Give your Festival feast a bit of Oriental flair

Today wraps up a wonderful season of Festival at Sandpoint concerts that have beckoned music lovers from around the area.

While the many excellent food booths offer superlative temptations, sometimes you want to bring your supper to enjoy it along with the great music and the added ambiance of the resident ospreys.

Today the Chef offers some Oriental options — chicken salad and some savory go-withs. Enjoy!

Oriental Chicken Salad

(Serves 6)

1/2 small/medium head bok choy or Napa cabbage, shredded

1 medium carrot, grated

4 green onions, sliced with tops

5 cups Chow Mein noodles

3 cups cut-up cooked chicken or turkey breast*

1 tablespoon sesame seeds, toasted

Ginger dressing (recipe follows)

Place prepared vegetables and chicken in large bowl.

Prepare ginger dressing.

Ginger Dressing

1/3 cup salad oil

1/4 cup white wine vinegar

1 tablespoon sugar

2 teaspoons soy sauce

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/2 tsp. ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon salt

Shake all ingredients in tightly covered container; refrigerate at least 2 hours.

Assemble salad: Pour ginger dressing over salad in bowl, mixing well. Add half the noodles, toss all together. Sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Serve over remaining noodles, or stir in at serving time for crispy texture.

• Option: For an elegant shrimp salad, forego the dressing and toss veggies with the following versatile recipe (which is also good hot over rice or alone at room temperature).

Spicy Citrus Shrimp

12 ounces raw large shrimp,

peeled, deveined

4 green onions, thinly

sliced 2 small red chilies, seeded, chopped

2 teaspoons orange-pineapple juice

2 teaspoons cornstarch

1/3 cup orange-pineapple juice

1 tablespoon sugar

3 tablespoons white rice vinegar

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 teaspoons sesame oil

Mix the 2 teaspoons orange-pineapple juice with the cornstarch.

Mix 1/4 cup orange-pineapple juice, sugar, vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil and chilies in wok or 10-inch skillet; heat to boiling.

Stir in shrimp, reduce heat, cover and simmer about 5 minutes, stirring frequently and turning shrimp until pink. Stir in cornstarch mixture. Cook and stir another 30 seconds or until thickened, stir in onions. Remove from heat.

Serve immediately over cooked rice, or cool, then chill and toss with Oriental Chicken Salad ingredients.

Sesame Wonton Chips

2 tablespoons water

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 16-ounce package wonton wraps

1/2 cup sesame seed

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly oil cookie sheet.

Mix water and soy sauce; brush lightly on both sides of wonton wrap. Cut each wrap diagonally into fourths. Place about 1/4-inch apart on cookie sheet. Sprinkle with sesame seed.

Bake 6-8 minutes or until crisp and light golden brown. Cool 1 minute before removing from cookie sheet. Cool completely on wire rack; store in airtight container.

Gingered Pineapple

1 large can pineapple chunks in own juice, drained

1 medium orange

1 teaspoon finely chopped

Preserved/candied ginger root

OR 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

Place drained pineapple in medium bowl. Grate 2 teaspoons orange peel from orange; reserve. Cut orange in half removing any seeds. Sprinkle orange peel and ginger root over pineapple.

Squeeze juice from orange halves over pineapple; stir gently. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour to blend flavors, stirring once. Serve with chicken salad.

(Editor’s note: For many years, Valle Novak has written gardening and cooking columns for the Daily Bee. “Weekend Gardener” and “Country Chef” became renowned for their humor, information and common sense advice on how to do everything from planting to cooking. While she recently retired, she has shared a number of columns to delight her many fans. This is one such column, originally published on Aug. 5, 2007.)