EclecticCook.com » Sandwiches

My Favorite Chicken Salad

Karen — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 04:53:54 +0000

On the pendulum of taste, chicken salad has two extremes; dry and flavorless, or swimming in enough mayonnaise to make you almost believe that it’s not dry and flavorless. Somewhere in between lies perfection; moist, tender and bursting with flavor chicken salad with just enough mayo to hold everything together. A salad so good that you could eat the whole bowl. Not that I have ever done that, at least not in one sitting.

There are two essential ingredients and a no-fail cooking method that make this chicken salad so magically delicious:

Tarragon: Tarragon is the yin to chicken’s yang. Sweet and with a hint of fennel, tarragon brings out the best in chicken.

Raisins or dried cranberries: Bring a little sweet and tart to the party with these dried fruit. Chop them up fine so that you get a hint in every bite. If you like more tart than sweet, use the cranberries.

The Method: Since one post can’t possibly have too many analogies, lets think of perfectly poached chicken breast as Dr. Jekyll, and dry, overcooked chicken breast as Mr. Hyde. All it takes is a little too much heat to go from the good, to the bad and the ugly. The poaching method in this recipe is my chicken salad’s BFF. Use bone in breast with the skin on, or you might get a visit from Mr. Hyde despite your best efforts.

My Favorite Chicken Salad

2 lbs skin on, bone in chicken breast
1 cup (3-4 stalks) finely diced celery
½ cup raisins soaked for 15 minutes in hot water and finely chopped
½ cup red onion, finely diced
½ cup lightly toasted slivered almonds
¾ cup mayonnaise
1 tbsp dried tarragon
1 tbsp lemon juice
½ tsp salt (or to taste)
½ tsp freshly ground pepper

Place chicken in a single layer in a deep skillet or pot and cover completely with water. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce heat to medium and simmer for 10 minutes*. Remove the pot from the heat and let the chicken steep for an additional 15 minutes. Let the chicken cool until you can handle it comfortably. Remove the skin and bones, and then cut into half inch pieces, or shred into strips along the grain, similar to pulled pork.

Add the remaining ingredients to a bowl with the cooled chicken and stir to combine. Serve as a salad or as a sandwich filling.

*If for some reason you feel the burning need to use boneless skinless chicken breast, reduce the cooking time by about half.

(Printable Recipe)

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©EclecticCook.com, 2009. | Permalink toMy Favorite Chicken Salad | 20 comments |

Asian Beef Sandwich with Ginger Wasabi Mayo

Karen — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 01:58:51 +0000

Tomorrow is August 17th, 2009, which means that today, August 16th, 2009, is almost done and gone forever and ever and ever. Never to be recaptured. Gone, like a puff of smoke in the breeze….

*cue violins…..or maybe a whole string quartet*

I think that maybe I’m feeling a little melancholy because my rug monkeys are back to school tomorrow, going into grades 4 and 6. Summer just dried up and blew away before I even had a chance to take it in. Yeah, it’s still hot out, bug season is still in full swing, and people are still grilling in their backyards. But the beginning of the school year is a huge red star on the calendar that tells me that the boys of summer are almost gone, and it’s time to get back on some sort of a schedule, stock up on pencils, and make sure the kids aren’t “secretly” reading the book they can’t put down with a flashlight under the covers, after the call for lights out. I know there is good stuff coming up to look forward to, like holidays and family gatherings, school plays and recitals, puberty and boys….ok, not so much the last two, but you know what I’m saying. Still, I think that I will finish this post, put away the dishes in the dishwasher, get lunches ready for the morning, and then sit out on the back patio and take in the summer night sky just one more time. The bugs can keep me company.

Yesterday I found myself with a loaf of focaccia I hadn’t even opened yet, a slab of top round roast, and some carrots that really needed to get used up before they sprouted or mummified, whichever came first.

I thought maybe a sandwich, my favorite summer meal. But what to do with the carrots?

This is the sandwich I came up with, very loosely inspired by that Vietnamese sandwich that seems to be all the rage these days. A soy marinated, grilled, and thinly sliced top round roast, served on a loaf of focaccia slathered with a ginger-wasabi mayo and topped with shaved carrots and cucumbers that were briefly pickled in sweetened rice vinegar.

