Lisa's Crunchy Chicken Salad

Cate Berger, parent of Will Berger '19, shares this salad, a perennial favorite of the Rusticus Garden Club from Lisa Gerard of Pound Ridge, NY.

This salad is about contrasts: crispy noodles against tender shreds of chicken, the sweetness of sugar vs. the tartness of vinegar, the pungency of scallions a counterpoint to the neutrality of iceberg lettuce.  When looked at in this way, the salad has endless variations and substitutions.  You need only your imagination to jump from this starting point to a fresh salad that works year-round, from a light summer salad to a hearty winter offering.

Instead of lettuce or with lettuce: shredded napa cabbage, red cabbage, carrots, celery, kale, edamame.

Instead of ramen noodles: fried wonton strips, fried onions.

Instead of almonds: pecans, walnuts.

For sweetness: dried fruit, manadarin oranges, shredded mango.

For my salad, I added shredded carrots and dried cranberries for color and texture.

As for the salad dressing, you can start with a ratio of 1 part sugar to 2 parts vinegar, as is noted below. You can add a little sesame oil and/or soy sauce.  A little mayo if you want it creamier.  You can also add sriracha, a garlic-chili sauce to provide some heat.

Note: Take a look at Will's Egg in the Hole recipe for a great breakfast treat.

Lisa's Crunchy Chicken Salad
Serves 6

1 head iceberg lettuce, chopped and shredded
6 green onions, chopped
1 lb. chicken breasts, cooked and shredded

4 tbs. butter
1-2 three oz. packages Ramen noodles (discard seasoning packets)
2 tbs. sesame seeds
1/2 cup sliced almonds

Dressing
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup (rice) vinegar
2 tbs. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. black pepper

Combine lettuce, green onions, and chicken in a bowl.  Set aside.  Break up ramen noodles, using 2 packages instead of 1 if you want more crunch. Preheat a skillet over medium heat. Melt butter in the skillet and add broken up noodles, sesame seeds and almonds.  Stir until gold brown, careful not to burn the noodle mixture.  Cool on paper towels. Please note that the noodle mixture can be made the day before and stored in an airtight container or Ziploc bag.

Whisk dressing together and toss with lettuce, chicken, and green onions.  Just before serving, add crunchy noodle mixture and toss.  Serve immediately.

Other SLS Cookbook Recipes which include crunchy ramen noodles:

Chinese Chicken Salad, p. 30
Asian Slaw, p. 32
Coleslaw Salad with a Twist, p. 33

Ninette's Award-winning Chili

Even though I am Filipino and have never lived in Texas, I have the odd accomplishment of winning two chili cook-offs with two different chili recipes. I developed this chili recipe for my colleague Sam Gaudet, who entered a chili contest with it and took home first prize. Simpler than the smoked chili I did for SLS’ first “Go Hot or Go Home” Chili Cook Off in 2009, it still has some of my signature ingredients: bacon, beer, and chocolate, which add a deep, smoky flavor.

Ninette's Award-Winning Chili

7 slices bacon, chopped

2 ½ lbs – 3 lbs. ground beef

2 medium-large onions, minced

4-5 garlic cloves, minced

Spice mix:

--½ tsp. cinnamon

--4 tbs. chili powder

--2 tbs. cumin

--2 tsp. dried oregano

 1 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes (NOT puree) or 2 14.5 oz. cans Hunts fire-roasted tomatoes (if you use the latter, take one of the smaller cans and puree the tomato chunks in a small food processor or blender; use the other can as is).

½ tsp. Sanka or ½ cup coffee

1 cup beef broth

1 Guinness beer

½ tsp. liquid smoke

2-3 tsp. kosher salt

½ square unsweetened chocolate

Heat a Dutch oven over medium-high heat.  Add ground beef.  Saute until browned.  When the ground beef is cooked, drain oil from the beef in a colander placed in a plate or bowl large enough to hold the excess oil.  Leave there for the moment.

In the same Dutch oven you used to cook the ground beef, render bacon until crisp over medium-low heat.  Remove the cooked bacon from the Dutch oven with a slotted spoon and place on top of the cooked ground beef. Keep the equivalent of three tablespoons of bacon fat in the Dutch oven. Remove the rest and discard.

Add onions to the bacon fat you left in the Dutch oven, and sauté for 5 minutes over medium-low heat.  Add garlic and spice mix.  Turn heat to low and cook until onions are translucent, another couple minutes. 

