52 Weeks, 52 Chickens: Week Five – Leftovers, bang bang chicken

One recipe I turn to quite often for leftover chicken or turkey is Nigella Lawson’s recipe for bang bang turkey salad. You can find it online here.

It’s delicious and spicy, and refreshing thanks to the spring onions and cucumber. You mix a sauce together by heating 2 tbsp groundnut oil, then cooling slightly and adding 2 tsp sesame oil, 3 tbsp smooth peanut butter, 2 tbsp chilli bean sauce, 1 tbsp caster sugar, 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 1/2 tbsp black Chinese vinegar and 2 tbsp water.

Then, you mix the sauce with the shredded chicken meat and lay it over a bed of shredded iceberg lettuce, and 20g each of chopped coriander and mint. Sprinkle cucumber and spring onions on the top.

Somehow, this time, the sauce came out a bit redder than usual… but it still tasted good, so who cares? Yum!

Gyoza and hot soy sauce cucumber bento

I love making Japanese pickles – unlike western pickles, these aren’t preserved vegetables, but are soaked in a preservative liquid for a couple of hours, or overnight. This recipe produces a spicy delicious pickle that goes really well with rice and gyozas.

Recipe for hot soy sauce cucumber

Ingredients

1/2 cucumber

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp mirin

2 tbsp soy sauce

1 tsp English mustard

Method

Halve the cucumber and scoop out the seeds. Cut the cucumber into half moon chunks, salt and leave to stand for 20 minutes in a covered bowl.

Take a plastic bag and add the remaining ingredients, mixing well so that the mustard is dissolved. Add the cucumber and mix well, then refrigerate until needed – leaving for at least 10 minutes. Drain well before adding to a bento – best used the same day or the day after.

This recipe originally appeared in 501 Bento Box Lunches, published by Graffito Books.