Numbing Chicken Noodle Salad

Name: Numbing Chicken Noodle Salad
Yield: Serves 4–6 as a starter or light meal
Ingredients: hoisin sauce 3 tbsp; ginger root 2.5 cm/1 in chunk; sugar 2 tbsp; Sichuan pepper 1 tsp, crushed; white peppercorns ½ tsp, crushed; sea salt ¾ tsp; spring onions 3 large, thickly sliced diagonally; salt ¼ tsp; boneless, skinless chicken breasts 3 organic, each weighing about 150 g/5½ oz; mint handful of leaves, stems discarded; coriander handful of leaves, stems discarded; cold-pressed sesame or sunflower oil 3 tbsp; rice vinegar 2 tbsp; Chinese leaves ⅓ of a head, thickly sliced diagonally; light soy sauce 2 tbsp; cucumber ½; dry sherry or rice wine 2 tbsp; Sichuan pepper 1 tbsp, crushed; soy sauce 2 tsp; muscovado sugar ¾ tsp; groundnut oil 2 tbsp; thin rice noodles 100 g/3½ oz; lime finely grated zest of 1; cashew nuts 3 tbsp, roughly chopped

Preparation info

Serves
4–6
as a starter or light meal

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Pepper

By Christine McFadden

Published 2008

About

This is a glorious mix of contrasting textures and flavours – numbing and tingling Sichuan pepper, cooling cucumber and mint, sweet crunchy nuts, zesty lime and tender noodles. A mellow sesame and soy dressing rounds out the flavours.

Ingredients

boneless, skinless chicken breasts 3 organic, each weighing about 150 g/5½

Main course
Starter
Spicy

Method

First make the marinade: dissolve the sugar in the sherry and soy sauce. Squeeze the ginger in a garlic press and add the juice to the mix. Stir in the hoisin sauce and salt.

Halve the chicken breasts horizontally, then cut them as evenly as possible into neat strips about 1cm x 4cm/½in x 1½in. Mix these with the marinade and leave at room temperature for 30 minutes or in the fridge for