few minutes, until the garlic takes on a goldish hue. Apparently cooking the beans longer takes the gassiness out of them. I don't know if this is true, but beans don't seem to result in hilarious gas with me as they seem to do in popular culture.

Add tomato sauce and chicken mixture and saute until the chicken is cooked.

Lunch it up!
If you're me, then you will pour this mixture over some cooked wild and brown rice. If you're my husband, you will wrap it up in a flour tortilla (mixed with rice, maybe? For fibre? Who am I kidding? It's probably going to be processed cheese slices.). Either way, this is a great way to get a ton of veggies in you with the delicious savouriness of meat, without going meat crazy. I had mine with some field greens in balsamic vinegar and oil, just to get the dark leafy green content in.

Crunchy Chicken Salad Sandwich with Raw Kale Salad

What do you do when you have one chicken thigh that you want to spread over two lunch servings without making some sort of stew thingie? Chicken salad sandwiches!!

But first, let's start with the kale salad, as I made that while the chicken was cooking.

Raw Kale Salad

I love this salad because it's ridiculously easy, lasts in the fridge for a few days and tastes great. It's also full of vitamins or something.


Working time: 5-10 minutes




Ingredients:
6 cups shredded/chopped kale (spines removed)
1/2 lemon
1 tbsp olive oil
salt to taste

Let's do it!
Put the oil, lemon juice (keep the seeds out, or the salad will have some bitter surprises for you) and kale in a big bowl. Put in a dash of salt. Using your hands, squeeze and mush up the kale until it's all mixed and it looks like you have about 1/4 of what you started with. Taste, salt (if needed). That's it. Really. That's it. And as an extra benefit, the lemon and olive oil feel great on your hands, I usually just give my hands a quick rinse after without soap, since it feels so nice. On the downside, you will discover that you have a tiny cuts all over your hands during this process.

Crunchy Chicken Salad

This is my first time making this, but not the first time making a chicken salad. To me chicken and egg salads need a few things: protein, onion, something crunchy and something creamy. Instead of the usual boring (and nutritionally empty) celery, I subbed in a nice tart and tasty green apple.

Working time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes

Ingredients
1 chicken thigh
1 green onion, cleaned and chopped into thin slices
1/2 green apple cored and diced
1/2 cup of cucumber, diced
1/2 lemon
1 tsp grainy mustard
1-2 tbsp mayonnaise (to your taste)
Optional: Chopped up cilantro would add a pretty wicked kick to this. Too bad I forgot to buy some.

Let's do it!


Rinse and season the chicken with salt and bake in a toaster oven at 350ºF for about 20 minutes. If you don't have a toaster oven, you can cook it on a pan. It's done when you can pierce it to the bone and the liquid runs clear. If you're not sure, err on the side of undercooking. You can always cook it a little more, but you can't save a burnt, dried out chicken. You can also use chicken breast if you're really believe that fat has no place in your life (of which I heartily disagree). When the chicken is done, set it aside to let it cool down.

Meanwhile, chop up the green onion, apple and cucumber and mix them in a bowl. Squeeze half the lemon over it (again, keep the seeds out by squeezing through your other hand) and mix.

When the chicken is cool enough to handle, remove the skin (or dice it and add it for extra flavour). Reserve the juices. Tear all the meat off the bone and chop it up finely. Mix the chicken, mustard, mayo and 1 teaspoon of chicken fat (yes yes YES) into the other stuff.

Quick tip: Get a big zipper freezer bag and store all the bones from the meat you cook. Ideally, you should be cooking with meat attached to bones, since they're cheaper and more flavourful. Once you have a decent amount of bones, you can simmer them with onions, carrots, garlic, herbs and celery for some stock which you can use for soups, gravies, stews... basically anything that requires a stock. You can freeze that stock into single servings in smaller freezer bags. I'll post a how-to on stock sometime soon.

For the sandwich portion of this meal, I bought Vietnamese sub buns from the Asian grocery store (4 for $1!) You can use whatever bread you like.

For all the people who hate mayo out there (*cough* Asians *cough*), it's possible that you actually hate Miracle Whip, which is not mayo, but some kind of quasi-edible abomination. Many people in my mom's generation don't differentiate between the two, so it was probably the MW (which really needs to tone it down) that ruined all the potato salads and sandwiches of your childhood. Give it a shot, you might be surprised.

Quick tip: This recipe is also a great way to use up leftover meat. Just sub that in for chicken, unless it's got some kind of heavy sauce on it, in which case, just slice it up and eat it in a sandwich!

Lunch it up
To package, keep the kale, filling and bread separate in order to keep the bread dry. Put it together at work. If you have a toaster at work, you can toast the bread before putting in the salad. Prepare for your coworkers to marvel at your lunch, and poke at their freezer-food meals in disappointment.

This is a great meal for a hot day. The cucumber and green apple really add a coolness and freshness to the sandwich. I'd recommend this sandwich for the heat of summer, as opposed to a cold and wet spring day. Brrr...