Flavor and aroma are not the only elements of food that give us satisfaction and pleasure. Before we even take our first bite of a new dish or potential foodstuff, our eyes inform our anticipation and expectations: does the appearance promise something delightful and new, familiar and routine, or foreboding and dangerous?
Once we pop a bite into our mouth, another sense comes into play to help us evaluate our choice: mouth-feel. Amid the tastes and smells we are experiencing, we also notice the tactile sensations the food gives us. Is it soft or crunchy? Dry or gooey? Tiny bits or large chunks that need to be chewed?
The textural qualities of food contribute greatly to whether a dish becomes a new favorite or a rejected loser. When I recently planned a new recipe, the question of texture was nagging at me and it was the final piece that I placed in my culinary puzzle.
I get together semi-regularly, about every 2-3 weeks, with a group of friends here in Argentina for lunch or dinner. We take turns at cooking: one person provides the meal and another provides the dessert, and one or more people get to just relax and enjoy eating on that particular occasion. I volunteer for more than my quota of the duties because I love the chance to share some of my favorite recipes with friends or gain their insights about new recipes.
When I was imagining what would become today’s WFD recipe for our recent gathering, I was pretty sure the flavors, aromas, and presentation would be appealing but I still felt something was lacking. I imagined adding various food items to the dish to improve it but, in my mind, they just didn’t work.
I realized the issue was texture — the dish needed more of it.
Texture veggies should be your friends
So I turned to my old friends and standbys, the texture veggies. I call them that because they all have great mouth-feel and mild or subtle flavors. That means you can add them to just about any dish and they won’t overpower with their own flavor but will add wonderful crunch or snap as well as a delightful visual appeal of freshness.
These versatile foods — jicama, yacón, palm hearts, parsley root, and water chestnuts — are not always familiar friends of many cooks in US households but they should be. In most recipes they are interchangeable; if you don’t have one at home or at the store, you can usually substitute another member of the group and the overall effect on your dish will be very similar.
The best part of all about the Fab Five above is that they can be eaten either raw or cooked. So for today’s WFD dish — a salad as a main dish — they work brilliantly, added directly to the plate without any muss or fuss.
Jicama, parsley root, and yacón are usually found fresh in the produce market. Water chestnuts and palm hearts are most likely available only in canned form (but that means they’re easy to store and keep on hand).
My first choice would have been jicama but it is very hard to find here. The easiest choice — because they’re grown here in Argentina — is hearts of palm (palmitos in Spanish) so I went with that. *
* Note: Deforestation is dreadful and harvesting hearts of palm can contribute to it if the trees are killed in the process (as is the case when the palm hearts come from trees that were harvested for palm oil). In some countries — like Argentina — specially bred palms are grown specifically to harvest the hearts sustainably, just as picking apples from a tree will not harm it and a new crop will be produced the next year. Do your due diligence to ensure that the palm hearts you purchase are environmentally sound.
California: we proudly showcase our fruits and nuts … and veggies too
I live in Argentina now but I’m still a native son of the Golden State and proud of our culinary contributions. California Fusion cuisine prominently features fresh fruits and vegetables in light dishes, without meat being the star of the show. Tonight’s dish is chock full of veggies and fruit.
We blend the cooking styles, techniques, and ingredients of other cultures into our food in ways that are novel but still evocative of the nations or regions from which they derive. You’ll see that this recipe has elements of Asian cuisine in it, particularly Chinese (although the soy-orange-glaze is somewhat teriyaki-like, reminiscent of Japanese cooking). Chinese cooking, like California Fusion, typically features vegetables prominently, integrating meat (beef, pork, chicken, etc) in the meal but not making it the sole attraction.
One trait of California Fusion that I love is what I call “balance through contrasts.” In other words, we don’t just go for the easy one-note profile in a dish; instead, we seek to add other notes that are complementary, that balance each other by means of their contrasts.
