After becoming mildly obsessed with two different chicken curry salads in Chapel Hill (Caffe Driade and Root Cellar) I started to look into how to make it at home, and kind of the story behind it. As I’m no big fan of mayo (I’m fine to order dishes with it, but wouldn’t use it enough at home to justify buying a jar) and prefer sour cream and yogurt, I started poking around the internet looking for chicken curry salad recipes — and soon fell into the rabbit hole of Coronation Chicken Salad. This combined with the fact that I’m in the midst of doing a weird “food challenge”* meant that I was on track to create my own version of the salad after learning a bit about the more conventional forms of it.
Why Curry Chicken or Curry Tuna Salad?
Simply, I love simple make-ahead lunches. And tuna or chicken salads have long been a favorite (here’s a few recipes on this very site: Tuna Avocado & Bean Salad, Turbo Tuna Salad, Green With Envy Tuna Salad.) On the face of it, it’s a mayo/cream salad that’s great as a sandwich stuffing or in my case, something to be enjoyed on lettuce leaves. In some forms it’s an old school 50s style food. I like some of these old recipes as they’re often unapologetically hearty and ripe for modification and updates. Typically I swap out mayo for avocado, plain yogurt and/or sour cream which I usually have on hand. Another favorite way to make a tuna salad is basically to mix tuna into guacamole and that’s that! I call it “Tuna-Guac”. But, exploring a curry variation was intriguing as it’s a completely different flavor direction.
Coronation Chicken Salad Controversies
Also learned that there’s a good bit of long-standing heated controversy about Coronation Chicken Salad and not even the BBC is immune! Raisins? No raisins? Dried apricots?! This is what the Queen ate! This is NOT what the Queen ate! Drama!!! Americans throw their hands in the air in exhaustion, “what is a ‘sultana’?” (Sultana is basically the cool British word for golden raisins dried in special way.) The main thing to get from all this is that it’s worthwhile to look at the original recipe at some point so you can brag about your royally-inspired lunch. Have fun with that rabbit hole. You’re welcome.
The Very Local Curry Chicken/Tuna Salad…
To keep in the theme of the aforementioned “food challenge”, I used some locally pickled red onions from the farmer’s market in this recipe. Pickled red onions are a little milder than red or white onions, but should be minced up tiny. You could also use green onions (aka spring onions) as well. This is one of many ways to modify the recipe to your tastes. For bonus points I used locally grown parsley (with the last of my Click and Grow grown parsley as a garnish). When I thought to make a curry salad, I really wanted to make a chicken salad, but given “food challenge” I had run out of chicken for the week. There was though a massive stash of incredibly high quality Safe Catch Elite Tuna packets in the cabinet… problem SOLVED! And that’s how this recipe came together. You can also experiment of course with any sort of cooked chicken, rotisserie chicken, roast chicken, baked chicken, etc. as long as the spices used to cook it wouldn’t clash with the salad. I bet left over tandoori chicken (the “dry” kind without sauce) would be incredible!
I created the following recipe to be further modified. It is in no way to be considered a traditional form of anything whatsoever! Yes, it says 2 servings, but… it is also one very good large serving too.
GiryaGirl Curry Tuna Salad
Ingredients
- 2 3oz pouches Plain Safe Catch Elite Tuna or 6 oz of your favorite tuna
- 1/2 Cup Plain yogurt use Greek yogurt for even MORE protein
- 3 Tbsp Sour cream Makes a rich salad experience, but feel free to just use more yogurt instead.
- 1 medium carrot minced
- 2 Tbsp Raisins optional, but surprisingly great when minced into it
- 1-2 Tbsp Pickled red onions Again, feel free to sub green onions, white onions, red onions but mince small. Pickled are a real treat though.
- 2 Tbsp Fresh parsley minced tiny yet again
- 1 Tbsp Madras curry powder I like a lot, some people might like this recipe better with just 1 tsp instead.
- 1 Jalapeno or mild small pepper I had a small mild pepper from the farmer's market and it added a nice balance to the salad.
- Mineral salt to taste
- Fresh black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Mince and prepare all the ingredients
- Crumple the tuna into a large bowl, then mix well with the yogurt and sour cream
- Add the rest of the ingredients
- If you can stand to do it, cover and place the bowl in the refrigerator for the next 2 hours
- Serve with lettuce, cucumber slices, carrot sticks, celery, or whatever you wish!
Notes
ALSO – Please look forward to some extensive posts about yogurt. I’ve recently purchased a yogurt maker and as some of you already know have been going absolutely WILD with experimenting with it. Just ordered some specialty cultures which you’ll be hearing about as well. I love plain yogurt for its versatility, heavy duty nutrition, and because it is so tangy!
*Full post on this coming soon, but the short explanation is that I figured out I had been compulsively grocery shopping and challenged myself to not go into a conventional grocery store or large coop for as long as possible. I would eat what I had combined with any local sources of fresh foods (farmer’s market, farm visits, small specialty stores), and incidentals (dairy) purchased while going into Target for another reason. As of today, December 20th, I haven’t been into a grocery store since November 5th. Please understand I undertook this “challenge” to stop a habit of buying too many groceries and for no other real reason. It’s incredibly arbitrary, silly, and something I call “recreational frugality” which I am blessed to be able to do. On the flip side, I’ve learned a lot along the way and have discovered some amazing and wonderful local foods!
Leave a Reply