Korean Chicken Salad

I am of the opinion that most things in life are not improved by the addition of mayonnaise.  I know that BLT's and other sandwiches need at least a touch of mayonnaise to be palatable (otherwise they are just too dry) and you need a little mayo in tuna salad.  But I can't really think of anything else that is improved by the addition of mayonnaise.  I have heard that you can use mayonnaise instead of butter when making grilled cheese sandwiches to help the outside of the sandwich toast up golden brown but I haven't tried it out so I can't speak to that.  But when Alex wanted to add mayonnaise to our Korean chicken salad I was very skeptical.  I think I made stink face at him when he brought it up.  And again when I tried it.  Had I been about two decades younger I probably would have thrown in an "ewwwww - mayonnaise!"  But it was really good with just a touch of mayonnaise!  The kewpie mayonnaise somehow pulled it all together - it thickened the dressing a little and gave it body, plus it balanced all of the flavors out somehow and added some sweetness and a touch of tartness/acidity.  It was yummy and it made the chicken salad (which was already pretty good but missing something), just that much better.  I heart this chicken salad, which by extension might mean I heart kewpie mayonnaise.  But let's not be too hasty.

P.S. The chicken by itself was really delicious and would make an excellent entree, or you could use the meat for sandwiches or soups or other things.  I was set on poached chicken breasts because I think their gentle chicken flavor and texture works really well for chicken salads, but Alex prefers roast chicken breasts (hence Alex's Roast Chicken Breasts).  Since he was cooking he got to choose the cooking method and in this instance, I might have to agree that he was right as I think we will be making those chicken breasts again in the future!

Recipe after the jump!

Scallops with Cilantro Sauce and Asian Slaw

 

I will be the first to admit that this meal is crazily not seasonably appropriate.  Given that it is now 30 degrees Fahrenheit in NYC, the more obvious decision would be to make chili or fried chicken, or something else warm, meaty and hearty.  Instead I decided to sear some scallops and serve them over Asian slaw.  Why would I make such a decision?  Well, the recipe sounded pretty good and we had some nice scallops in the fridge just waiting to be cooked.  Plus Alex and I are both still kind of in the mood for light meals after the past few weeks, so it just seemed to make sense to go for a light refreshing dish like this one.

My main complaint with this dish is that it somehow felt incomplete on almost all levels.  The flavors were good, but I wanted something more to bring them to the next level.  I also really wanted something crunchy to provide a textural contrast.  It would have been even better if the crunchy bits had a bit of salt to them (perhaps some finely chopped salted roasted peanuts would have worked).  The slaw was quite good.  I enjoyed the addition of the granny smith apples for some extra sweetness and crunch.  However, should I make this again in the future I think I will alter the ratio of apple and carrot to daikon, or make sure that the daikon is cut smaller than the apples.  In some bites there was a bit too much bitterness from the daikon radish and it overwhelmed all the other flavors.  I thought that the cilantro sauce had nice flavor, but I wanted there to be a little more heat and a little more zip to it.  But the lack of heat could have been due to the fact that our serrano chili just wasn't that hot.  Somehow the balance between the sweet, sour and spicy flavors that I expected in the sauce was just a bit off.  It was more muted than I wanted it to be given the ingredients - a little delicate, rather than in your face.  And while I wanted a light meal, some in your face flavors would have been appreciated.

Recipe after the jump!

Moroccan Carrot Salad

So carrot salad - sounds a little gross, huh?  It reminds me of jello molds and various other weird 1950's-esque potluck dishes.  For some reason, it sounds like it should have mayonnaise and raisins in it.  Maybe carrot salads in the US traditionally have both in them.  Actually, I just Googled "carrot salad recipes" and they do in fact traditionally have raisins and mayo in them.  Gross.  And it appears that they sometimes have pineapple in them, or various other fruits.  Also gross.  This carrot salad has none of the above.  And I'm not exactly sure what inspired me to make a carrot salad, except that I was thinking Moroccan and had a ton of carrots from the CSA in the fridge.  But I saw a recipe on Epicurious for a Moroccan Raw Carrot Salad and it piqued my interest.  The best thing about it was that there was no mayo or raisins involved, just evoo, lemon juice, cilantro and spices.  Actually, that was the second best thing.  The best thing was that the carrot salad was good.  Really good.  Alex ate forkful after forkful, and he was even more skeptical about making carrot salad than I was.  I knew it had to be good after I saw Alex go back for his third forkful.

Recipe after the jump!

Summer Crab Salad with Carrots, Basil, and Lime

 

If you grew up anywhere near the Chesapeake Bay, nothing says summertime more than blue crabs and corn.  Crabs come in many forms - crabcakes, bushels of steamed or boiled crabs, crab dip, softshell crabs, etc.  This crab salad came from the Susan Spicer cookbook one of my friends gave me as a wedding gift.  It seemed like the perfect dish to mark the end of summer 2010, both because the ingredients encapsulate all that is summer to me, and also because after a long weekend of gorging on pork, I really needed something light and fresh.

This crab salad was nice and light, with a subtle sweetness from the crab, carrots, and basil, balanced out by the slight heat from the hot sauce and the brine of the capers.  The lime vinaigrette makes the whole thing taste even more bright and summery, if that is even possible.  My only complaint is that, while this salad was lovely, when I think crab I think Old Bay and there was obviously no Old Bay present in this salad.  So when I took my first bite all I could think was "man, crabs just aren't the same without Old Bay."  But with all of that said, this crab salad was bright and lovely.  Then again, of the two dishes I made tonight - this salad and creamed corn, the corn took the cake.  By a landslide.  But it's not because the crab salad wasn't nice.  Instead the corn is really just that awesome.

