Fritters ‘n turkey salad

So y’all want the sweet potato fritters recipe? It’s not exactly mine to give. Here’s the original, and here’s how I changed it:

I baked my sweet potato at high heat (450F to 500F) until soft, scooped out the flesh, and measured it — just under two cups. I combined it with 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon thyme, a few grinds of nutmeg, a few grinds of black pepper, 2 tablespoons of melted butter, 1 tablespoon of sugar, and 1 cup of milk. The milk helped cool the mixture. Next, I added two egg yolks and mixed it well.

Separately, I combined 1/2 cup of flour and 1 teaspoon of baking powder. I whipped my two egg whites to the stiff peak stage, then used the electric mixer to whip up the sweet potato mixture, adding the flour/baking powder dry ingredients gradually to the wet ingredients. Once this was well mixed, I folded in the egg whites.

I fried heaping-teaspoonful-sized dollops of batter in hot canola oil. 365F? Who knows. I don’t have a thermometer that goes up that high. You’ll need to turn the fritters over a few times with a fork in order to brown them evenly.

Drain on paper towels, sprinkle with powdered sugar. I skipped the “serve with syrup” step.

So: the main difference from the linked recipe was my addition of thyme, nutmeg, and black pepper. I was trying for a more savory fritter, but I think I wasn’t bold enough. Karen liked them. I thought they were too bland and, if I do them again, I’ll add a little more salt and perhaps some curry-type seasonings. Everything tastes better with cumin.

Here’s the recipe for Chinese Chicken Salad, more or less unchanged from the version I learned from my sister. Can you use this for turkey leftovers? I don’t see why not. If you like turkey well enough to make it in the first place, you ought to like it in this salad, too. But the best, BEST Chinese Chicken Salad, no arguments please, substitutes roasted duck meat for chicken. Oy. Yum.

Recipe below the cut.

The salad:

several cups of shredded romaine lettuce
shredded meat from a roasted fowl, however much you like
one bunch of scallions (green onion), diced
one carrot, grated coarsely
several radishes, julienned
whatever other vegies you want in your salad, julienned

Yeah, you can use iceberg lettuce for this, but iceberg lettuce is so boring. Use a lettuce that has a bit of flavor! Add cilantro, if you like cilantro; and, although I’ve never tried it, I imagine arugula would be an amazing addition.

The rice stick:

This is sold in the Asian Food section of your grocery store as rice stick, mai fun, or sai fun. If there’s a difference between mai fun and sai fun, please tell me. I’ve used both with some success.

You need to deep fry this sh!t, but watch out: when you add a brick of rice stick into hot oil, it expands to four or five times its original size and the center never cooks properly. I use kitchen shears to cut the brick in half (so as to make it a thinner brick). Have handy a big pan lined with paper towels.

Heat your oil. To test the oil, add a little fragment of rice stick to it (don’t worry, when you cut the brick in half with shears, little fragments will be ALL over the place). When the oil is the right temperature, the rice stick will crisp up within one or two seconds. The oil should not be so hot that the rice stick browns.

Fry your rice stick one half-brick at a time. Turn once with tongs. Drain. Taste it to make sure it’s cooking correctly: properly fried rice stick will be crispy, not chewy. If it’s chewy (or heaven forbid crunchy) your oil isn’t hot enough yet.

The dressing:

I always wing it, so I don’t have exact measurements. But here’s my best guess as to the dressing:

1/4 cup table sugar
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/4 cup toasted sesame seeds
1/4 cup sesame seed oil (the brown stuff prepared from toasted seeds, NOT the pale stuff!)
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Combine vinegar, sugar, and salt. Stir well — you’re trying to get the sugar and salt to dissolve, but don’t fret if it doesn’t dissolve completely. Add sesame seeds and oil. Mix well.

Preparation:

Add dressing to salad ingredients. Toss. Top with rice stick. Garnish with a bit of reserved green onion or cilantro.

Variations:

You folks in the Bay Area have to try Ming’s (on Embarcadero in Palo Alto). Their version of Chinese Chicken Salad, made with roasted duck, is killer.

Ming’s goes heavy on the cilantro. They do two other things which make their salad unique:

• they julienne the duck skin and roast it until it’s crisp, then add it to the salad at the last moment (otherwise, the skin will lose its crispness)
• they lace the salad with Chinese yellow mustard

To recap: roast duck instead of chicken, crispy duck skin, yellow mustard, cilantro. They might also add some thinly julienned red bell pepper (marinated in a rice wine vinegar/sugar mixture), but I’m not sure. I haven’t been there in a few years. I’ve done this, however, and it makes for a beautiful color and flavor contrast.

Some folks substitute fried won tons for fried rice stick. Feh. Too starchy, and it adds a flavor to the salad which (to my palate) seems inappropriate.

What will you be doing with your turkey leftovers?

D.