In my recipe, the sauce is divided into two contrasting, but complementary, parts. Half becomes a tangy light dressing for the greens when vinegar is added to it; the other half is blended with honey and thickened to become a full-bodied glaze for the chicken. The sweetness of the mandarins balances the pungent umami flavors of the toasted sesame seeds.
Every mouthful should be a surprise as one taste note peaks then fades and another note rises to momentarily dominate the palate.
Imperial Mandarin Salad
So, here is Imperial Mandarin Salad. On a base of dressed leafy greens, I layered slices of chicken breast in a soy-based glaze with flash-braised mandarin orange segments, cucumber spears, and hearts of palm. The entire dish was then sprinkled liberally with toasted sesame seeds and sliced green onion shoots. I served it with golden homemade biscuits and whipped honey-orange butter.
Imperial Mandarin Salad
Servings: 4 |
Prep Time: 20 minutes Cooking Time: 25 minutes |
1 ½ Tbs sesame seeds
3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 Valencia, navel, or other juice orange
1 ½ Tbs oil
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
2/3 cup soy sauce
2/3 cup water
2 Tbs honey
1 Tbs cornstarch
2 Tbs water
3 Tbs white vinegar
2 heads lettuce, spinach, or other leafy greens (choose 2 for more variety)
2 cucumbers
1 jicama, yacón, palm hearts, water chestnuts, or parsley root
4 mandarin (clementine) or satsuma oranges or tangerines
½ cup tops of green onions, finely sliced
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If you plan to serve the honey-orange butter described below, set the butter out now to soften at room temperature while you prepare the rest of the food.
Toast the sesame seeds in a dry skillet over medium heat for 3-5 minutes, stirring constantly, until they become golden and aromatic. Pour into a saucer or dish and set aside.
Zest the Valencia orange into a small dish then cut it in half and squeeze the juice from it into another dish or cup. Set aside both the zest and juice.
Peel the mandarins and remove the white pith (web-like bits). Break into its natural segments and de-seed each segment by making a slit in the center and squeezing out any pips (not all segments will have a pip and some segments may contain two or three pips). Set the mandarin segments aside for use later.
Slice the chicken breasts longitudinally into 4-6 fillet strips. Sauté the chicken pieces in the oil in a large skillet over medium heat, about 3 minutes on each side.
Put the soy sauce, water, minced garlic, squeezed juice, and half of the orange zest in a small bowl and stir well. Add the mixture to the chicken in the skillet and turn the heat down to low once the liquid begins to bubble a bit. Stir occasionally, turning the chicken pieces over to ensure both sides soak in the liquid.
Simmer for about 12 minutes, adding water if necessary to ensure there remains at least a cup of liquid in the skillet. Remove the chicken pieces onto a plate or dish to cool and use a ladle to transfer 1/3 cup of the soy liquid to a bowl to cool (this will become the dressing for the leafy greens).
Add the honey to the skillet and stir it into the remaining liquid.
Now the soy-honey liquid needs to be thickened to become a gooey glaze, about the consistency of a thick barbecue sauce. Place 1 heaping tablespoon of cornstarch into a small jar or plastic container with lid. Add 2 tablespoons of water and seal the container. Shake well. Pour half into the skillet with the remaining soy liquid and stir as it simmers. The liquid should thicken a bit after a minute or so. Use the rest of the cornstarch-water mixture if needed. Depending on how much liquid there is in your skillet, you might need to repeat this process with more water and cornstarch.
Pour the glaze over the chicken pieces and let cool for a couple of minutes. Sprinkle half of the toasted sesame seeds over the chicken. Use your hands to turn each piece until it is well coated with both the glaze and the seeds.
Without wiping out the skillet, pour the vinegar into it and deglaze any remnants of the soy sauce mixture. Drop the mandarin segments into the skillet and stir them around over medium heat for about a minute and a half. Remove the mandarins to another dish and pour the vinegar into the soy liquid mix (for dressing) that you set aside earlier.
