Curried Chicken Salad

Another beautiful morning. This is the kind of weather that makes us all love October. I opened Copperfield's Coffee Cafe in October  2005. Right from the beginning the Curried Chicken Salad was the most popular dish we offered (with the exception of one of my mother's homemade fruit pies). I offer the recipe here and suggest you serve it with my tomato soup recipe.

Curried Chicken Salad

2 cups chopped cooked chicken meat

1/2 cup chopped celery

1/2 cup chopped green onion

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1/4 teaspoon of salt

pinch of black pepper

1 teaspoon sweet curry powder

juice of half a lemon

1/2 to 3/4 cup Hellman's mayonnaise or to taste.

In a wide bowl (so you can mix it easily and well) mix together all the ingredients except the lemon juice and mayonnaise.  Mix well so that the seasonings are all evenly distributed. This is a very important step. Then add the mayonnaise and lemon juice and mix well.  It's best to let this salad sit in the refrigerator for an hour or so to let the curry powder develop. It will turn the chicken salad yellow (that's the turmeric) and blend all the flavors.

A note about the chicken.  I either bake bone in,  skin on chicken at 400 degrees, then cool it, skin it and chop it, or I poach skinless, boneless chicken breasts. To poach the chicken put the raw, washed chicken meat in a baking dish, add a little salt and pepper and enough water to come about half way up the chicken.  Cover it with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour depending on the size of the pieces of meat. The chicken will be moist and tender and low fat and you can use the broth that develops from the poaching liquid as a soup base. Enjoy.