Add reserved cooked beef and bacon to the onion-spice mixture in the Dutch oven.  Add 2 tsp. of kosher salt, the crushed tomatoes, beef broth, beer, Sanka or coffee, and liquid smoke to the Dutch oven and mix everything together.

Bring to a low simmer and cook for two hours to develop the chili’s flavor.  Check on the chili and stir occasionally, so that it stays at a low simmer. If toward the end of the cooking time, your chili is “soupy,” you can bring the chili to a medium simmer and simmer until it’s thicker.  Conversely, if the chili is getting too thick, add back some water, so that it’s the consistency that you like.

Mix in chocolate in at the end.  Taste and adjust seasoning, adding more salt if necessary.

Enjoy with your favorite fixings.

Go Hot or Go Home Beef Chili

Serendipity. This is what happened when Corey, a new faculty member, happened to mention his past experience starting a BBQ club at school, to Mike, a hardcore Q-er. Mike mentioned it to me, and we hatched the idea of doing a smaller test of the idea at school -- a chili cook off at Homecoming.

I talked to a few other fellow foodies, including Kate, whose Amish friendship bread gets a lot of hits on this site, and Julia who's been featured here several times. Before you knew it, we had a full-fledged cook off planned, including a logo, nicknames, and a lot of smack talk among the six contenders.

The good lookin' chili crew with aprons made with a logo designed by Julia, who has been a guest blogger here. Check out her post on galley cooking. Photo credit: Jeorge Yankura.

For my first cook off, I decided to use my new, favorite toy.

Can you guess?

The Big. Green. Egg.

The Big Green Egg
By cooking my regular multi-chile chili in the Big Green Egg, I added the flavor of mesquite smoke and the memory of many a campfire over which the old cowboys cooked their chili.

I won ... by a mere two votes, and the chilis were all within five votes of each other. Second place went to Corey, who created an intriguing sausage veggie chili with a little maple syrup to act as a counterpoint to the heat of chili powder.

All the chilis were excellent. Kate used TVP to make a vegetarian chili, so that most people didn't know it was meatless. Julia used Mexican cinnamon as her secret ingredient. Desiree created the best texture I've ever noted in chili by browning her meat cubes in flour, like beef stew. Mike, whose cooking mind works very similarly to my own, softened dried chili pods in hot water and then pureed them. He also made use of chilis from Penzey's Spices, of which I'm a big fan.

I like a chili that is deep and flavorful, with layered flavor components. It's taken me years to get my chili where it is now, and I'm sure it will keep evolving. That said, there are certain constants for me in chili:

1) Beef. Maybe I'll get to making other meat chilis, but beef is it for me. Sometimes I cube it. Sometimes I use ground beef. It depends how lazy I'm feeling. Cubed is more authentic but ground beef is definitely more convenient. My friend, Andy Pforzheimer who owns the Barcelona chain (this is a must-try restaurant if you haven't been there), has a friend who uses short ribs as his chili meat.

2) Smoky, deep, rich undertones. I use bacon, Guinness beer, beef broth, coffee, and semisweet chocolate to complement the dried chilis. Sometimes, I don't use all of these, depending on what I have in the pantry, but I believe these ingredients are why people ask for my chili recipe. If this were music, this chili is definitely in the bass section, no question.

3) Tomatoes and acidic components. If I use ingredients to bring out the smoky flavors of the chili, I firmly believe in the importance of the acidic to provide contrast. I know traditionalists don't use tomatoes, but I do, both diced and crushed, and depending on how the chili is going, I've been known to add Ortega's diced green chilies, Frank's red hot sauce, salsa, Trader Joe's salsa verde or even ketchup to brighten up the chili. Acid is what makes chili 3-dimensional and sassy.

4) A combination of fresh and dried chili peppers and spices. I'm still learning about chili peppers, so this is where it gets fun. I like a medium-spicy chili that has a slow, mellow heat and have been experimenting with different peppers to obtain that.

Before I talk about what I'm doing, I want to say that I believe you can make a perfectly decent chili with the 2-Alarm Chili packets or other packets they sell in the grocery store, if you add the bacon, Guinness beer and chocolate. However, I like to use a combination of dried and fresh chili peppers in my chili. If I use chili powder, I like to know that it's as fresh as it can be, which is why I buy Penzey's spices in small lots.

