Asian Chicken Salad with Peanut Sauce and Soba Noodles

Last week, we’ve so enjoyed having my mom visit us from California.  She came to celebrate her 82nd birthday.

Denis did not photoshop this photo. His comment: What 82 year old woman has that jaw line!??

Other than when we took her to visit Denis’ lovely parents in Shelter Island, she’s been in our garden weeding, picking up leaves, pruning plants–basically working her green thumb magic on it (which I sadly did not inherit)!

I wish I had “before” pictures to contrast this with! There were less flowers all around, and the rocks and back were covered in leaves and weeds!

We call her the Energizer Bunny.

Instead of eating out, she preferred me to cook “things from [my] blog” for her, so all week, I prepared various dishes for her and revisiting some old recipes.

Lots of smoothies:

High Fiber Smoothie

A ton of sushi, of course (click on each image for recipe):

Inside out rolls

Regular “maki” rolls

Inarizushi “Foxy Pocket Sushi”

With Miso Soup:

For her 82nd birthday which was the same day as Father’s Day, I made Reese’s Pieces and M & M waffles for brunch using our trusty Cadbury Egg Waffle recipe:

I bought a small bag each of Reese’s Pieces and plain M & Ms and scattered them on the batter before cooking in waffle iron.

And Crispy Fish Tempura Bites for dinner:

with Miso Green Beans:

And Rich Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Ganache Frosting for dessert:

I used a double amount of  Chocolate Ganache Frosting in place of this frosting

Other meals were quick Chicken Quesadillas using cooked rotisserie chicken (after a long day of shopping–not much time to cook!):

I filled ours with cooked chicken, cheese, onions, and salsa

and Creamy High Protein Avocado Dip:

I discovered I don’t have to spend a lot of time searching for favorite recipes anymore — I can just do a search on my blog!

For her last night here, I decided to make something special and created my version of a chicken salad with peanut sauce, because she had mentioned she had had a great one awhile back during her many travels.  It is a quick and easy when you have leftover cooked chicken! We used more of the rotisserie chicken.  I also used my favorite peanut sauce recipe using roasted peanut flour (if you can’t find this, just peanut butter is fine–use this recipe instead minus sesame seeds) and coated cooked soba noodles and chicken with it (angel hair or vermicelli would work too).  Then I made a salad with shredded Napa cabbage, romaine lettuce, shredded carrot, julienned daikon radish, cilantro, green onions, and snow peas.  I topped the salad with the peanut sauce coated noodles and cooked chicken and garnished with more chopped cilantro and chopped roasted peanuts.

It was really good!  We had leftover sauce which I diluted with a bit of rice vinegar and used as a salad dressing over the course of the week –sans mom. 
We miss you obaachan! (Japanese for “grandma”)  Thank you for all your hard work here!!

Asian Chicken Salad with Soba Noodles and Peanut Sauce

Peanut Sauce:

¼ cup peanut butter (or 1 tablespoon peanut butter plus ½ cup peanut flour and 2 tablespoons water)

1 garlic clove, minced

1 tablespoon ginger, minced

3 tablespoons soy sauce

2 tablespoons rice vinegar

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon sesame oil

Salad Greens:

4 cups shredded Napa cabbage

2 cups shredded Romaine lettuce

1 cup sliced cucumber

1 cup julienned carrot

1 cup julienned daikon or other radish

1 cup blanched snow peas

2 scallions, sliced

¼ cup chopped cilantro, divided

Vinaigrette:

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 tablespoons rice vinegar

1 teaspoon sesame oil

4 oz. soba noodles

2-3 cups cooked chicken, shredded

¼ cup peanuts, chopped

1. Make peanut sauce.  Process all ingredients (peanut butter to sesame oil) in a food processor until smooth.  Transfer to a bowl and set aside.
2. Prepare vegetables.  Mix salad greens together in a large bowl, reserving about 2 tablespoons of the chopped cilantro for garnish.  Set aside.
3. Make vinaigrette.  Whisk soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sesame oil together in a small bowl.  Toss salad greens with vinaigrette to taste.
4. Cook soba noodles according to package directions.  Drain.
5. Assemble salad.  Toss cooked soba noodles with shredded chicken and prepared peanut sauce (use as much sauce as you want depending on how dry or wet you prefer the noodles—you will probably have some leftover!).  Divide salad greens into four bowls.  Top with noodles and chicken.  Garnish with reserved cilantro and chopped peanuts.

Ebi Fry and Re-ment (Exquisite Fake Japanese Miniature Food)

Ebi Fry is basically breaded and fried shrimp –a diner-like comfort food I was introduced to while living in Japan.  It’s commonly served with rice, some shredded raw cabbage, and miso soup as a “set” meal.  I like to eat it with thick Worcestershire sauce or tartar sauce.

Jamie helped me make Ebi Fry for dinner yesterday.  He’s been wanting me to make it ever since he received the most amazing gift from his “Auntie Cheryl”, a close friend of ours who grew up with Denis.

I present to you….. RE-MENT!

If you are not familiar with these amazing miniature Japanese foods you MUST– I implore you, you MUST check out the You Tube videos of RR Cherrypie!  We first saw Re-ment models in these crazily hypnotic and soothing videos and then saw the real thing at Mitsuwa in NJ!  Jamie loved them and wanted a set, but they are a bit pricey and really — they aren’t a toy!

It says it right on the box!

Cheryl found them on ebay and presented Jamie with not ONE set but TEN!

Plus, a kitchen!

Examining the loot.

Check out the cuteness:

Storage drawer

This toaster oven looks just like the one I used to have in Japan!

One of the sets is a miniature Ebi Fry.

