SERVES 2 TO 3 AS A MAIN COURSE, 4 TO 5 AS PART OF A MULTICOURSE MEAL
This is my favorite, and perhaps the most untraditional, of all our chicken salads. The sweet mustard sauce and the pairing of cold chicken slivers with crunchy almonds would win loud Chinese applause, but the greens are frankly, and deliciously, California-born.
Preparations can be done up to a day in advance. Last-minute tossing is imperative but a cinch.
CHICKEN AND MARINADE:
2 whole boneless fresh chicken breasts with skin on, split in half (4 pieces)
½ cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons plum wine
1 tablespoon Chinese rice wine or dry sherry
1½ tablespoons China Moon Chili-Orange Oil (page 15)
1½ teaspoons sugar
1 fat scallion, cut into 1-inch nuggets and smashed
3 quarter-size coins fresh ginger, smashed
1 tablespoon finely slivered coriander leaves and stems
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon corn or peanut oil, for searing
SWEET MUSTARD SAUCE:
¼ cup juice from China Moon Pickled Ginger (page 8)
3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon Five-Flavor Oil (page 13)
½ cup rice bran, corn, or peanut oil
¼ to ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
SALAD:
2 inner ribs celery, thinly sliced on the diagonal
6 cups mixed baby lettuces
3 cups baby spinach
½ cup Ginger-Pickled Red Cabbage Slaw (page 61)
3 tablespoons purple basil julienne
¼ cup thinly sliced green and white scallion rings
½ cup toasted, sliced almonds
1. Remove the fillet, membranes, and cartilage from the underside of the chicken breasts. Trim the skin where it overhangs the meat.
2. Combine all of the marinade ingredients in a bowl big enough to hold the chicken. Let stand for 15 minutes to infuse. Add the chicken and marinate for 1 hour at cool room temperature, turning the chicken once or twice midway.
3. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Move a rack to the upper third of the oven.
4. Drain the chicken and discard the marinade. Don’t worry about any bits of green that cling to the meat.
Chinese cooks and China Moon cooks smash a lot of vegetables: coins of ginger, nuggets of scallions and lemongrass, fresh chili peppers, and heads of roasted garlic on a regular basis, and lots of other things on an occasional basis. Aside from being a fair amount of fun, the smashing accomplishes an important task. It releases the vegetable juices from the peel, skin and/or fibers, leaving them ready to infuse in liquids or oils.
In the world of the Chinese home kitchen, much of this kind of smashing is done with the smooth end of a cleaver handle.
In our larger, smash-filled restaurant kitchen, we’ve discovered a meat mallet is a great alternative. Offering more heft and surface for smashing, the flat side does a terrific, speedy job. Only with lemongrass, which is like pounding rocks, do we use the toothy, irregular sides.
So, if you’ve had a meat mallet collecting dust in the kitchen in the wake of that chic recipe for paillards, here’s to its second, vegetarian life!
5. Heat a large heavy skillet over high heat until a bead of water evaporates on contact. Add 1 tablespoon of the oil and swirl to glaze the pan. Reduce the heat to moderately high. Add the chicken breasts, skin side down, in a single layer and sear until deeply golden, 1 to 1½ minutes. Turn the breasts and sear the other side, 30 to 60 seconds more. Drizzle a bit more oil down the side of the pan, if needed to prevent sticking. Remove the breasts and place skin side up on a rack set over a baking sheet.
6. Bake the breasts until just cooked through, 5 to 10 minutes depending on the thickness of the breast and the intensity of the sear. Slice open a breast in the thickest part to check for doneness; it should be very moist at the core. The breasts will continue to cook a bit while cooling. Remove the chicken and let it cool on the rack. If working in advance, the chicken can be sealed and refrigerated overnight. Let come to room temperature before using.
7. To make the mustard sauce, whisk all of the sauce ingredients except the sea salt in a bowl. Add the salt to taste, beginning with ¼ teaspoon. The flavor of the mustard will dictate the amount of salt required. Seal and refrigerate until ready to use, overnight if you like. Re-whisk to blend before using.
8. Slice the chicken on a slight diagonal into thin ribbons, cutting crosswise against the grain. If you are adverse to chicken skin, remove it. Otherwise, leave it on as the Chinese do; it is tasty and adds texture.
9. Just before serving, toss the chicken and celery with half of the mustard sauce. In a separate bowl, combine the baby lettuces and spinach, and toss with the remaining mustard sauce. Sprinkle the slaw, basil, scallion rings, and half of the almonds over the greens and toss to combine. Add the chicken mixture to the greens and gently toss to blend.
10. Mound the salad on individual plates of a color that shows off the greens. Add a flurry of the remaining almonds to decorate each plate.
MENU SUGGESTIONS: You might pair this light main course salad with something hot and lush like Many Mushroom Buns (page 374) or Vegetarian Springrolls (page 349). Or if the weather is warm and you don’t want to turn on the oven, it would be terrific as part of a cold buffet alongside a platter of Dragon Noodles (page 391) and a bowl of Loni’s Cucumber Pickles with Chinese Black Beans (page 50).
I am devoting a separate section to say that I never do it! I don’t buy frozen chicken and I don’t freeze chicken after purchase. There is nothing philosophical about it. I simply experimented years ago while writing my first cookbook and discovered that even a night in the freezer strikingly lessened the taste and texture of good chicken. I have since found the same appreciable loss with duck and quail that are frozen. That’s why all of these recipes begin with the word “fresh.”