In this chili, my foundation is Penzey's regular chili powder, cumin, and oregano. To that, I add diced fresh chilis like poblano, jalapeno, and serrano peppers, which I saute with the onions and garlic. Fresh chilis add a fresh, grassy flavor to the chili, and they are also a little acidic.

I also like to add some chipotle in adobo. These are definitely smoky and rich, and a little goes a long way.

After that, I pick from a growing collection of dried chili peppers in my cabinet -- arbol (spicy, acidic), New Mexico (earthy), guajillo (fruity, piney), cascabel (nutty, tannic) -- and depending on what I'm doing, I'll either soak them in hot water or coffee, puree them, and add them to the chili, or I'll let them cook in the chili whole and pull them out. I always remove the seeds first, for both fresh and dried peppers, so that the chili is not too spicy for my family.

There are so many peppers that it's interesting to try them out and see what happens. I found a list of dried chili pepper descriptions at the Cook's Thesaurus if you want to get an idea of what's out there.

5) No beans. My husband doesn't eat carbs, so there are no beans in my chili. But if I did put beans, they'd be black beans or red pinto beans. I don't like kidney beans.

6) Thickener. I've never used flour, or the more traditional thickener of masa, in my chili, but after having Desiree's chili, I may have to change my mind. Using a starch to thicken the chili liquid creates a smooth, silky texture, and yet another taste sensation. If you can't find masa, I'm sure that taking two corn tortillas, soaking or simmering them in some chili liquor to soften, blending it in a blender, and then adding it back (some or all of it depending on how thick you want the chili), would do the job.

7) Season with salt at each stage and fry the spices.

Those are my thoughts on making a great chili. I should add my chili is never the same. I wrote down what I did today, which is the recipe below, but depending on my mood and what I have in my kitchen, my chili is always different. That said, it must be layered and flavorful, smoky and tangy, rich and memorable.


Chili with cubed beef instead of ground beef and with the addition of softened and pureed corn tortillas to thicken it up and get a silky texture.

Go Hot or Go Home Beef Chili2 ½-3 lbs. ground beef or beef chuck hand cut into small 3/8"-1/2" chunks
7 slices of bacon, cut into ¼ inch pieces
2 medium onions or 1 large onion, finely chopped
3-4 garlic cloves minced
2 tbs. cumin
1 tbs. oregano
4 tbs. chili powder (ideally one like Penzey’s which is ancho chile and new Mexican chile or you can grind your own in a coffee grinder)
Green chiles in small can (e.g, Ortega brand)
1/2 chipotle chili in adobo sauce (or more if you dare; you can freeze the rest of the can in spoonful-sized portions for future use)
1-2 jalapenos, seeded and diced
2 poblano chilis, seeded and diced
1-2 serrano chili, seeded and diced
1 dried cascabel chilis (seeded) (optional)
1 dried guajillo pepper (optional)
1 cup coffee (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste
1 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes (put 1/2 a can first and see if it's enough)
1 14 1/2 oz. can diced tomatoes (preferably Rotel)
1 11.2 fl. oz. bottle of Guinness beer
1 tsp beef concentrate or 1 cup beef broth
1 block of semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate (Baker’s chocolate comes in blocks)
1 can of kidney, red pinto, or black beans (optional)
1 corn tortilla (optional)

Before you start to cook, combine onions, poblano, jalapeno and serrano together. Also, mix the chili powder, cumin, and oregano together in a bowl. Puree the chipotle in adobo with a little water.

Render bacon until crisp in dutch oven; set bacon aside.

Brown meat cubes in bacon fat in batches, setting aside when browned. Salt and pepper meat to season. If using ground beef, brown meat in bacon fat and then drain. Salt and pepper to season. Set aside.

Add some vegetable oil to the dutch oven, and when hot, add onions, poblanos, jalapeno, and serrano peppers and cook until translucent(5 minutes); add garlic for a minute, being careful not to burn it.

Add chili powder, cumin, and oregano mixture to onions and fry for a couple minutes to release flavors.

Add beef to onions and spices. Mix together and cook for a few minutes.

Add the Guiness beer and pureed chipotle in adobo and bring to a simmer. Let cook for five minutes.

Add tomatoes, and beef concentrate or broth. If you have a cascabel chile, add it; if you don’t, don’t worry about it. Stir everything together.

Bring to a simmer and cook for one hour.

While the chili is simmering, simmer the guajillos in hot water or coffee to cover. When the guajillos are soft, puree in blender.

