David Rubel's
What's For Dinner?
9/14/05
Sesame-Ginger Chicken Pasta Salad
(serves two adults and two children)
The dish’s key ingredients are the grilled chicken, the cold pasta, and the sesame-ginger dressing (which listener Susan Katz helped me formulate). All of these can be made in advance and refrigerated. The other ingredients and can be replaced with whatever you happen to have in your refrigerator.
The Salad
2 large chicken breasts, skin removed
1/2 box small shaped pasta (such as rotini or fiori)
lettuce
tomatoes, coarsely chopped
cucumbers, seeded and coarsely chopped
scallions, coarsely chopped
The Dressing
3-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped
2 Tbs toasted sesame oil
1 Tbs soy sauce
1 Tbs rice vinegar
1 Tbs rice wine
2 Tbs tahini
juice of 1/2 lime
1 Tbs brown sugar
1. Grill the chicken breasts until cooked all the way through. Let cool. Tear into bite-sized pieces.
2. Boil the pasta in salted water until done. Rinse in cold water until cool. Toss with a little sesame oil so that the pieces don’t stick together.
3. Combine the dressing ingredients in the bowl of a mini-food processor and process until the ginger has been pureed. Adjust the flavor to suit your taste.
4. Combine the salad vegetables attractively on each plate. Top with the pasta and the torn chicken. Drizzle with the dressing.
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Tips
* You can use either bone-in or boneless chicken breasts. The former take a little longer to grill but tend to come out moister.
* You don’t need to peel your cucumbers if you grew them or bought them at a farmers’ market. If you bought them at a supermarket, however, you will need to peel them to remove the wax that industrial farmers apply to retain moisture.
* Other salad ingredients you might consider include blanched snow peas, julienned red peppers, and chopped red onion.
Listener Feedback
Because her daughter is a fussy eater, Ann Lapinski served this dish with the sauce on the side. Also, because it was raining, she steamed the chicken breast on her stove top (in her vegetable steamer) rather than grilling it outside. She also asks whether the sesame oil listed in the recipe is the toasted Chinese variety. Yes, Ann, it is. My apologies for the lack of clarity. Finally, Ann writes, Being lazy, I used bottled lime juice, and it worked just fine. My son was surprised to find out that the main flavor was tahini and not peanut butter because the dish had a peanutty taste to him.
Susan Katz decided to liven up this recipe with more vegetables, and she reports that it was a great success. In addition to grape tomatoes, a seedless cucumber, and whole-wheat rotini, Susan added julienned orange peppers, diagonally sliced zucchini, blanched pea pods, and asparagus. “By adding more vegetables,” Susan writes, “I was able to cut back a bit on the amount of pasta and chicken, making it a lower-calorie meal for those of us watching our weight!” She also chose to broil the chicken rather than grill it outside. (It still came out moist and tender.)
If you have tried one of these recipes and have an improvement or tip or variation to suggest, please e-mail David at dinner@wamc.org. Also feel free to send along your own family cuisine recipes. You can even request dishes that you'd like David to present in the future.
David Rubel is president of
Agincourt Press, a book production company in Chatham, New York. He spends his days writing American history, then heads home after work to cook for his wife and two young children. His most recent book is
The Story of America (DK, 2002).