Turned out pretty darn good, thankyouverymuch.

Asian Beef Sandwich with Ginger Wasabi Mayo

2 lbs top round steak
½ cup soy sauce
2 tbsp rice vinegar
2 chopped scallions
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp ginger, minced
3 tbsp honey
1 tsp sesame oil
1 loaf of dense bread. I used focaccia, but you can used whatever bread you prefer
Pickled Carrots and cucumbers (recipe follows)
2 tbsp ginger wasabi mayo or to taste (recipe follows)

Combine the soy sauce, rice vinegar, scallions, garlic, ginger, honey, and sesame oil in a bowl. Place the top round in a plastic freezer bag and pour the marinade over the top. Seal the bag, squeezing out as much air as possible.Marinate in the refrigerator overnight. Prepare the wasabi mayo at this time as well. Preheat the grill to medium, and cook the beef turning once, for 7-10 minutes per side, or until the internal temperature reaches 135°F. Set aside to cool.
While the steak is cooling, prepare the pickled carrots and cucumber according to the recipe below.
When the beef has cooled and the pickled vegetables are ready, slice the beef as thinly as possible. Slice the loaf of bread in half, lengthwise. Spread about a tablespoon of the mayo on each cut side of the bread. Layer the beef on the bottom slice and top with a generous amount of the pickled veggies. Cover with the top slice and cut into individual servings.

Pickled Carrots and Cucumber

2 large carrots, peeled
1 medium cucumber, peeled
½ tsp kosher salt
1 tsp sugar
¼ cup rice vinegar

Using a potato peeler, shave thin slices of the carrots and cucumbers. Add the remaining ingredients to a medium bowl and whisk to combine. Add the carrots and cucumbers, and stir to coat with the vinegar mixture. Let sit for 20 minutes, stirring a few times to redistribute the vinegar mixture. The veggies will be tender, but still have a bit of crunch when they are ready.

Ginger-Wasabi Mayo
Adapted from Chef Duncan Gott

1 tbsp wasabi powder
1 tbsp water
1 cup mayo
¼ cup pickled ginger
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp lime juice
1 tsp soy sauce

Combine all ingredients in a blender and puree until smooth. Refrigerate overnight before using.

(Printable Recipe)

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©EclecticCook.com, 2009. | Permalink toAsian Beef Sandwich with Ginger Wasabi Mayo | 20 comments |

Souvlaki Pita

Karen — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 04:52:42 +0000

You know that dish that everyone always begs you to bring to the backyard BBQ even when you really really (really) want to bring something different for once, so you end up making both, and then they barely touch the new dish that took you *forever* to prepare and that you were so excited about bringing, but completely devour your regularly requested one?

(Pause to let punctuation catch up)

Souvlaki Pita is that dish for me, the dish I will never escape. Good thing it’s pretty darn tasty. I could probably eat it every week without going crazy. I may or may not be speaking from personal experience.

I’ve searched high, low and even under a few beds, but I just can’t find good pita bread in Wichita. I can find “pita pockets”, which are small thickish pita’s that you can cut in half and split open to make a pocket, or “pita bread” which is a small, thick and dry thing with no pocket inside. Pita bread for souvlaki should be soft and thin enough to be able to wrap around the filling, similar to how you would wrap a soft shelled taco. Yes, I realize that I should simply make my own pita bread. I haven’t yet found the motivation (or a recipe that doesn’t scare me; I’m not a baker) to go that route, so I use the pita pockets.

Souvlaki Pita

The Meat
2 lbs grilled souvlaki. Use chicken, pork or both.

Traditional Toppings
2 tomatoes, cut into cubes
¼ tsp oregano
1 yellow onion, sliced fine
1 tbsp vinegar
1 tsp olive oil plus more for drizzling
Tzatziki

Mix the tomatoes with the oregano and 1 tsp olive oil. To remove some of the bite from the onions, soak then in cold water and the vinegar for about 10 minutes. Drain, then soak them again in fresh, cold water for an additional 10 minutes. Drain and pat dry. Drizzle the onions with a bit of olive oil before serving.
Fill the pita with souvlaki, top with tomatoes, onions, any additional toppings you choose, and plenty of tzatziki. Get a napkin ready, then take a big bite and enjoy!

