The Chicken Salad That Wasn't Very Good

This was an emergency dinner.  I didn’t love it.  Lee liked it, but I often call him Mikey, so I don’t really trust his judgment. *

Menu:

Chicken Salad with walnuts and tarragon
Fingerling potatoes (fresh from the garden–the only good part!)
Paula Wolfert’s Middle Eastern Chopped Salad

There were two problems:

1)  I don’t like cucumbers.  This means that any salad that relies heavily on cucumbers is doomed from the get-go.  Personally, I think they’re a sort of stupid vegetable–they’re nutritionally pointless (containing pretty much nothing useful), they don’t taste great, and they make me burp.  Don’t ask why I keep buying them, and then feeling compelled to sneak them into dinner.  I go to the farmer’s market, and there they are.  Next thing I know, they’re staring up at me from the vegetable crisper, going slightly limp, begging to be used.  That’s how I wind up with salads that I don’t really like.  But that is in no way a reflection on Paula Wolfert’s recipe–like I said, Lee liked it.

2)  I used the wrong chicken.  I have a brilliant system that usually works really well:  whenever we’re having boneless, skinless chicken breasts, I cook a couple of extras.  After they cool, I cut them up into bite-sized chunks, put them in a ziploc, and throw it in the freezer.  So I always have a bag or two on standby for those days when I need to produce dinner, but can’t be bothered to go to the store, or figure out something interesting.  Pull out a baggie, put it in a bowl of hot water to quick-thaw, and make chicken salad.  It’s especially handy in the summer.

BUT–I also sometimes shred that chicken, and use it for tacos.  Several weeks ago, I went on a binge, trying to figure out how to replicate the chicken that my kids like at Moe’s (you don’t even want to know how often I’ve gone to Moe’s this summer to get two John Coctostans to go, one with beans.  I’m a pushover . . .).  Anyway, I had this brilliant idea that if I could replicate the chicken, they could just make quesadillas at home.  No such luck–Toby (he of the discerning palate) dismissed every version I made.  I figured the slightly Mexican flavors I had been experimenting with would make good tacos, so into the freezer went all that chicken.

Of course I promptly forgot about the experiment, so when I needed chicken salad one night last week, I just pulled out the first bag I found in the freezer.  Um, bad plan.  Because it was shredded, it looked like tuna salad (which I find revolting), and the cumin and lime juice just didn’t work in my normal chicken salad.  Yuck.  But as I said, Lee liked it.

So you should make this menu, but you should not make my mistakes.  Use plain (or at least non-Mexican-ish) chicken.  And if you don’t like cucumbers, well, think up your own vegetable.

Chicken salad
For the two of us (because of course the children won’t eat it–it doesn’t come from Moe’s) I use:

About 1 1/2 cooked chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
About 1/4 cup fat-free sour cream
About 1/4 cup plain fat-free greek yogurt
About 1 T. fresh tarragon, chopped
A couple of tablespoons of chopped, toasted walnuts

Mix everything except the nuts.  Add sour cream or yogurt to get it to the chicken-salad consistency that you like. Salt and pepper to taste.  Sprinkle walnuts across the top.

Middle Eastern Chopped Salad (this is my adaptation of Paula Wolfert’s recipe in The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean)
Serves 4:

1 small cucumber, peeled, seeded, and diced
12 cherry tomatoes, quartered, or 2 ripe tomatoes, cored, seeded, and roughly chopped
1/3 cup shredded spearmint
1 clove garlic, peeled
salt to taste
1 teaspoon or more finely chopped fresh green chile (I used a jalapeno that was milder than I would’ve liked)
1 to 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

In a salad bowl, combine the cucumber, tomatoes, and mint.

In a mortar, crush the garlic with 1/4 t. salt, add the chile, and pound to a smooth paste.  Stir in the lemon juice (if the tomatoes are very acidic, use less).  Taste for salt.  Pour over the vegetables and mix thoroughly; adjust salt and lemon juice to taste.

*If you don’t get the Mikey joke, well, perhaps there is no hope for you.