Calling all you broccoli salad lovers!
Obviously I am one of these people since not too long ago I brought you my Loaded Broccoli Salad recipe too. Just can’t get enough. Which is a good thing since I hope to be producing some broccoli heads of my own right out of the garden in the next few months. Having recipes like this to help me use my fresh produce will be crucial!
This one goes back to my time searching for recipes where I could make a big batch and take it to work for lunch throughout the week. I was also getting pretty obsessed with making curries. Green, yellow, red, whatever, I was all over it. So I combined my love of salads, curry and big batch lunches and found this recipe on EatingWell.com. It’s different, but it’s really tasty!
First, you cook the chicken by any method you prefer: grilling, baking, sautéing, or boiling. I followed the recipe and boiled my chicken since it’s quick and easy. Once that was done, I threw it in the standing KitchenAid mixer and turned it on speed 2 for about 40 seconds or so until the chicken is shredded.
Learning this trick has made my life significantly easier!
My standing mixer comes in so handy for shredding meat, making batter for a plethora of things, mashed ANYTHING, and basic mixing, among other things (I learn more that I can do with it all the time). It doesn’t get easier than throwing crap in a bowl, hitting a button, and completely ignoring it for a minute or two while you get other things done.
YAAAAASS.
I am so damn impatient when it comes to shredding stuff that one morning I was moving a little fast shredding meat using two steak knives.
Anyone to care to guess what happened?
Or can everyone put it together just by knowing me and where I would most likely fall on a scale of 1 to baby-foal-learning-to-use-its-legs-for-the-first-time-ever?
I made a nice slice in my finger where, even after years have passed by, the feeling has still not quite returned. I remember laying on the floor with my bloody finger held in the air, tightly wrapped with a towel and held above my heart of course. I could NOT get it to stop bleeding. I remember when my friend walked in like, “what the hell are you doing on the floor? I thought you were making us breakfast?”
Yes.
But this is what happens when I try to move too fast with sharp objects within my grasp.
Somebody take them away. I’m way too klutzy to have this kind of responsibility in my life.
A mixer makes it all better, long story short.
Next, make a cream sauce using yogurt, chutney, curry powder and cilantro. I used Sharwood’s for the chutney, but I’m not loyal to any specific brand. Mango chutney can be found in the ethnic foods section of your grocery store and it’s found alongside the Indian foods.
Also, to keep it simple, I use cilantro paste in a tube. I don’t have time or patience to constantly buy cilantro to pull off meeeeeeeellions of leaves one by one and chop them all up! Ain’t nobody got time fo dat.
This will all change once I grow my own cilantro which is fine since the paste is pretty pricey anyway. But it’s so easy.
I chopped up some cashews in a plastic bag with a mallet.
Got all my ingredients ready to go.
Then I threw everything back in the mixer and let it go until it was all mixed. Voilà! Lunch for the week.
Before eating it for lunch though, I did think it tasted better warmed up a little bit. The cream sauce liquified a bit more and it gave the chicken and broccoli good flavor, but that part is completely up to you.
If you love chicken salad and are looking for an interesting new flavor twist on the classic, try this one out!
Madras Chicken and Broccoli Salad
Ingredients
- 1 lb. Chicken breasts boneless, skinless
- 2/3 cup yogurt plain, nonfat
- 3 Tbsp. Mango chutney
- 2 tsp. curry powder
- 4 Tbsp. Cilantro fresh
- 3 broccoli crowns chopped
- 1/3 cup red onion finely chopped
- 1/2 cup cashews chopped
Instructions
- Place chicken in a small skillet or saucepan and add enough water to cover; bring to a simmer over high heat. Cover, reduce heat and simmer gently until the chicken is cooked through and no longer pink in the middle, 10-12 minutes. Transfer to a cutting board, cut into 1/2" cubes and cool to room temperature.
- Meanwhile, whisk yogurt, chutney, curry and cilantro in a medium bowl until thoroughly combined. Add broccoli, onion, cashews and the cooked chicken; toss to coat.
This looks really good. Love the mango chutney in it-great idea for any chicken or tuna salad.
My early memories of Memorial Day. When I was growing up in Massachusetts, we would go to the little cemetery in Seabrook, NH to put flowers on graves. It was rather a solemn time, and we also went there to visit the grave of my parents’ first baby who died, and would have been my big brother. His birthday was May 30th. I remember being a bit creeped out, but my mom told me there was nothing to be scared of, it was a peaceful place.
Many years later, on May 30th, 1981, I met your dad while vacationing in the Bahamas, so it became a joyful day as well, which we still celebrate!
I have two close relatives who were killed in WW II, and I think of them especially on Memorial Day. One was my dad’s older brother, Don, who was killed in France in April of 1945. The other was my mom’s uncle, Lincoln Akerman, who was killed in the Pacific. He is honored to this day in the little town of Hampton Falls, NH, where the school is named after him.