If you want to mix things up a bit, you can also use shredded lettuce, feta cheese and/or some chopped olives for toppings.

(Printable Recipe)

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Bratwich with Roasted Red Pepper Aioli

Karen — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:01:30 +0000

It’s stinkin’ hot outside. Literally stinkin’. Everything smells like baked dirt and hot asphalt. This is not the kind of weather that inspires me to spend any amount of time over a hot stove (except for that regrettable risotto incident). This here is sandwich weather!

I’ve been looking for an excuse to whip up an aioli all summer. The bratwurst in my freezer was going to provide one for me. I would have liked to have used some of the fresh herbs from my garden for the aioli, but my dill, parsley and cilantro have already bolted and gone to seed in this early heat, and I have been frantically pinching buds off my basil for a week.

I scored some jars (six; I couldn’t help myself) of roasted red peppers at the grocery store on clearance and I thought that a garlicky-smokey-peppery aioli would be just what the brats needed to wake ‘em up a bit. My family is not really fond of bell peppers of any kind, but I still hold out hope that someday I’ll be able to convince them that they are oh so wrong, and I have been right all along (like I always am, of course). Mushrooms are also on the family no-way-am-I-eating-that list; breaks my heart it does. Sometimes I find myself alone in my kitchen at night with nothing but a tub of Ben and Jerry’s and a box of tissues for company, while thoughts of Philly cheese steak sandwiches dance in my head. *sniff*

But I digress.

The last 3 items to round out the cast of characters were a handfull of baby romaine lettuce, a long loaf of still-warm French bread, and some long shaved slices of parmesan cheese. All that was left to do was grill, assemble, and call it dinner.

Ah the grill. You really can’t beat that smoky charred, sweet caramelized flavor that food acquires when you cook it on the grill. But I have a love/hate relationship with my grill. It lives outside on the back patio with my herb pots, where it is not directly in my line of sight. Out of sight, out of mind; therein lies the problem. My multitasking cooking habits make it physically impossible for me to hover over the grill and watch while it takes its sweet time cooking something. I usually give up and end up back in the kitchen, prepping a salad or making pasta. I’ve discovered it cooks stuff REAL fast when I’m not looking . It’s evil that way. So usually I let (beg) my husband do the grilling. Except he wasn’t home yet, so I had to. Which was scary. But I’m happy to report that the brats survived my “oh poop (or a similar word) I forgot I have brats on the grill” moments and dinner was eventually served.

No, I didn’t take any photo’s of stuff on the grill because I forgot. I’m sorry. I’ll be better next time.

Bratwich with Roasted Red Pepper Aioli
Serves 4

1 long loaf of French bread
4 or 5 links of your bratwurst of choice
1 cup salad greens such as baby romaine, romaine, bibb or butter lettuce
¼ cup aioli (recipe below)
4 or 5 thinly shave slices of parmesan cheese

Preheat the grill to medium high. Grill the sausages with the lid closed for 20-25 minutes, turning every 5 minutes. Let cool slightly (5-10 minutes).
Slice the French bread in half lengthwise and remove some of the bread from the inside of both the top and bottom slice. Slather each slice with about 2 tbsp aioli. Layer the lettuce on the bottom slice and top with the brats. Place the slices of parmesan cheese over the still-warm brats and cover with the top slice of bread. Cut the sandwich on the diagonal into approximately 3 inch pieces and serve with your favorite ice-cold beer.

Roasted Red Pepper Aioli

1 egg yolk
2 or 3 cloves garlic, peeled
½ of a roasted red pepper
1 tbsp lemon juice
½ tsp salt (and to taste)
¼ tsp pepper
1 cup olive oil

Make sure all of the ingredients come to room temperature before you start. In a blender, combine the egg yolk, garlic, red pepper, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Cover and blend until smooth. Take off the blender cover, and with it still running slowly add the olive oil in a steady stream and blend until everything is smooth and combined. Make sure you stop a few times to scrape down the sides of the blender with a spatula. Taste and adjust for seasoning.

(Printable Recipe)

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