A salad you can('t) reFuse

Fusion food? Sign me up. This is "Asian" sesame chicken salad--ok, it's no doubt "American" or "European" to mix cold meat with mayonnaise--next to a "Jewish" bagel. Get the connection: sesame plus sesame! How cool is that? I think I might have an unconscious desire to become a bloggy, male Rachael Ray. Take the same salad, sub in some curry powder: Indian! Olives and feta: Greek! Pimento and smoked paprika: Spanish! Black beans and corn: southwestern! Awesome! I'm going to take a short break to write another cookbook and count my money and when I come back I'll make a trip from the fridge to the pantry to the garbage bowl with my arms full of veggies that I washed when I came home from the supermarket!

Yesterday I tossed a chicken (minus one breast, which I fried up with rice for dinner) in the oven and roasted it. Today I shredded the meat off the other breast, a thigh, and a leg. I mixed it with a medium julienned daikon, about half a cup of thinly sliced cucumbers, a clove of garlic minced to a paste, a tablespoon of toasted sesame seeds, a handful of toasted slivered almonds, rice wine vinegar, honey, salt, pepper, sesame oil, and mayonnaise. The black sesame seeds are decorative. This is basically what you would find at any good prepared foods counter, but my first rule of food is that everything is better when you make it yourself. I think Ray-Ray probably agrees.

The bagel is from St. Urbain Bagel Bakery in Toronto, the best this side of Montreal.