Wash the greens and tear into pieces suitable for a salad, placing them in a large bowl. Prepare enough to create a good sized base on each plate, about 1/3 to ½ head per plate. Drizzle the cooled soy-vinegar dressing over the greens and lightly toss.
Peel the cucumbers (I like to “stripe peel” it, leaving 10-20% of the peel on so its somewhat bitter taste gives the cucumber some "bite") and trim off the ends. Slice them lengthwise and de-seed by dragging a spoon along the center. Slice the halves lengthwise again. Cut the long pieces into smaller pieces about 2 inches long and set aside.
Use a vegetable peeler to remove the skin from the jicama. Slice it into strips about 1/4" wide and thick (batonnet cut) and the length of the jicama (usually about 3 inches, so cut the batons in half if they’re too long). If using one of the other "texture veggies", prepare it in a suitable fashion.
Wash the green onions (scallions) and finely slice the green shoots (save the white bulb part for making another dish soon).
Place 1/4 of the dressed leafy greens on each serving plate. Place 1/4 of the chicken pieces on each plate atop the greens. Drizzle any remaining liquid from the greens bowl over the plates.
Place 1/4 of the mandarin segments, cucumber segments, and jicama batons (or other “texture veggie” pieces) atop each plate. Sprinkle the remaining half of the sesame seeds atop each plate then garnish with the sliced green onion.
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Calories: |
555 per serving (as calculated by HappyFork’s recipe nutrition calculator) |
Note that you might need to adjust quantities. For example, chicken breasts here are very good-sized but I recall quite a few skimpy ones in the US; so add another one to the recipe if needed. Leafy greens are highly variable as well; I’ve seen heads that would feed a multitude as well as pathetic ones that would barely serve for a piece of lettuce on a hamburger. Remember, recipes are just starting points for you to get creative and make dishes in whatever way that you find tasty and fun.
Mmmm, buttery biscuits
Biscuits are a marvel. They’re equally as delicious at breakfast as they are at dinner. They’re dead simple to make from scratch and even easier to pop out of a can.
Because tonight’s dish is a salad, I had down time in which I needed the chicken and sauce to cool to room temperature. That made it convenient to include homemade biscuits. Using a recipe that calls for baking powder instead of yeast, I had them ready to slide into the oven in 10 minutes or less (I use lard instead of shortening, add ½ teaspoon of vanilla, and brush the tops with milk before baking). While they baked, I whipped up the honey-orange butter that complements the orange notes in my salad, prepared the salad greens and veggies, and cleaned the kitchen a bit before beginning the plating.
Honey-Orange Butter
Servings: 8 |
Prep Time: 2 minutes |
1 stick of butter (4 oz.)
1 heaping tablespoon or soup spoon of honey
Zest from ½ of an orange
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Let the butter soften at room temperature in a small bowl.
Zest the orange using the “fine” section of the grater to grate just the orange-colored peel, not the white stuff beneath the skin. Use half of the zest for this recipe and half for the main dish recipe above.
Mix all ingredients together with the spoon you used for the honey. Whip the butter quickly a number of times to incorporate some air into the mixture so that it’s light and fluffy.
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Calories: |
113 per serving (serving size = 1 tablespoon) |
Trust me, your family and friends will flash big smiles when you give them fresh biscuits topped with honey-orange butter.
PostPrandial chit chat
So whence came the name of this dish? After our lunch, my friends asked me what I called it and I told them I didn’t really have a name for it. I had thought about Mandarin Chicken Salad but rejected it because I knew people would immediately think of chicken, mayo, and sandwiches. I told them I liked the word “mandarin” in it because it not only obviously refers to the mandarin oranges but also evokes the functionaries of China’s historic empire and thus pays homage to the Asiatic notes of my dish. So they debated it and decided we should call it “Imperial Mandarin Salad.”
What’s for dinner at your house tonight?