Waldorf Salad |
Autumn
I have been told that my version is better than what you can get at the Waldorf Astoria, although I haven't been there to check myself.
Ingredients:
2 pounds of potatoes - any sort that works well when boiled and doesn't fall apart.
A chicken breast, free range if you can find it. No skin, no bone.
One apple, or two if you like it a lot. I prefer them as sweet as possible. And if "seconds", or mis-shaped apples are available, by all means get those.
Walnuts.
Mayonnaise. This is the trickiest one: homemade is not safe, and has way too many calories, and the store version is not local. If yoghurt is local, you can mix two thirds mayonnaise with one third unsweetened plain yoghourt to create a very nice and much healthier salad dressing.
Preparation:
Boil the potatoes; peeling them before or after boiling is a matter of preference. I prefer to peel them after becuase that way there's less waste. Cut in chunks (dice looks better but chunks saves time).
Boil in another pot the two halves of the chicken breast, with a little salt. Check that it's completely done inside (it doesn't take much, maybe ten to fifteen minutes). Don't throw the water away even though it doesn't look like real soup at all. Use it as the base of a soup, with lots of vegetables and spices. Cut the chicken in small pieces.
Crack the walnuts if they weren't already open, and cut in small pieces.
Peel the apple if you like. I don't. Core it, dice it.
Mix all the solid ingredients together, and then the salad dressing.
Comments
As previously stated on this site, I'm not sufficinently afraid of things that aught to be scary. I mean, I've survived 24 years of eating raw cookie dough and other things with raw eggs in it, and I'm not dead yet. That's got to count for something, right?
Regardless, for all you sensible folks out there, here's a recipe for cooked mayonaise. It looks fussy, but I suppose that's worth not getting scary diseases, right?
Peggy Trowbridge Filippone, the woman who submitted the above recipe, also notes that if you buy irradiated eggs, they're salmonella-less. However, they're also sort of scary, and I somehow doubt that irradiation is done by many local small farmers...
I used to love watching the women in Senegal whip up a mayonnaise using their fingers as the whisk!
For those of you interested in a "no-kill" Waldorf, I would suggest using marinated baked cubes of tempeh and a tofu mayo:
Combine in a blender 1 box Mori-Nu silken tofu (or a block of soft Ithaca Soy tofu - similar results, although you will need to blend a bit longer) with 3 TBS canola oil, 3 TBS lemon juice, 1 TBS rice vinegar, 1/2 tsp salt. Blend until smooth.
And I always associate a Waldorf salad with celery. I would probably slice up a few stalks of celery to add to the above, or maybe some a half cup of chopped lovage, leaves and stem.
All the same, here is a recipe for homemade mayonnaise ADAPTED from Edouard de Pomiane, _French Cooking in Ten Minutes_ (trans. P. and M. Hyman; Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1971-2001):
(edit comment)Mayonnaise
*1 egg, room temperature (run warm water over it)
*Salad oil (I use light olive oil)--also room temp. "If it is too cold, it will be partly solidified and your mayonnaise will be a total failure."
Break the egg, placing yolk in a small bowl (I find that a small glass measuring cup or jar works well). With the aid of a friend, or with your own courage, drizzle the oil into the yolk in a very thin stream as slowly as possible while whisking the mixture with a fork. Season, once at the right consistency, with salt and vinegar (according to de Pomiane; I also add a little cayenne pepper).