The New York Times Recipe: Chicken and celery salad with wasabi

The next time you get delivery or takeaway, don’t throw away those condiments. Use them in your next dinner.

This recipe was inspired by a chef who, according to his fiancee, mixes together takeaway condiments — hoisin sauce, nuoc cham, sambal oelek, to name a few — and rubs them on pork or chicken for something that becomes deliciously savoury, sweet and spicy.

In that same vein, you could also save those wasabi packets from your Japanese takeaway, and whisk them into a tahini dressing to cover a celery and chicken salad.

The combination of wasabi and celery isn’t all that new: It’s similar to a cold appetiser found in Taiwanese-Chinese cuisine, simply called hot mustard celery salad. In the dish’s usual preparation, blanched celery ribs are peeled or have the tough strings pulled out,