Asian Marinated Chicken over Arugula with Green Onion and Sesame Potato Patties

I took a different turn with last night's meal than I'd originally planned. I had chicken breasts that I'd intended to make another chicken pot pie with, given I have another piece of buttermilk crust in the freezer. Only we had a beautiful box of baby arugula that had been languishing in the fridge for too long and how to use enough of that with a big ol' chickie pot pie sitting on our plates?? Another salad seemed to be in order. The leftover mashed potatoes morphed into what I thought might pass for Asian-esque patties. If you make this, just make sure to marinate your chicken about mid-day, so it'll be ready for you at dinner. Or, you could just make the chicken the day before and eat it cold to save time. Just don't slice it until you're ready to make the salad.

Asian Chicken Marinade:

Durn...I guess I should have written down amounts when I made this! I just threw a bunch of stuff into a big ziplock bag as a marinade without measuring. If it sounded like it'd be good, it got tossed in! I'd love to be able to replicate it to some degree though, so I'll try to write up a semi-recipe for the marinade.

~5 Tbs soy sauce
~2-3 Tbs dry sherry
2 glugs (that's a measurement!) of organic hoisin sauce
2 spoonfuls of chili garlic sauce
3 whole smashed cloves of garlic
~2 Tbs rice wine vinegar
a squeeze of agave nectar
~1 tsp toasted sesame oil
lime juice
~1" of ginger, grated (it looked like about 1-2 tsp?)

Place all ingredients in a bag with 4 skinless boneless (and natural if you can get it) chicken breast halves and marinate for ~4 hrs., turning the bag periodically. When you remove the chicken to cook it, pour the marinade into a small sauce pan.

Sauce made from marinade:

~1/2 tsp arrowroot powder (or cornstarch)
more agave nectar

Bring the marinade up to a boil and cook for at least 3 minutes. Remove from heat and pass the marinade through a sieve to remove the solids. Return the marinade to the sauce pan and whisk in about 1/2 tsp arrowroot powder (or 3/4 tsp cornstarch) and another squeeze of agave. Simmer to thicken then set aside. You'll brush a little of this on one side of the chicken while cooking and use the rest to drizzle over the sliced chicken.

Cooking the chicken:

You could either grill these, or use a skillet like I did. I lightly oiled a non-stick skillet and heated over med.-high. Cooked the chicken breasts for ~6 min. on the first side, then flipped, brushed with some sauce made from the marinade, covered the skillet, and turned down the heat a bit. The marinade will tend to burn onto the pan and cooking it in a more moist environment helps a lot. I even added a bit of water at the end so that I could continue cooking the chicken to an internal temp. of ~165. Remove the chicken to a plate and cover for ~10 min.

Prepping the Green Onion Black Sesame Potato Patties:

Cold mashed potatoes
Green onions cut into thin lengthwise strips
~1-2 tsp black sesame seeds (got these in the bulk spice aisle at CM, just for fun one day)
one egg
Panko bread crumbs
canola oil
canola non-stick spray

This recipe assumes you have cold leftover mashed potatoes in your fridge that need to GO. :-)
The potatoes were already adequately seasoned, so all I did was saute up the green onions in a little toasted sesame oil on lowish heat and mix them into the taters. Mix in the sesame seeds too. Now set up a potato station...
Your bowl of mashers is the first stop. Then, in a medium bowl, mix the egg and a little water to make an egg wash for your second stop.
Now place a thick even layer of Panko crumbs on a medium sized plate for the third stop.
You won't cook these until you've plated your salad.

Plating the salad:

organic baby arugula
slices of ripe avocado
slices of orange
rice wine vinegar
toasted sesame oil
kosher salt and black pepper

Pile up some arugula on each plate. Sprinkle with a little rice wine vinegar, a couple drops of toasted sesame oil and toss.
Arrange alternating slices of orange and avocado on top half of salad. Sprinkle salt and pepper over the whole plate and a little more sesame oil on fruit. Fan out chicken breast just below the fruit. Now cook the potato patties if your making them.

Cooking the Potato Patties:

Heat a little canola oil in a non-stick skillet over med.-high heat.
Scoop up some of the tater mixture and form about a 3 inch patty. Dip into your egg wash, then
dredge it in the Panko crumbs.
Place the patties as you make them into the heated skillet. Spray the tops with a little canola spray. Turn when browned on first side, and continue cooking until 2nd side is browned.
Plate the patties just below the chicken and garnish with a little toasted sesame oil, sliced green onion and more black sesame seeds.
Drizzle your sauce made from the marinade over the chicken and sprinkle with more sesame seeds.

Whew! You're done! And you don't even need to wait for a damn photo to be taken to eat it! :-)
We liked this a lot. Next time I'd use a stiffer mashed potato mixture and I'm going to try just coating the patties in a dusting of brown rice flour, without the egg and panko. It was a fun morph of our Sunday mashed taters in any case!