I first encountered Kataifi (I’ve also seen it spelled “katafi”. I’m not sure which is right, but on my box of dough, it said “kataifi”.) at one of my favorite restaurants, Artie’s, in Fairfax City, Virginia. They have blue crab fritters that are breaded with kataifi (finely shredded phyllo dough) and served with roasted corn salsa and ginger lobster butter. They are SO delicious and you should definitely stop and have some, if you are in the Northern Virginia/Washington D.C. area.
I thought that it would be fun to try something else with shredded phyllo, and Emeril’s website was obliging enough to have this recipe: Katafi Wrapped Chicken Strips with 2 Dipping Sauces
I used Emeril’s “Baby Bam” spice, which is a “bammed-down” version of his “Essence” spice. The recipe for this great seasoning is in his “There’s a Chef in My Soup” book, but it contains paprika, salt, parsley, onion and garlic powder, black pepper, oregano, basil, thyme and celery salt. I use “Baby Bam” on almost everything and even keep a glass jar of it out on my counter, near the stove, with the salt, pepper and olive oil. The chicken strips were good, and the chicken itself had good flavor, but the phyllo was fairly bland. I don’t know if I over-breaded and there was just too much, but I think, if I made these again, I might sprinkle a little Baby Bam over the top of the strips before they’re baked. The good news is that the sauces were pretty flavorful. Hubby decided to use them (well, mostly the raspberry) for “dousing” sauces, instead of dipping sauces, and I think that’s probably the best way to go. The strips, with all of the crumbly, dangling kataifi, are a little unwieldy to be “finger food”, so they pretty much require a fork, anyway, so having them covered in sauce is not an inconvenience. Both Boy and Girl liked these.
The two dipping sauces were:
Apricot Dipping Sauce and
Spicy Raspberry Dipping Sauce
They were both good, but the Raspberry sauce really wasn’t that spicy. I didn’t have seedless raspberry preserves, so I just used what I had, which did have seeds, but it was fine. Girl preferred the apricot sauce. Boy liked the chicken plain, with no sauce. This dish actually might have been really good with a roasted corn salsa (with chopped tomato, black beans, a little onion and cilantro).
I still had some leftover mixed salad greens from Hubby’s party, so I went to Epicurious and did a quick search for a “4-fork” rated salad and came across the Mixed Greens with Roasted Asparagus and Apple. A bonus was that I still had some Gruyere on hand from our recent fondue experiment, so all I had to buy at the store was apples and asparagus. My store happened to be out of regular old green asparagus, and only had the white (it IS out of season right now – I should have known better), but it looked good, so I thought I’d give it a shot. The salad was good and Girl liked it, but Boy has decided that he’s not a great big vinaigrette fan, so I may have to lay off it for a while, or add just a tad bit more sugar to his portion of the dressing. The salad tasted fine, but since I used the white asparagus, almost everything had the same color (white-ish apple, white-ish cheese, white-ish asparagus), except for the salad greens. I did add a bit of roasted red pepper, because I still had some on hand, but it was a little difficult to see if you were eating a chunk of apple or a chunk of cheese, since it all looked similar. Having the green asparagus would’ve helped, I think, but it was pretty good, anyway.
Here’s how it all looked on the (my) plate:
