Vietnamese Chicken Salad [Quick From Scratch Chicken, Turkey & Cornish Hens]

What caught my eye with Quick From Scratch's Vietnamese Chicken Salad was the combination of fresh cilantro and mint, plus the inclusion of some reasonably authentic flavours. This is still a westernized recipe (I mean, it's from the 90s), but I think it turned out pretty well.

Cookbook Recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 1/3 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 4 - I got a value pack and stashed the extras in the freezer)
• 1 cup canned low-sodium chicken broth or homemade stock
• 4 scallions, including green tops, chopped
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/4 lbs green cabbage, shredded (I got lucky at the grocery store, there was only one half-head of cabbage and it weighed that amount exactly)
• 3 carrots, grated
• 6 tbsp chopped fresh mint and/or cilantro (the cookbook says you can use one or the other if necessary, but they work great together)
• 1/4 cup lime juice (2 limes worth)
• 1/4 cup soy sauce or fish sauce (I went with soy sauce since it was on hand)
• 4 tsp sugar (that's a lot of sugar)
• 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes (that's not a lot of pepper flakes)
• 1/4 cup chopped peanuts

Following the cookbook recipe exactly:

1. Cut each breast into five diagonal pieces. In a saucepan, bring the broth, 1/4 of the scallions, and 1/4 tsp salt. Bring to a simmer, add chicken, stir and cover. The recipe says to cook over a low heat for 5 minutes, but I found a medium heat was needed to make sure the chicken cooked. Turn the heat off and let the chicken steam for 5 minutes. I think this step is also to let it cool down for shredding, but it's still scalding hot when it comes out of the pan. Remove the chicken and shred it.

2. In a large bowl, combine the cabbage, carrots, rest of the scallions, chicken, and 4 tbsp of the mint and cilantro.

3. In a small bowl, whisk the lime juice, soy sauce, sugar, pepper flakes, and 1/4 tsp salt. Toss dressing in with salad. Top with the remaining herbs and the peanuts.

The Outcome:

This is pretty good! The flavours come together pretty well, though I think the lime juice comes through a bit sharp, though I have a feeling it will probably gel better after sitting in the fridge for a bit. While it's not a truly authentic Vietnamese recipe, it does have a lot of Vietnamese flavours, especially with the lime, soy sauce, cilantro, and peanuts. The mint adds some interesting depth, and it's generally a pretty healthy salad too. I could see myself making this again, especially for a potluck.

Of course, as always, it could use more chili.

1/4 tsp for the entire salad. Really.

Spicy Chicken Chili [Quick from Scratch Chicken, Turkey & Cornish Hens]

I had originally wanted to make this cookbook's Groundnut Stew recipe but for the life of me couldn't find any okra, fresh or frozen, so I flipped the page and came to their Spicy Chicken Chili recipe. I love spicy food, usually peel-your-face off, but my gut instinct is that a recipe from the 90s isn't going to have any punch to it.

Cookbook Recipe:

Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp cooking oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 pound skinless chicken thighs, cut into strips (I got them boneless as well)
• 4 tsp chili powder (this is a pathetic amount of chili powder for a whole pot of chili. If I remake this recipe, it's going to be 4 tbsp)
• 1 tbsp ground cumin
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 jalapeno pepper, seeds and ribs removed, chopped (another thing I hate - deseeding peppers. It just makes them less spicy. Again, if cooked again, I'd leave the seeds.)
• 1 1/2 cups canned crush tomatoes with their juice
• 2 1/2 cups canned low-sodium chicken broth or homemade stock
• 1 2/3 cups drained and rinsed pinto beans (I had to substitute romano, but they're extremely similar)
• 1 2/3 cups drained and rinsed black beans (both these beans are about the amounts in 443ml/15 oz can, but I could only find the larger cans, so I saved the extras)
• 1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
• 1/3 cup chopped cilantro 

Following the cookbook recipe exactly:

1. In a large saucepan, heat the oil over moderately low heat. Sautee the onion and garlic until they start to soften, about 3 minutes.

2. Increase heat to medium, add chicken, cook until no longer pink, about 2 minutes.

3. Stir in the chili powder, cumin, oregano, and salt, then the jalapenos, tomatoes, and broth. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 15 minutes.

