Susie Drage
Music, Art & Cookery
The Cookery Book


Creamy Chicken & Vegetable Salad
​
Serves: 6
Preparation: 10 minutes
Cooking Time: 15 minutes
Category: Chicken / Flexitarian
Plan: Can be prepared a day in advance
Difficulty: Easy
Course: Main
Cuisine: English
​
This is a Guest Recipe by Lisa Bryan of Downshiftology.com and, in my view is a superb way to entertain your guests with surprisingly little effort.
This wonderful chicken salad is full of fresh Summer vegetables mixed in a simple sauce of plain yogurt and a little mayonnaise and flavoured with fresh herbs. Each mouthful is a complete revelation of different tastes, sweet, savoury and nutty!
We tweaked the original recipe to mainly yogurt with a much smaller portion of mayonnaise but still incorporating the fresh herbs.
We made this for a party this Summer and everyone absolutely loved it and not a scrap was left, which meant I had to make it all over again for the family.
​
So, as you can guess, this is my go to recipe for Summer entertaining!
Utensils
-
Large pan for boiling water
-
Chopping board
-
Sharp knife
-
Container for chicken if preparing in advance and refrigerating
-
Roasting tray for flaked almonds
-
Large bowl to assemble fruit and salad vegetables
-
Large bowl to mix mayonnaise
-
Serving platter
Ingredients
For the Poached Chicken
-
1 kilo (2lbs) boneless chicken breasts
-
One chicken stock cube
-
Bunch of fresh herbs
-
One small onion, peeled and quartered
-
One stick of celery, chopped roughly
-
2 bay leaves
-
A few fresh pepper corns
-
Modest amount of sea salt
For the Salad
​
-
Half a cup flaked almonds, lightly toasted
-
One cup of good quality mayonnaise
-
One cup of plain Greek Style Yogurt
-
One tablespoon Dijon mustard
-
1-2 cups red seedless grapes, halved or quartered
-
4 sticks of celery, diced
-
One bunch Spring Onions, finely sliced using all of them after trimming the roots
-
One handful of fresh parsley, finely chopped
-
One handful of fresh tarragon, finely chopped (we prefer French Tarragon)
-
Juice of one lemon, plus grated zest
-
Sea salt
-
Freshly ground black pepper
Method
-
Place the chicken breasts into a pan of boiling water plus a chicken stock cube and the other remaining ingredients, cover and simmer on a lowish heat for about 15-20 minutes, remove from heat and then leave to cool.
-
The chicken can then be diced and stored covered in the fridge overnight ready for assembly.
-
Meantime, heat the oven to 200C and place the flaked almonds on a flat roasting tray into the oven for about 5 minutes - you need to watch carefully as they must be removed as soon as they turn a gentle golden colour. If preparing the day before, store these in an air tight container.
-
Prepare the grapes, celery, spring onions and herbs all finely chopped or diced and set aside.
-
Mix the yogurt and mayonnaise together, adding the dijon mustard, lemon juice, zest and seasoning.
-
Finally, mix together into a large serving dish the chicken, vegetables, herbs, almonds and yogurt mayonnaise sauce - this is now ready to be served.
-
You could serve this with hot buttery new salad potatoes and a simple green salad to accompany.