Recipes: Chinese Chicken Noodle Salad and Escabeche

Our family enjoys eating foods from other cultures.  I encourage you to try these delicious recipes. First, though, you must cook a four to five pound chicken until it is tender. Or if you’re like me (Cathy) you prefer the roasted chicken flavor. Put a chicken in your roaster. Add water to almost cover the chicken and roast it in a 350 degree oven until it is fall-off-the-bone tender. Remove the chicken from the broth, cool it, and debone it. Save the broth.

Chinese Chicken Noodle Salad

8 oz. rice noodles or thin spaghetti
Cook in water until tender. Drain in a colander and rinse with cold water. Set aside.

1/4 c. toasted sesame oil
1/2 c. soy sauce
6 T. rice or apple cider vinegar
1 t. ground ginger
1 clove garlic, crushed
Combine in small bowl. Add to noodles.

1 whole chicken breast, cut into small chunks
Your choice of vegetables, chopped or shredded:
scallions, sweet red pepper, celery, carrot, tomatoes, cucumber, squash, bean sprouts, broccoli
Add to noodles and sauce and toss. Best chilled overnight to integrate the flavor. Garnish with cilantro if desired.

For breakfast the next morning, poach your eggs in some of the leftover broth. The broth gives the eggs a delicious flavor. We love eggs cooked this way! After serving the eggs, strain the broth. It is now ready for escabeche for lunch. Escabeche (chicken onion soup) is a special dish served by Maya Indian descendents in the country of Belize.

Escabeche

4 c. chicken broth
2 c. cooked chicken (or the rest of the chicken you cooked up)
2 c. sliced onions
2 T vinegar
1 clove garlic, minced
1
/8 tsp. ground cloves
1 tsp. crushed oregano
hot pepper sauce or jalapenos to taste

Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes. This is important as it intensifies the flavors. Serve with warmed tortillas. Our family loves to spread the tortillas with peanut butter, roll them up and dip them in the soup.

Baked Steak or Lamb Chops

Do you need a simple, surefire recipe for steak or chops? My family LOVES steak baked in the oven. I rarely add a marinade, but instead just add a little garlic, salt, and thyme so we can taste the wonderful rich flavor of the beef.

To prepare the steak/chops, sprinkle both sides of each piece of meat with salt and a little granulated garlic and thyme. Place in your baking dish. Add 1/2 inch of water. Cover dish. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 1/2 hours. Or reduce the heat to 325 degrees and bake for 2 hours. The last time I baked steak, I forgot to add the water and after baking the steak extra long, it was browned and not dried out, but tender and delicious. This was because I do NOT trim the fat. Fat from beef that has been grass finished has omega 3 fatty acids and CLA (conjugated linoleic acid). CLA has been known to reduce cancerous tumors.

Chicken and Rice

Put 2 cups of brown rice in the bottom of your roaster. Top with a little chopped onion and bell peppers. Sprinkle with salt. Add 4 cups of hot water. Sprinkle salt on your whole chicken. Place breast side up into roaster on top of the rice. Sprinkle with desired herbs. I like sage, garlic powder and onion powder. Cover. Baked at 325 degrees for three hours or till chicken is fall-off-the-bone tender. Are you in a hurry? Turn the oven up to 400 degrees and bake for 2 hours. (At 400 degrees, the rice will probably stick to the bottom of the pan a little, but it won’t burn.) I like to double the recipe so I have leftovers to make chicken and rice soup. To make the soup you only need to add water and a little salt to the rice and chicken that has been taken off the bone. The broth is in the rice.

Quick and Easy Pizza

If you want pizza, but don’t have the time or desire to put together a yeast dough crust, here’s a recipe you can try. My family loves pizza, but they don’t think they get it often enough (especially my husband 🙂 ). So not long ago I began using this recipe. It was an instant hit and it is quicker and easier to make.

Crazy Crust Pizza

1 cup flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ground oregano
1/8 tsp. black pepper

       Combine in bowl.

2 eggs, beaten
2/3 cups milk

       Combine and stir into flour mixture. Pour batter into greased pizza pan.

1/3 cup chopped onions
Mushrooms if desired

    Sprinkle over dough. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes. Remove from oven and spread on meat, pizza sauce and toppings below:

1 lb. hamburger

    Brown and drain. To have a sausage flavor, add Wright’s hickory smoke or 1 tsp. ground sage to the meat. You can also use chicken or lamb, cut up.

1 cup pizza sauce
3/4 tsp. basil
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1 1/2 cups grated mozzarella or cheddar cheese

    After putting toppings on pizza, return to oven 5 more minutes or until cheese melts.

A Chicken Recipe From a Customer

One of our customers, Donald Fowles, sent us a delicious chicken recipe last month and we’d like to pass it along to you. Here is what he says:

"Cut one large onion into chunks and put in bottom of crockpot.  Mix ~2 tbsp. olive oil, 1-2 cloves garlic, 1/2 to 1 tsp. dry tarragon, and salt and pepper to taste in a small bowl.  Wash whole chicken, drain, and put it in crockpot breast side down.  Rub about 1/3 of olive oil mixture over bottom of chicken.  Turn chicken over and rub remaining mixture on chicken.  (Add no other moisture.)  Cook 8 hrs on low.

“This recipe is so quick and easy, and it results in a moist and tasty chicken ready to eat when you get home from work.  I strain the juices left in the crockpot and put them in the fridge.  The next day I scrape off the fat at the top and use the gelled material as the base for chicken gravy, to which I add some of the leftover chicken meat and serve over hot rice.  Incredible!"

Recipe: Cathy’s Favorite Marinade

My favorite marinade for meat and poultry:

1/4 c. olive or coconut oil
1/4 c. balsamic or apple cider vinegar
1 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. dried basil leaves
1/2 tsp. salt

Bake the meat or poultry in the marinade. Delicious!

Recipe: Butter Baked Chicken

Here’s one of our family’s favorite chicken recipes. It’s so delicious and sooo easy.

1 chicken, cut up

4 Tbsp. butter, melted (no substitutes except coconut oil)

Unrefined sea salt

Brush one side of each chicken piece with butter. Sprinkle with salt. Turn the chicken pieces over. Repeat the process of brushing with butter and sprinkling with salt. Bake skin side up at 350 degrees 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours or till the chicken pieces are tender. (Breast pieces will take less time.) To speed up the baking of the chicken, you can bake it as high as 425 degrees and it will still bake fine.