“I’m the Queen” Salad with Chicken and Dried Fruit

Kateryna Bondar
"I'm the Queen" Salad with Chicken and Dried Fruit"I'm the Queen" Salad with Chicken and Dried Fruit
Cuisine
Course
Serves 6 people
Prep time
30m
Cook Time
1h 0m

This salad is a home cook’s take on Coronation chicken, the British-Indian dish invented for the 1953 coronation: poached chicken in a spiced curry sauce with an apricot note. Here the cooked bird is pulled by hand into shreds — they grab the dressing far better than neat knife-cut cubes — and folded into a layered sauce of mayonnaise, smetana (full-fat sour cream), apricot jam, tomato paste, and curry powder.

Dried apricots and golden raisins bring sweet accents, while lemon juice and garlic keep the sweetness from taking over. The move that makes it work: fry the curry and tomato paste with a spoonful of broth rather than stirring dry powder into the finished sauce. A brief hit of heat and fat unlocks the spices far more fully.

From experience: taste and adjust as you go — too sweet is fixed with lemon or mayo, too tart with another spoon of jam. Reach for mild or hot curry to suit yourself. Prunes or dried cranberries can stand in for the apricots and raisins; the flavor shifts, but the sweet-tart frame holds. Don’t skip the rest: chill the salad 2 to 3 hours so the chicken drinks in the sauce all the way through. For a striking finish, serve it in crisp vol-au-vent shells or on toasted bread as individual bites.

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Ingredients

  • 1.2 Kilogram
    chicken
  • 1
    large onion
  • 3 Pieces
    garlic cloves
  • 1.5 Tablespoon
    mayonnaise
  • 1.5 Tablespoon
    sour cream
  • 0.5 Tablespoons
    apricot jam
  • 0.5 Tablespoons
    tomato paste
  • 0.5 Tablespoons
    curry
  • 0.5
    lemon juice (from 1/2 lemon)
  • vegetable oil
  • a handful each of dried apricots and golden raisins
  • bay leaf, allspice, cloves
  • 1
    onion (for broth)
  • 1
    carrot (for broth)
  • dill

Instructions

  1. Boil the chicken with aromatic seasonings (bay leaf, allspice, cloves, onion, carrot). Once cooled, pull the chicken apart by hand into pieces.

  2. Sauté the finely chopped onion in vegetable oil. Add the tomato paste, curry, and a little broth. Cook briefly, remove the onion mixture from the heat, let it cool slightly, and mix with the lemon juice.

  3. In a salad bowl, combine the sour cream, mayonnaise, jam, crushed garlic cloves, dried apricots, raisins, and the onion mixture. If the mixture is too sweet or too tart, add the needed ingredients to taste.

  4. Add the chicken to the salad bowl with the dressing, mix everything well, and refrigerate the salad for 2 to 3 hours. It can be served in vol-au-vents or on crisp toast.

Nutrition: Calories: 420 kcal · protein 33 g · fat 27 g · carbs 12 g (per serving, estimated)

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