Chicken Noodle Salad

I’ve had this cookbook called Noodle by Terry Durack for a long time.  Tonight I realized why I have not made much use of it.  This was time consuming and also unless you live near NYC or SF China towns, one of the ingredients was just not possible to obtain.  Serves 4 

Ingredients:

10 oz. rice vermicelli (use the very thin ones, they look mangled in the package)

1 T sesame oil

1 white cut (poached) chicken (from Chinese barbecued meat shop) Really????

1 cucumber

1 small bunch cilantro

Dressing:

1 bunch green onions

½ C peanut oil

2 T shredded ginger

1 t salt

Directions:

1.      Pour boiling water over noodles and let stand for 6-7 minutes.  Drain, then transfer to a saucepan of boiling water and cook for 1 more minute.  (Mine were still tough, but eatable, after boiling for 3 minutes.)

2.      Rinse in cold water and drain thoroughly. 

3.      Chop noodles roughly a couple of times with scissors. 

4.      Add sesame oil and toss thoroughly.  Cover and set aside.

5.      For the unattainable chicken, I poached two large boneless, skinless chicken breasts using a Chinese stir fry sauce in the water for flavor.  You could also mix 1/3 C OJ, 1C chicken broth, 1/3 C soy, 1 clove garlic and a piece of ginger to give it an oriental flavor.  But since I have no idea what one would taste like from a Chinese barbeque shop, I am just guessing.  After poaching, I cut it into very thin slices.

6.      Peel cucumber, cut in half lengthwise and scoop out seeds with a teaspoon.  Slice cucumber flesh lengthwise, and cut each slice into thin matchsticks about 1 ½” long. 

7.      Pick all the leaves of the cilantro off the stems and set aside.  (Now that was really fun.  My guess is that this took at least a half an hour.)

8.      To make the dressing, finally chop the green onions.  Gently warm peanut oil in a wok, then add ginger and salt.  Stir briefly until salt dissolves, add green onions, and stir for 10 to 15 seconds, until it starts to soften. Remove from the heat. 

9.      In a bowl, combine chicken, cucumber, noodles, cilantro and half the dressing.  Top with the rest of the dressing. 

Having been to China, this is very authentic in the fact that it is an oily dish.  It tasted delicious.  It took an extraordinarily long time for something that looked like you banged it out in a few minutes.  Also my brother called right as we were sitting down.  When we called back, he asked Jim what we had for dinner and Jim said, “Some chicken and noodle Chinese thing.”  What an endorsement!