The salad will have a standard substrate of blanched and deep fried rice sticks plus shredded iceberg lettuce mingled with threads of Napa cabbage.
Please tell me about your own favorite recipes for this sort of (ubiquitous honky) salad and any variations you might suggest. Yes, I’m turning this into a sort of dinner salad. Accompanying it will be barbecued Kaluha pork wrapped in ti leaves and a batch of my best shrimp fried rice. We’re going Island style here and I’d like your ideas.
Add a little peanut butter to the dressing. Your idea is very similar to what we use in our catering business, without the fancy items.
Add some finely julinned (use a mandoline) fresh bell pepper and carrot to the salad–it will add some very needed color. Skip the tomatoes. Add chopped roasted cashews.
Well, the salad was the best everyone ever had. Being the first or second time I’ve ever made it, I was rather pleased with the results. Here is a list of the ingredients that were included:[ul]Freshly grilled spiced chicken breast
Hard boiled quail eggs
Grape tomatoes
Slivered red Jalapeño chile
Slivered carrots
Julienne of red bell pepper
Fresh pea sprouts
Cilantro leaves
Shredded Napa cabbage
Shredded iceberg lettuce
Deep fried mai fun rice sticks[/ul]The dressing contained:[ul]Soy sauce
Light brown sugar
Pineapple juice
Roasted sesame oil
Roasted sesame chile oil
Xao Xing rice wine
Mirin sweet Japanese vinegar
Five spice powder
Grated ginger
Lemon juice
Sugar
Crushed garlic
Minced shallot
Minced red Jalapeño chile
Thai peanut sauce[/ul]
The hard boiled quail eggs and grape tomatoes lent an extremely attractive visual element to the composition. The killer item was the freshly grilled and still-warm peppercorn spiced chicken breast. A light and piquant crust on the poultry matched up perfectly with the crunchy rice sticks.
A guest literally growled at alohaaloha when she tried to clear his salad bowl before he had finished with it. I’m really hacked off that Marina supermarket didn’t have the sweet soy pickled garlic cloves. I am keen to introduce them as another size match to the grape tomatoes and quail eggs.
The pea sprouts were a last minute inspiration and contributed a wonderful semi-sweet note with their delicate flavor. They are a bit dangly, with their long stems, so they may be omitted in future batches. I also cannot believe I missed mentioning the cilantro first time around. They don’t call it Chinese parsely for no reason at all. Its slightly bitter note balanced the sweet dressing quite nicely. The peanut sauce also helped to cut an otherwise cloying aspect given the dressing by all its various sugars. (Thanks for the suggestions, JavaMaven.
I’m going to post the recipe over in the main thread in the next day or two. This one was a major success.