After one hour, add the piece of chocolate. Add guajillo mixture to taste (you want to taste; if your chili is too spicy for you already, then you don't want to add that much). Simmer another hour or until meat is softened. If you’re adding beans, add them 15 minutes before you finish cooking. Pull out cascabel chili before serving.

Adjust seasonings to your taste. If you feel it needs something to brighten it up, you can add a couple tablespoons of salsa and/or a squirt of ketchup. Serve alone, or with rice, nacho chips, shredded cheese, sour cream, and hot sauce.

Fontella's Curry Chicken

Today I was at school with my kids to welcome and give a tour to a group of prospective families who were considering our school. Fontella, a fellow parent and friend, was there too with her daughters, and she gave me a warm hug and freely shared her lovely smile.

Last year, Fontella brought a Jamaican curry chicken to one of the school's Multicultural family group get togethers. It was the best curry chicken I had eaten, because the chicken was the softest and silkiest I had ever tasted. It was addictive. After that night, I would fondly tease Fontella with a "Where is my curry chicken?"

Well today was no different. I went on and on about where was my curry chicken, hugged her goodbye, and went home.

A couple hours later, I got a call from Fontella. Surprise! She went home and actually made curry chicken, and she called me to come pick up some.

Don't you agree I have lovely friends?

This time she made a curry with Trinidadian curry powder, which she called a dark curry.

I asked her how she went about cooking curry, since I was taught how to make other curries -- Japanese, Thai, Malaysian, Jamaican, Indian, and Guyanese -- from other friends.

Like my Jamaican friend Coleen, Fontella uses pre-mixed curry powders, bought from the local Caribbean store. There's Jamaican and Trinidadian curry powders, duck/goat curry powders, etc.

If Fontella is using chicken breasts, she slices it thin and dusts it with Goya adobo powder, cumin, onion powder, and salt and pepper, so that it can marinate in the spices.

She fries some garlic in oil and takes it out so it doesn't burn. After frying whole allspice berries in the oil until fragrant, she adds the curry powder, chicken, onions, and garlic and cooks them slowly for a few minutes, then adds a little water and cooks it at a low simmer, as Fontella says, "until it's done."

We figured out this was about 15 minutes.

Eat with rice for a lovely meal.

P.S. Fontella's handsome, young son reminds us to avoid those allspice berries -- they're for flavor, not for eating!

SuSu Chicken Marsala

One gloomy winter week in January 2009, my friend Su swept me away from school for a restorative lunch at her favorite Italian restaurant. In addition to the main entree of friend therapy, I had a veal and shrimp piccata and Su enjoyed veal marsala. I've made this chicken marsala in her honor. Thank you, Su.

To make this an easy weeknight meal, I used packaged sliced chicken. Of course, you can take chicken breast, slice it yourself, and pound it so it's even. I also used packaged sliced mushrooms. This will serve 3 people and of course you can double or triple the recipe.

3/4 to 1 lb. prepackaged sliced chicken
Flour
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
1/2 tbs. butter
2 slices bacon (or 2 oz. pancetta), finely chopped
1 8 oz. package sliced mushrooms
1 tsp. tomato paste (I use Amore paste in the tube)
1 clove garlic, minced
Salt and pepper
Italian seasoning
1 cup sweet Marsala
1/2 cup chicken broth
Lemon
Fresh chopped parsley
A tsp. of cornstarch mixed with a couple tsp. of water

Heat oven to 200 degrees.

Season chicken on both sides with salt and pepper. Dredge both sides in flour, shaking off excess flour.Heat saute pan over medium heat.

Add 1-2 tbs. of oil and cook chicken on both sides, 4-6 minutes per side depending on the thickness. If cooking in batches put chicken on a plate, covered loosely with tin foil, in the oven.Add a little oil and little butter in the skillet. Add bacon and cook for one minute. Add mushrooms and garlic and cook until bacon is browned and mushrooms are cooked, around 8 minutes. Add salt, pepper, and a little italian seasoning. Add tomato paste and cook with mushrooms until the tomato starts caramelizing. Take out mushrooms and set aside.

Add marsala wine to skillet and simmer five minutes, letting it reduce and the alcohol burn off. Add back mushrooms and chicken broth, and cook until sauce is reduced, another five minutes. taste, add salt and pepper as needed, and add shot of lemon as needed. Add cornstarch slurry, and stir, letting it come to a simmer for final thickening and add parsley.Poor sauce over chicken and serve.