Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Turkey, chicken, lamb or pork salad

This recipe is a fantastic way of using up leftover protein from Christmas. You can throw whatever meat you fancy into it, and it just requires you to re cook it. So it's a twice cooked type of dish. This means that the meat will turn quite dry and sucks up the flavours more. It's how I really love meat, kind of crispy and crunchy. To remove the seeds from a half a pomegranate - find a freezer bag and hold the end of the pomegranate just inside the bag. Hit the end of the pomegranate with the handle of a knife sharpener or a mallet (just something heavy) and the seeds will fall out into the bottom of the freezer bag along with some of the juice. Just add both to the salad dressing. Doing this inside the bag contains the splash. I learnt the hard way - standing on a ladder to clean the splatter off the ceiling!!


The quantity serves 4.

2 handfuls of leftover meat
1/2 cup of cashew nuts
1/2 cup of cranberries
2 tspn five spice powder
1/2 cup of fresh chopped mint
1/2 cup of fresh chopped coriander
4 cups of mixed salad leaves
1 tbsp of honey
1 fresh chilli, finely chopped

Dressing
juice of one mandarin
juice of one lime
seeds from 1/2 a pomegranate
half a red onion, chopped finely
olive oil
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp soy sauce
grated fresh ginger

Shred the meat and slice into thin strips and place into a dry pan over a medium heat. Add the cashews, cranberries and five spice. Give it a good stir and toast. Shake the pan every now and again to prevent burning.

Add the mint, coriander and salad leaves to a bowl. Make the dressing in a separate bowl and mix the fruit juices together. You can add the pomegranate juice in too. Stir in the onion. Add a good slug of olive oil and the sesame oil and soy sauce. Squeeze in the juice from the grated ginger between your fingers. throw away the fibre.

Stir the dressing and taste for seasoning. Drizzle over enough dressing to coat the salad leaves then toss with your hands.

Add the honey to the pan with the meat and stir through until coated. Turn up the heat and fry the meat on high to crisp it up. Toss half of your pan-fried meat through the salad leaves and transfer to a serving plate.

Spoon the remaining nuts, cranberries and crispy meat over the top of the salad and add another drizzle of dressing. Garnish with extra pomegranate seeds and fresh chilli.






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