Recipes

  • Smoked salmon & avocado sandwich with wasabi

    Smoked salmon sandwich w wasabi

    A good sandwich is a joyous thing.

    It’s easy to prepare but therein lays the trap, folk are far too blasé about the commitment or conceptual understanding required – the simple sandwich is also easy to get wrong. A mish-mash of ‘salad’ ingredients set between two slices of sticky soft white bread (that ends up stuck around your front teeth) does not constitute a sandwich.
    Pull back the number of ingredients but up the flavour component by choosing especially tasty fillings and enhancing those with a well-flavoured dressing or spread. Choose bread that can fulfil its support role with aplomb. I like the plump Italian ‘ciabatta’ that my local French baker makes. It is openly textured and bouncy – thickly cut slices will stand up to being handled without flapping open or squashing unappetisingly into the filling. The bread also has a delicious nutty flavour that adds a nice background note to the other flavours.
    Either smoked salmon or ocean trout is good. You could even use flakes of hot-smoked salmon or trout. The dressing is the key to success and the wasabi gives everything an agreeable spiciness. You can easily adjust the amount to suit your taste. I found a tube of grated wasabi which was quite mild, convenient for being able to adjust the spicy kick just so. The tasty dressing has a myriad uses – pop it on prawns, crayfish, grilled fresh salmon, trevalla, even chicken. Enjoy your luncheon with a glass of 2007 Lalla Gully Pinot Gris

    The Recipe

    Smoked salmon sandwich with wasabi dressing
    1 loaf Italian-style bread, cut into generous slices butter for the bread
    slices of smoked salmon
    spring onions, white and pale green part, finely sliced
    1-2 firm but ripe avocado, sliced
    Butter the bread slices lightly. Cover half with slices of smoked salmon. Top with a few slices spring onion. Lay some avocado slices over these. Grind over black pepper. Drizzle with the dressing and pop the other slice of bread on top. Cut in half at an oblique angle.

    For the dressing:
    half cup Bests mayonnaise (blue lid)
    half cup King Island crème fraiche (or sour cream)
    squeeze lemon
    2 tsp (or more to suit your taste) grated wasabi paste
    1 tbsp finely chopped chives or dill
    salt to taste
    Mix everything well together, starting with 1 tsp of wasabi paste and gradually increasing it until you get the right spicy note.

  • Chinese style fried chicken

    Chinese fried chicken

    It is worth making this dish just for the experience of dry-roasting the Sichuan peppercorns.

    The smoke that emanates is very fragrant, better than any incense.

    Sichuan pepper is a component of five spice powder, a mixture that imparts a distinctive flavour to Cantonese food, particularly duck and beef dishes. It adds a special something to the marinade for this lively chicken dish, adapted from one of Madhur Jaffrey’s excellent recipes in Far Eastern Cookery. Her recipe in turn was an adaptation of an ‘uncommonly good’ Shanghai-style dish served at the Shanghai Club in Hong Kong. In the original version a whole chicken (feet, head and beak included) was opened up at the breastbone, marinated, deep fried, cut up and reassembled to look like a bird. Jaffrey uses the much easier to manage chicken pieces but I’ve simplified things even further by using boneless chicken thighs.

    Deep frying is not my favourite pastime, especially in summer months. To speed things up and reduce the amount of oil used I shallow fried the marinated and cornflour-coated chicken pieces in a large frypan. I kept the heat relatively high while cooking the pieces in batches. The crisped chicken then went into the oven on a large metal tray to finish cooking through and keep warm before being doused with the sauce. This worked very well. The sauce is divine. Soy sauce, ketchup (a standard Chinese ingredient!), vinegar and sesame oil are basic but it is the combination with ultra finely chopped vegetables – spring onion, celery, garlic, parsley stems and ginger – which elevates it into something out of the ordinary.
    A juicy, sweetly fruited pinot like the 2005 ‘Ese would match up with the spiciness of the chicken.

    The Recipe

    Fried chicken with spring onion sauce
    8-10 boned chicken thighs
    cornflour
    oil, peanut or vegetable
    Marinade:
    2.5cm cube ginger, peeled and very finely grated
    1 spring onion (white and some green part) very finely sliced into half rounds
    3 tsp Sichuan peppercorns, dry roasted in a pan until aromatic and rich mahogany in colour, ground
    2 tbsp Chinese Light Soy Sauce
    ½ tsp sugar
    Place the chicken thighs in a large bowl. Spike them here and there with the point of a small sharp knife. Sprinkle over the ginger, spring onion, 2 tsp (generous) ground Sichuan pepper, the soy sauce and sugar. Rub the marinade in well with your hands. Leave the chicken in the fridge to marinate for at least 2 hours.
    Take the chicken from the marinade and dredge in cornflour. In a large frypan heat the oil. Over moderate to high heat cook the chicken (in batches to avoid overcrowding) for a few minutes each side until they are crispy and nicely brown. Pop on a tray in a moderate oven to cook through for another 8 minutes.
    Steam or boil a selection of green vegetables.
    For the Sauce:
    2 tbsp Chinese Light Soy Sauce
    2 tsp white wine vinegar
    4 tbsp chicken stock (not too salty)
    1 tbsp tomato ketchup
    3 tsp sesame oil
    ½ tsp sugar
    3 cloves garlic, very finely chopped
    2 spring onions (white and green part) very finely sliced into rounds
    half stick celery, cut into fine julienne and then cut across into fine dice
    3-4 long stems flat leaf parsley or coriander, chopped across into tiny pieces
    2.5cm ginger, peeled, grated and then chopped very fine
    In one bowl mix together all the liquid ingredients and sugar. In another bowl mix together all the vegetables and aromatics.

    To serve:
    Place the green vegetables on a platter. Cut the cooked chicken into smaller serving pieces. Arrange these on the vegetables. Mix the two bowls of sauce ingredients together and pour over the warm chicken and vegetables. Serve at once with plain rice.

    Michele Round January 2008

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