Recipe after the jump!

Roasted Chicken with Vegetables

As I grow older, there are a few dishes that I become more and more interested in perfecting - ones that never would have interested me five years ago.  When I first realized how much I loved to cook and then became comfortable in the kitchen I would pick very elaborate recipes and esoteric ingredients to experiment with.  There was one year where I picked out a new random, ingredient every other week and had to figure out how to cook it.  That experimentation led to my realization that I love roasted cauliflower and brussel sprouts, prefer Japanese/Asian eggplant to Italian eggplant, and that there are some things better left to restaurants to prepare.  It also taught me that experimentation in the kitchen can be quite expensive!  But now that I have tried most things I am interested in at least once, I keep coming back to simpler dishes - like the perfect roast chicken.  Not too long ago I got to try some roast chicken prepared by Jonathan Waxman, who is the indisputable king of roast chicken.  It was amazing.  The skin was nice and crispy, rather than flaccid and/or rubbery, and the meat itself was both juicy and flavorful.  After that I remembered that there was a recipe for roast chicken that Elia made in Season 2 of Top Chef that everyone raved about.  Luckily I have the cookbook and we had everything we needed for it (minus the chicken itself that is).

We were supposed to make this chicken last night for a dinner party, but there ended up being a change of plans and we ended up going out for Mexican instead.  So Alex and I downsized the ingredients for the recipe, including the chicken, and made it for ourselves tonight.  As the chicken roasted the apartment started to smell fantastic.  You could smell the thyme, the mushrooms, and the smells of roasting meat.  And it was delicious.  I think that the vegetables could have used a touch more salt (salt them generously!) and the potatoes were a little undercooked, but the chicken was fantastic.  The breasts were juicy, the skin was nice and crispy and the chicken drippings were delicious when you dipped a nice baguette in them - buttery and rich.  I'm not sure that this is the ultimate roast chicken recipe, so I might keep looking, but it was a definite winner in my book.

Recipe after the jump!

Carrot-Zucchini Bread with Candied Ginger

So I love carrot cake.  And I love zucchini bread.  But I have never combined the two.  The other day I was trying to recreate a zucchini bread recipe I made once before using candied ginger and came across this recipe online on the Chicago Sun-Times website.  The recipe sounded really interesting (the person who came up with combining carrots, zucchini, and ginger into a bread is the type of mad kitchen scientist that I would love to meet).  Better yet, through some vagary of fate we have all of the ingredients in the kitchen for once - with both the zucchini and the carrots coming from our CSA.  So that seemed like a definite sign to me that we had to make this bread, and we had to do it soon!  Although baking was the very last thing I wanted to do this evening after a long week at work, I figured if I didn't make the carrot-zucchini bread tonight, I was never going to make it.  So after we finished cleaning up from dinner, I started right on making yet another mess of the kitchen.  Have I mentioned recently how much Alex hates it when I bake because I tend to make huge floury messes?  Sorry hon.

This bread smelled delicious while it cooked.  I couldn't wait to cut off a huge slice and try it out.  The last time I baked with zucchini I made a Chocolate Zucchini Cake that was tasty, but you really couldn't taste the zucchini at all.  What I was hoping for here was a far more summery bread where the taste of zucchini and carrots would be far more evident.  If I were to make a cake version of this bread (which would require making it quite a bit sweeter), I would top it with some homemade cream cheese frosting.  I made one loaf with chopped walnuts for me, and one loaf without any nuts for Alex because he has a serious hatred of baked goods with nuts in them.  And boy was that a good call.  When Alex took a bite of his loaf his first words were "yummmm, I think this is kind of awesome."  And for the record, that is huge praise from Alex.  The bread isn't super moist, but the flavor is really nice.  I love the combination of the carrot, zucchini, ground ginger, candied ginger, and cinnamon.  Alex was right - it is kind of awesome.

Recipe after the jump!

Spice-Rubbed Pork Tenderloin with Roasted Baby Carrots and Spring Onions

What do you do when your CSA keeps supplying you with carrot, after carrot, after carrot?  Particularly if you don't generally like cooked carrots?  You try cooked carrots again - in a new and more interesting way and hope that you like them better this time.  My typical problem with cooked carrots is the texture.  The texture tends to be somewhere between mushy and toothsome and reminds me of a combination of baby food and old people food.  And unlike fingerling potatoes or parsnips (or any of the other vegetables that you typically roast with a pot roast), carrots never get that nice crust on the outside.  They just sit there and get mushy.  This pork tenderloin just sounded so good and we had so many carrots that I couldn't resist this recipe.

This recipe made me a little nervous because there isn't much salt in it.  And it definitely needed just a little more salt.  Once we sprinkled some sea salt on top of the final dish the flavors all came together and the entire dish was just that much better.  So I have adapted the recipe to use the amount of salt we really should have used for optimal flavor.  Even after adding more salt, Alex and I both agreed that the flavors in this dish were nowhere near as vibrant as they could have been.  Don't get me wrong - I voluntarily ate roasted carrots which is huge in and of itself.  And the carrots were actually quite good.  But they weren't as good as they could have been when seasoned with jalapeno, cumin, ancho chile powder, garlic, etc.  With all of those spices I was really expecting a real burst of flavor and instead I got just a little taste.  So all-in-all I would give the recipe a solid B or B-.  With a few modifications it might even make it to a B+, but it definitely isn't quite there yet.

 

Recipe after the jump!