Teriyaki Chicken Wraps with Miso Dressing

When it comes to food, the three most important things are decidedly not location, location, location. Our favorite local Japanese restaurant sits in a depressing strip mall between a Latin-fusion dive (rapidly going out of business) and a More Than Just Nuts store.

Our favorite things about it are the fresh scallop sashimi and the miso salad dressing. The owner regards these two as, respectively, the most and least impressive things on his menu. And so, we left the beautiful scallop alone and flat out stole the salad dressing recipe. Here, we applied it to a wrap with a simple teriyaki chicken.

Miso Salad Dressing

1 tsp red miso
2 tbsp mayonnaise
1 tsp mirin
1 tsp brown sugar
Water

1. Whisk the first four ingredients together.
2. Taste, adjust, then add water to thin to desired consistency.


Teriyaki Chicken

(By the way, this is likely not the best teriyaki you'll ever have—so if you've got your own recipe, go for it.)

Two chicken breast halves (or boneless thighs), cut into 1 inch strips
¼ cup soy sauce
¼ cup mirin
2 tbsp Dry Sack (or saki, if you have it)
1 tbsp brown sugar, unpacked
2 tsp ginger, slivered
Water

1. Combine the soy sauce, mirin, saki, sugar, and ginger. Mix, then marinate chicken for 30-45 minutes.
2. Drain chicken, reserve marinade.
3. Grill chicken
4. Once done, heat a saucepan. Add chicken, reserved marinade and about 2tbsp water.
5. Reduce until a tasty glaze forms and remove.


To make wrap

1 recipe of PJ Hamel/King Arthur flour gorditas (or any flatbread)
1 recipe miso dressing
1 recipe chicken
Baby spinach
Scallions, slivered.

1. Lightly dress spinach with dressing.
2. Assemble how you like and add more dressing on top.

Pasta with Celery Sauce

Throughout pregnancy, she had only two cravings. One was celery. The other was French fries topped with canned gravy and American cheese. No comment.

Back to the celery. It's really out of favor among the food elite. A few years ago, an article appeared in Ars Culinaire or one of those high-end food magazines, opining that over the years celery must have become more bitter. It explained this by saying that more and more chefs were using less and less of it, even for the classic French mirapoix. We'll leave that discussion to the experts.

Of course, celery flavor is not going out of style. Celery root has made such a lightning ascent that celeriac salad is now on the menu of every Food Network star. (Why is the Food Network the only place outside of the porn industry where everyone is a star? We must stop digressing.)

So let's embrace it. This celery pasta is cheap, dead simple like all good Italian food, and, if you've got good, minty basil to go along with it, really tasty.

Pasta with Celery Sauce
1 large can tomatoes
2 stalks celery plus some celery heart, cut in very large pieces (you're going to remove them)
1 medium onion, quartered
Basil
Salt
2 tbsp butter
3tbsp cream cheese
Parmesan (lots)
Pasta

1. Place tomatoes, celery, 1 tsp salt, and onion in a pot.
2. Simmer for 40 minutes, adding H20 as necessary.
3. Allow to cool. Pull out the celery and onions and squeeze them over the pot to get out all the juice.
4. Add butter and bring back to a simmer.
5. Add cream cheese and stir until it dissolves
6. Add grated parmesan slowly while stirring until it tastes great. (a good handful or so)
7. Cook pasta, toss with sauce and basil to taste.

Summer Bread and Grilled Chicken Breast

Every summer, we abandon our oven and seek out a flatbread—usually something that can be made in a frying pan or on a grill. This year we've settled on an odd one. PJ Hamel, the always amusing baker at King Arthur, apparently fell in love with the Taco Bell Gordita, and decided to figure out how to emulate the bread. The result is an amazingly simple, soft, and durable little wrap that loves grilled veggies, chicken breast, sausage, and whatever else you have lying around. Her trick is to "cook" the flour with boiling water. We really can't say enough about it.

You can find the recipe here—and we also highly recommend her quick Caesar dressing.

She didn't offer a grilled chicken recipe, so we'll share ours. It's a little involved but quite tasty and helps keep you in Speedo shape. By the way, the pictured wrap is one with grilled veggies. We were entertaining and somehow forgot to photograph the chicken. A couple of gin and tonics may have played a role there—but it's also true that having a cute baby to photograph somehow saps your desire to set up a creative shot of a chicken Caesar wrap.

Grilled Chicken Breast

1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 tbsp each: smoked paprika, garlic powder
½ tbsp each: creole seasoning with salt, pepper, mixed Italian seasoning (or oregano)

1. Heat your grill to high.
2. Take each breast, place it flat on your board. With a sharp knife, slice it as you would a bagel, making two thinner pieces—not two gargantuan chicken tenders.
3. Take two pieces of plastic wrap and spray with cooking spray (water works too, if you have a spray bottle of that around).
4. Place a chicken breast between them.
5. Use a heavy saucepan to pound the breast until it's ¼ inch think. (This works much better than a silly meat mallet. Chicken breasts aren't tender like veal. You have to really whack 'em to get 'em flat).
6. Repeat for the rest.
7. Combine the spices and liberally dust each breast with them.
8. Allow to stand for a few minutes.
9. Brush or spray each breast with cooking oil.
10. Grill quickly—it should take 1-2 minutes on each side.
11. Slice and serve on flatbread with tomatoes, lettuce, and Caesar dressing.

Stuffed Clams

Our summer cottage lies on the coast near a rich store of shellfish, which can be extracted relatively easily. The problem is that the sea floor is mucky, and while the mussels are always good, the clams often end up dirty. To defeat this, we allow them to feast for a week on cornmeal and water in our refrigerator drawer. They expel the dirt and live quite happily until we're ready.

If you've never done stuffed clams before, they're really worth a shot. This recipe is the standard one in our area, although traditionally, they are cooked with a slice of bacon over the top. We put the bacon inside instead.

Cheapness note: Although we used all fresh clams, you can buy enough fresh ones for the shells and then fill out the recipe using canned clams.

Stuffed Clams

20-25 large clams, shucked, chopped with juice reserved
8-10 clam shells
4 thick slices bacon
2 small onions, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
2 medium carrots, diced
4 cloves garlic, chopped fine
1 lemon
Breadcrumbs
Butter

1. Preheat your oven to 425.
2. Cut the bacon into small pieces, and fry with a little olive oil until done. Set aside.
3. Sautee the onions, celery, and carrots in butter over low heat.
4. Just before the onion is translucent, add garlic and sautee for several minutes.
5. In a large bowl, add clams, garlic, vegetables, a small amount of lemon juice, and some of the reserved clam juice.
6. Don't be shy with the breadcrumbs. Add a lot and more clam juice and mix. The consistency should be thick and easily stick to your hands.
7. It's a good idea to fry a bit of the mixture to ensure that it will taste good.
8. Butter the inside of the clam shells.
9. Spray your hands with nonstick spray and go to work. First form meatball like pieces. Compress them a little, and then press them into the shells so they crest over the edge.
10. If you aren't planning on living forever, lay a slice of bacon over each one.
11. Bake for 10-15 minutes until lightly browned.
12. Enjoy with lemon juice.