4. Stir in beans and pepper, simmer uncovered for another 15 minutes. Top with cilantro.

The Outcome:

Unsurprisingly, this is not spicy. Like, not even a detectable tingle. The other spices are a bit light too, so the tomato flavour is much more dominant than in most chilies. It also has a much soupier consistency. If I was to remake this, I would cut it down to 2 cups of broth, at least an extra tsp or two of cumin, and just go hog wild with the chili powder. It's not bad, it's warm and hearty and easy to make, but it doesn't have zing. I'm going to reheat some of the leftovers later and add some ghost pepper sauce that I have in my fridge - that'll pick it right up!

Russian-Style Chicken Cutlets [Quick From Scratch Chicken, Turkey & Cornish Hens]

Not as pretty, but it works out in the end.

The first test recipe from the Quick From Scratch Chicken, Turkey & Cornish Hens cookbook is for Russian-Style Chicken Cutlets. The "Russianness" seems to come from the inclusion of dill, but a bit of googling suggests this recipe is based on a Russian dish called "Pozharsky Cutlets" dating back to the 19th century.

The recipe warns that ground chicken can often be "disappointingly dry" and so uses cream and a fair deal of butter to make it moist. Between the half-and-half, the oil, and the butter, this is definitely not a diet dish.

Cookbook Recipe:

Ingredients:

• 2 slices "good-quality" white bread, crusts removed (not sure what constitutes "good-quality", but I got a fresh loaf from the grocery store's in-house bakery)
• 1/4 cup half-and-half cream
• 1 lb ground chicken (yes, the special deal was that it was only $5 instead of $7. Yes, chicken is that expensive in Canada.)
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp fresh-ground black pepper (the cookbook was very insistent on fresh-ground)
• 1/2 tsp dried dill
• 5 tbsp butter, 3 of them at room temperature
• 1 cup dry bread crumbs
• 2 tbsp cooking oil

Following the cookbook recipe exactly:

1. Break the bread into pieces and put into a bowl. They didn't specify how big the pieces should be, so I tore it up into moderately small chunks. Soak the bread in the half-and-half until it's absorbed, about 2 minutes.

2. Mix in the chicken, egg, salt, pepper, dill, and the 3 tbsp room temperature butter in with the bread. This is the first issue I had with the recipe - as the room temperature butter hits the cold chicken that you've just taken out of the fridge, it becomes firm and hard to incorporate. You're left with pretty big butter chunks in the chicken mix and you have to work pretty hard to blend them in.

3. Put the mix into the freezer for 10 minutes.

Yum.

4. The recipe warns you that the chicken will still be "very soft" when taken out of the freezer. Form the mixture into four oval cutlets and coat with breadcrumbs. Heads up that the consistency of the chicken is very weird - it feels like it's about to fall apart, but it's also very sticky. It will definitely form cutlets, but there's no way they'll be as pretty as the picture without using some kind of press or mould.

5. Melt the remaining butter AND the oil in a nonstick frying pan, and cook the cutlets until "golden brown and just done", which is 4 to 5 minutes per side. I had to split it up into two sets of two, since that's all I could fit into my frying pan.

The cookbook suggests a side of sauteed mushrooms, which sounded like a good idea. I deglazed the pan and sauteed the mushrooms with a bit of garlic salt. The wine recommendation was an "uncomplicated red wine", such as a French Beaujolais or a merlot from Trentino in Italy. Since I live in the part of Canada with government liquor stores, I did wrangle a merlot, but they didn't have a Trentino.

The Outcome:

This is pretty good! The weird consistency of the raw chicken cooks up well - the cutlets don't fall apart and the breadcrumb crust is nice and crispy. It's definitely on the buttery side - there's a LOT of butter in here, and it's not dry in the least. I think the firmer butter meant that the butter was less incorporated, so there were little buttery pockets in the chicken. The dill flavour is very subtle, so if you like dill you can always add a bit more. I think it might take some practice to deal with the consistency, but the only real suggestion I would make would be to soften the butter instead of just letting it go room temperature - that way it can incorporate better. It does go well with the mushrooms and wine, though I think the already subtle dill flavour gets overwhelmed when eaten with sides/wine.