The amazing thing about these miniatures, as you can see from the videos, is that they show the foods at different stages of cooking and they are SO life-like!

Comes with raw shrimp, breaded shrimp, and fried shrimp.

Frying oil has a little hole in it so you can fit shrimp in.

It even comes with a little paper towel roll on which to “drain” your fried shrimp.

Each set also comes with a recipe to make the dish.

For our (real) Ebi Fry, we used a combination of large and jumbo shrimp.

Lego Batman is impressed by the jumbo shrimp on the right!

You can find Panko at Asian markets and sometimes in the International sections of grocery stores.

Jamie did all the breading himself:

I’m not sure which looks more tasty — the real version or the miniature version!

All I can say is:  Everyone should have an Auntie Cheryl in one’s life!  Thanks, Cheryl!!

Ebi Fry (Breaded Fried Shrimp) loosely translated from Re-ment Set

Ingredients (4 servings)

12 shrimp  (jumbo size works better)

2 teaspoons oil (we omitted this)

1 tablespoon milk (we omitted this as well)

flour for dredging ( we used about 1/3 cup)

1 egg, beaten

Panko (Japanese bread crumbs)

Oil for frying

1. Devein and clean shrimp, but leave tails on.
2. Place shrimp on backs and make small diagonal slashes on the shrimp bellies (this will help it to stay straight when fried). Chop tips off of shrimp tails and squeeze out excess water with the side of the knife (this will prevent splattering when frying).
3. Season with salt and pepper.  Let sit in oil and milk for awhile to remove any odors (I skipped this step because my shrimp was really fresh and I didn’t think it was necessary).  Pat dry.
4. Dredge shrimp in flour, dust off, then dredge in egg, then coat in Panko.
5. Heat oil to 355 degrees F.  Slowly ease in shrimp from the tails. (I actually didn’t deep fry ours — I just sauteed in about 1/2-inch of oil.)
6. Fry shrimp for about 1 minute turning once or twice until golden.

Direct translation:  When oil makes a sound like “juwajuwa” and becomes like “pichi-pichi”, it is OK (done)!

Trader Joe’s Roasted Seaweed Snack and Miso Soup

True story:  A few months ago at our local Trader Joe’s, I spied a young woman sitting on a bench at the entrance of the store in a trance-like state eating something from a hurriedly ripped open green package.  With a faraway look in her eyes, she was munching on thin sheets of roasted seaweed, one after another without stopping.  I glanced at her two shopping bags propped up in front of her.  They were filled to the brim with the same green packages–perhaps 20 per shopping bag?  I was intrigued.

They come in paper thin strips.

I grew up eating seasoned roasted seaweed.  My relatives from Hawaii would send large canisters of it every year.  My family never seemed to finish all of it, and most of the strips would always turn soft in defiance of the little white packets of desiccant that came in the container.  I believe they were loaded with MSG so it is probably just as well we never ate the entire batch.

“Was there something different about the Trader Joe’s roasted seaweed?” I wondered.  I decided to see for myself.

What I discovered is that these strips are less salty than the ones I have had in the past, and they are made of only natural ingredients (seaweed, safflower and sesame oil, and salt).  And because they come in a small container of two servings, it is easy to finish it in one sitting with another person when the seaweed is at its peak of crunchiness and freshness.  I have to say that these seaweed snacks are addictive.

Though I don’t sit eating them trance-like, I do love them.  It has even caught on with my son who previously would never eat dried seaweed.  He eats these seaweed strips by the stack full like potato chips.

Recently he’s taken to combine them with his other favorite foods, creating truly Asian-American fusion meals.  He urged me to post it on this blog.  Hee hee.

I present to you — Jamie’s Pizza Sushi (pizza piece rolled in seaweed):

This one is his latest:

Open faced PB and seaweed sandwich

Believe it or not, these inventions of his taste really good!

I’m more of a purist though.  My favorite way to eat them is with hot rice.  The clean flavor and combination of crunchy and soft and sticky textures brings me back to when I lived briefly in Japan.

Paired with a freshly made hot bowl of miso soup and salad, it makes a nice light meal.

Miso Soup

Note:  If you want to make the dashi (Japanese stock) from scratch, kombu (dried kelp) and katsuo boshi (dried bonito flakes) can be found in Asian stores.  You can also make dashi using instant dashi powder– just add water!

Kombu (dried kelp), Wakame (dried seaweed), Katsuo boshi (dried bonito flakes)

Dashi:
4 cups water

1 to 2-inch piece of kombu

Large pinch of katsuo boshi

1.   Heat water and kombu in a saucepan.  Just before water boils, remove kombu and discard.  Add katsuo boshi.  Boil for 30 seconds.  Turn off heat.  Let flakes settle to bottom on pan.

2.  Strain liquid into a bowl or measuring cup (I use the same one I used to measure the water), pushing down on solids to remove as much liquid as possible.

Makes 4 cups.

"shiro" (white) more mild than "aka" (red) -- the darker the miso paste, the stronger the flavor

Miso soup:

4 cups of dashi

4 tablespoons miso paste

Pinch of wakame (dried seaweed — also found in Asian stores)

1 ounce of tofu cut into small cubes

1/2 scallion, finely sliced

1.  Pour about 1/4 cup dashi into a small bowl.  Add miso paste to bowl and whisk until mixture is free of lumps.

miso whisked in a bit of dashi

2.  Pour remaining dashi into sauce pan.  Add whisked miso slurry to pan.  Add tofu, wakame, and green onions.

wakame, tofu cubes, and sliced green onion

3.  Gently heat miso soup over low heat until it is ready to be eaten.  Do not let it boil or simmer.

Makes about 4 servings.