But I don’t have a picture.
There is a story here though.
It was Sunday, July 5th, the tail end of a busy holiday weekend, and a busy last week in the kitchen preserving fruit. Because it was a holiday weekend, we had the unexpected bonus of not having an evening service at church, so I found myself with time to make a decent dinner. Except I’ve also been nursing a head cold, and my energy comes and goes in spurts. So I went back and forth on dinner. Everything rolled through my brain and then rolled back out. I really wanted to make pancakes, because it was quick and easy. But poor Andy hasn’t really eaten good, scratch food in over two weeks. We were gone for 9 days to Florida, and he left to work out of town before we even got home. Then when he was home, it was holiday run-around, with good grill food, but not a great meal made with love here at home. And since Sunday was the only opportunity for a decent meal before he left again for another week…
I went out to the garden and surveyed what I had out there. I had tons of peas to be harvested. They were snap peas, but a lack of rain this last week made them more like snow peas- the peas were not swollen and puffy. No worries, I like snow peas too. So I picked peas, and then I picked more peas, and was amazed when I practically filled the bowl I had with me. I even left peas on the plant for another day! Then I wandered over by the kale and pulled off a few leaves of dinosaur kale, and decided that I should make a stir-fry for dinner with all these peas and a bit of kale. I mentioned that to the kids and they begged me to make the ground beef stir fry. Only, when I went to pull the ground beef out of the freezer, I saw I had a lot more frozen chicken breasts and decided to go in that direction instead. I’m so glad I did!
I had my peas, chicken and kale, and went in search of a new way to put them together. I wanted the peas to be barely cooked in the stir fry, and I really wanted a light sauce- similar to a moo goo gai pan that you would get at a Chinese take out place. I came upon this recipe at Eating Well for a Warm Snow Pea and Chicken Salad. Go ahead and go look at that, because the picture there is what inspired my chicken salad. I thought the recipe sounded just a little different and fun, and I decided I wanted to make it.
I started with the chicken breasts that were now about half thawed. I put them in a pot with 2 cups of homemade chicken stock, and then decided to add a tablespoon of soy sauce to the broth as well. I brought the broth up to a boil, then turned it down to a simmer, added a lid, and let the chicken poach for about 15 minutes- turning it once or twice as it cooked.
While the chicken did it’s thing, though, I kept reading that recipe and in the end, I decided that I did not want a warm salad at all, and I also did not want the sauce called for in that recipe. I thought about what it would be like to sit and sliver up my pile of peas like the picture showed, and I thought about how fresh they were and how crunchy they would be. I wanted that crunch!
So I slivered up my entire pile of peas. I probably ended up with 4-5 cups of slivered snap/snow peas. Then I grabbed half a red bell pepper from the fridge and sliced that up thinly for some color contrast and added that to the peas. The chicken finished cooking, so I pulled that out to cool. I tasted a bit of the chicken and thought it needed salt, so I also sprinkled the chicken with salt and pepper. Once it was cool, I shredded that up and added it to the peas as well. I was really wishing I had some green onion at this point.
So I wandered back out to the garden and pulled up about 5 teeny-tiny baby scallions. Really, they looked more like chives,but they were packed with onion flavor, and even better than them being full sized scallions, when I chopped them up finely and added them to the salad, they spread the onion flavor throughout- without adding obvious bites of onion. Finally, I took a tablespoon of sesame seeds and put them in a pan to toast up.
I still needed a sauce though. I thought really hard about going easy and just grabbing a bottle of salad dressing from the fridge and using that. I have plenty of options on hand! But then I thought of how long ago I’d made a chicken salad from Ina Garten that used a peanut sauce. The sauce then ended up WAY salty, but I thought the peanut flavor would be perfect with the peas and chicken. Then, as I read through that old blog post I realized I was coming awfully close to making her salad anyway- only I was using slivered snap peas instead of the asparagus!
I modified the dressing, using very scant amounts of everything, because I wanted a scant amount of dressing on the whole thing. Tossed it up, added another pinch of salt, and dinner was served with some fresh Florida watermelon on the side. The salad was absolutely delicious. Andy loved it, I loved it, the kids loved it. Even better, Andy took the remains with him to work on Monday and texted that it was still delicious- AND the peas were still crunchy. I will most definitely be making this salad again. It’s a perfect summer salad that could be made ahead well in advance of when you need it. Next time though, I will take a picture.
Here is my modified peanutty dressing. This would be good in so many applications. As a salad dressing as I used it, or as a dip for veggies or spring rolls. It was nice and light, but still full of flavor. This dressing as made fully dressed about 8 cups of chunky salad without being too heavy and cloying. It would multiply easily if you wanted more dressing.
A Lighter Peanut Dressing
2 tablespoons olive oil 2 tablespoons natural peanut butter 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar 1 teaspoon soy sauce 1 teaspoon honey 1/8 teaspoon sesame oil 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder 1/4 teaspoon salt few grinds of black pepperDirections:
Whisk everything together in a small bowl until fully combined. If your peanut butter is really thick, you may need to add an extra splash of liquid to the bowl. You can use water or extra vinegar- taste it to see what you would prefer.
You also may need more or less salt depending on the soy sauce you use. I use a brand I find in the Asian aisle of the grocery store, so it’s a touch more salty than the regular brands.
Makes about 1/2 cup of dressing.