hot salad & other stories: sticky memories
(Archive from July 15, 2022) I lived the beach life for a week, a great break from the dry heat of Colorado. With beach life also came clams, oysters, and lush greens grown on Long Island. It was a treat to cook for 5–11 people every night, a mix of grilled meats, fresh salads, and cheese boards to last a lifetime. One of the nights we did an entire dinner of hors d’oeuvres. The table was laden with lobster rolls on toasted brioche, a salty fresh cucumber and avocado salad, sweet corn elotes, clams prepared two ways (baked clams stuffed with bacon + cheese, and steam-grilled as one would make white wine mussels, but I used beer instead), and the new summer staple: grilled chicken + vegetable lettuce wraps with a sesame sauce.
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SESEAME CHICKEN LETTUCE WRAPS
2 chicken breasts, grilled with salt and pepper
2 carrots
4 bunch radishes
a handful each of basil, mint, cilantro
scallions, sliced thin on the bias
sesame seeds
2 heads bibb, boston, or butter lettuce, leaves separated
for the sauce:
soy sauce, mirin, hoisin, tahini or peanut butter, minced ginger, rice vinegar, chile oil optional
- Chop the chicken into pinkie finger-sized pieces.
- Use a vegetable peeler to peel all you can of the two carrots, then julienne them on a bias. Add to the chicken in a big bowl.
- Julienne the radishes (probably can’t use a peeler for this… but nothing’s impossible). Add to the bowl.
- Tear the basil, mint, and cilantro. Add to the bowl.
- Sprinkle in a few tablespoons of sesame seeds
- To make the sauce, combine a few tablespoons of soy, rice vinegar, mirin, hoisin, and tahini. Add a splash of rice vinegar, and about an inch of minced ginger. Taste for salt (add more soy, if needed). There are no hard and fast rules, make it the sesame-y, sweet, savory sauce of your dreams. Add a bit of chili oil, if desired.
- Arrange the lettuce leaves on a platter, with the sauce in a bowl beside them. Serve with the sesame chicken, offering people to build their own wraps.
OTHER STORIES
Elotes, in their husks: I thought it would be pretty and interesting to serve elotes in their own leaves. Shuck the corn, saving the best leaves. Cut each ear into two or three pieces, and char them on the grill with oil, salt and pepper. Arrange the leaves on a board, and tuck each piece of corn into the leaves like the ear of corn it was before. Grate a generous amount of cotija cheese over the top of all pieces, followed by a sprinkle of chile powder (I used Hatch green chile powder), a squeeze of lime, a drizzle of Mexican crema, and a handful of cilantro leaves.
Mouth Margs: Trust me on this one. They’re sillier than a traditional margarita! Line up pre-measured amounts of margarita ingredients in tiny cups/shot glasses/already-squeezed-lime-halves. Tip back the simple syrup, then triple sec, then tequila, and bite down on a lime wedge. Swoosh everything in your mouth, and ta-da! Mouth marg. Salt optional, fun required.
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I was reading about the idea that foods that take time and effort create the ‘stickiest memories in the minds of those who cook them’, and I think that’s why I love cook and will always put in effort to what I feed my self, family, and friends. Cook slowly, y’all.
