This weeks theme is a bit lazy. Still enjoyable of course.
I have jury duty this week in the Supreme Court of New York building, 100 Centre Street in lower Manhatten. Unbenounced to me the court building was steps away from Bayard street and in turn - Shanghai Cuisine. So there is the theme - eating by the court house. Every day this week I will try to have at least one meal by the court house. Today it looks like a Thai place.
Jury Duty Lunch #1 - Shanghai Cuisine
Hot and Sour soup
Crab and Pork tiny buns
Baby Shrimp Fried Rice
Here is a leftover from chickpea week that I made. My problem with chicken salad has always been mayonnaise. I just don't enjoy the stuff ( as any good food writter will tell you - we must learn to eat the things we despise and one of these weeks mayonnaise will be the theme). I never have liked it. But I craved chicken salad. So I used Hoomus as the binding agent.
Eureka!! It was good. Below I will tell you what I did and soon I will write up an actual recipe with some pictures.
1. Make a good amount of hoomus (olive oil, tahini, 2 cans of chickpeas, 5 gloves of garlic, salt, pepper, cumin, a little lemon juice).
2. Marinate three chicken breasts in lemon juice, cumin, seasoning salt, peper, and olive oil.
3. Brown chicken in a pan and cook all the way through. Reduce leftover liquid with water or more lemon juice and save.
4. Put chicken in food processor and reduce it to tiny shredded pieces. Add the reserve liquid and a bit more peper to the chicken and run food processor once more.
5. Cut up scallions and add to the chicken. Add hoomus back to the mixture and run once more in the food processor to mix.
6. Salt and pepper if needed.
And there you have it. Does it taste like chicken salad? Well, somewhat. The garlicky taste of hoomus is strong but mixed with the chicken things balance out. I toasted wheat bread and served the chicken salad on it topped with cucumber, lettuce, and a few strips of bacon.