Pancit Salad [GF]

In day-to-day Hawai'ian culinary life, the noodle salad is a staple.  If not in itself, as may deem it, the backbone of any plate lunch worth its salt (and that's usually a lot of salt), it's at least a vertebra on a par with the gravy, the meat, and the two scoops of rice.  While your typical plate-lunch noodle salad is macaroni-based, the gluten-intolerant among us will be glad to see a viable alternative (in the form of a pancit salad — pancit bihon being a type of ultra-thin rice noodle used in Filipino cuisine) that is wheat free and equally respectable as local food.  And as for the creamy sauce, the morsels of chicken, fish, or seafood, and the minced tomatoes — never fear: they're here in full force.

The recipe provided below yields a single serving of the salad.  I originally made a bowl of this salad a week or so ago, but have maintained a strong hankering for it ever since, and have created three variants so far: one featuring chicken breast, one featuring tuna, and one featuring mussels (the rest of the ingredients, and their proportions, have been held constant as the protein source has been varied).  The mussels have so far been my favorite, but all have been outstanding.  Also, I should point out that the reason I elected to use pancit, rather than any other form of rice noodle, is that I just happened to have some lying around.  I suspect that rice macaroni might even be a better vehicle for the mayonnaise-based sauce, and would, at any rate, add to the mac-salad authenticity and caché of the dish.

Curly cress, incidentally, which is called for in this recipe, and which occasionally also goes by the aliases "garden cress" and "pepper grass," is a piquant, peppery micro-green.  It shows up not infrequently at farmers' markets on O'ahu (credit for the bunch I used in constructing this recipe, in all three of its incarnations, goes to the folks at 'Nalo Farms, who also, I should add, raise a damned fine corn sprout), but, as with many of Hawai'i's agricultural delights, I'm not sure about its wider availability.  If you can't find it, don't worry too much: it's not an essential ingredient in the salad, but it does complement the other flavors quite nicely, and provides a bit of textural variety to an otherwise overwhelmingly creamy dish.  Other sorts of cress might serve as reasonable substitutes as well, for what it's worth. 

• 1 oz. dry pancit noodles
• 1-1½ oz. diced grilled chicken breast, cooked mussels, or canned tuna
• 1 tsp. mayonnaise
• ½ tsp. Tabasco sauce
• 1½ Tbsp. dijon mustard
• 1 Tbsp. rice vinegar
• ½ Tbsp. fresh cilantro, chopped
• 1 tsp. curly cress, chopped
• 1 Tbsp. tomato, chopped
• ¼ tsp. dry dill weed
• ⅛ tsp. dry basil
• ¼ tsp. sweet paprika
• 1 generous pinch ground cayenne pepper
• ⅛ tsp. black pepper, coarsely ground
• ⅛ tsp. salt, or to taste

Bring a small pot of water to a boil in order to cook the pancit.  While the water is boiling, combine the rest of the ingredients in a small bowl and mix them together thoroughly.  Once the water is boiling, place the dry pancit noodles in the water and cook thoroughly.  Once the noodles are cooked, strain them and allow them to cool for a few minutes, then add them to the bowl and stir them into the sauce thoroughly.  Serve either with other components of plate lunch, or else with a simple side salad, as shown in the photo above.