Curried Chicken Salad Circa 1986
I have a confession to make. I own more than 500 hundred print cookbooks. There wasn’t enough space in my home and so my husband built a special giant bookcase for all of them. It’s hard, because I love them all and I also need to downsize pretty soon. I have a dream of going through them all and photographing the best recipes for my collection in Evernote. This will clearly never happen. I want to keep like 50 of them...well, maybe 100 tops...and Time Life Foods of the World counts as one, right? Oy vey. Please send help!
A couple of my favorites were released in the 80’s. Martha Stewart’s first book, The Silver Palate, and an old fish cookbook by Jasper White that has a killer recipe for gravlax made with bluefish (yes!). Something most of the books from that particular era have in common is a love of adding curry to dishes that don’t typically ask for it. I guess it was a thing back then? Curried chicken salad was definitely THE thing in those days. I have a nostalgic memory of my grandmother making it and loving every bite, except the ones with raisins. Raisins are my nemesis. Always were and always have been.
My chicken salad has pretty standard ingredients, but there is one that is new to me this year and I LOVE it! It is a curry paste in a tube from a company called Entube and it is fiery, fresh, and delightfully authentic. They also make harissa, molé, and umeboshi pastes. I highly recommend their products and at the moment, you can grab a tube at Bartlett’s Farm if you’re on island. If not, the internet is your bff.
If you need yet another chicken salad recipe (or tofu, if you’re into that sort of thing), then look no further. And be careful with that curry paste-it’s hot af and you might want to supplement it with some milder powder to keep the heat down. Okay! Ready, set, go!
Curried Chicken Salad
Ingredients
1 whole roasted chicken, torn and/or cut up into bite sized pieces. (Yes, it can be a rotisserie!)
Juice of two limes and the zest of one
2 stalks of celery, cut in fine dice
1 tiny red onion (or a quarter of a bigger one), minced finely
1/2 of a Granny Smith Apple, peeled, cored and finely diced
1 teaspoon of Entube Curry Paste (or less of you’re sensitive to heat)
1-2 teaspoons of less spicy curry powder (optional)
1/2-3/4 cup of mayonnaise, either Hellman’s or your own
1 tablespoon of Major Grey’s Chutney (avoiding the few super secret raisins hidden in the jar)
Salt to taste-about a teaspoon or so
A big handful of chopped cilantro
A big handful of toasted, slivered almonds
Method
Squeeze the lime juice onto the chicken in a large bowl. Fold in the zest and the rest of the ingredients, except the almonds. Serve in a pretty bowl with the nuts sprinkled on top.
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Last-Minute Chicken Pasta Salad
Last minute is a key phrase that comes up frequently in the life of a private chef. You can be the most hyper-organized, vigilant list-making, pantry-stocking, backup-shopper and there will always be those days where you think you are all set and suddenly you are not. Well, yesterday was one of those days for me.
The summer on Nantucket is glorious. And it is also crowded as hell with the worst traffic you can imagine (think no traffic lights, historically small streets, touristy drivers and too many rotaries). Doing errands is a strategic undertaking, where you have to plan for time of day, route, and of course, delivery days for specialty (and non-specialty) items. Well, I tried to start early and didn’t have a 100% clear idea of what was needed for lunch, but I made an executive decision on the fly that I felt would be well-received. As I was leaving the store, I suddenly received a text asking for something completely different-"chicken and some sort of pasta”. Okay, deep breath and onward. Onward to the rotisserie chicken aisle, that is.
I recently made a delightful zucchini pasta dish by Yotum Ottolenghi, that was featured in NYT Cooking. Riffing on his idea of a room temp pasta, sauced with an herby/capery/lemony combination and combined with grilled summer squash, I took a similar approach. I was able to get this on the table in 25 minutes, using an already cooked chicken and having some pesto in the fridge.
Here you go, kids.
Last Minute Chicken and Pasta Salad
Ingredients
1 store-bought rotisserie chicken, shredded into medium bite-sized pieces
1 cup of any kind of pesto (I had arugula on hand)
1 box of penne pasta (GF or regular)
3 T red wine vinegar
1 bunch of basil, whizzed in a blender or processor with a cup of EVOO
2 small-medium sized yellow and green summer squash, ends cut off and sliced lengthwise about 1/4” thick and grilled outside or on a grill pan, until browned and cooked through
1/2 roasted red pepper from a jar, diced
1/2 jar capers
Zest of one lemon
a few good squirts of white balsamic glaze
a large handful of minced parsley
Salt and Pepper to taste
Buratta-1 or two, depending on how decadent you are feeling
Method
Fold the pesto into the chicken. Cook the pasta till al dente, drain, and sprinkle it with the vinegar and about 1/2 cup of the basil oil. Chop the squash into 2-3 inch pieces and throw that in with the chicken, along with the red pepper and zest. Then combine the two mixtures, add the balsamic glaze, parsley, and taste for salt and pepper. Arrange this mess in a beauteous bowl and carefully tear your expensive Buratta and scatter it artfully over the top of the salad.