Circassian Chicken Salad
Let’s see how a no-mayo Chicken Salad comes out
Time: 3 Hours 30 Minutes
Ingredient Availability: 4/5
Difficulty: 1/5
My weekday lunches typically consist of shredded chicken, carrots, and an apple. This week, I wanted to try something a little different. Instead of just having some chicken that I seasoned and shredded up, I’ll try the Circassian Chicken Salad from the Zaytinya Cookbook. I’m curious to see what a mediterranean style chicken salad is like.
Key Ingredients & Omissions:
Walnuts aren’t shown, but are used
The only ingredient that I wasn’t able to find was the sweet gem lettuce. Apparently, it is a variety of romaine lettuce, so I could’ve just gotten that instead. I ended up getting butterhead lettuce as a substitute. Other than that, all of the ingredients were easy to find and readily available. I decided not to make the candied walnuts, which are used as a topping/garnish, but I have made them before (you can read the analysis here). One last thing I want to mention is that I used roasted walnuts, so I didn’t roast them as the recipe calls for. Honestly, I forgot to do it, but I don’t think they needed to be roasted again.
Tools:
Sharp Knife
Food Processor
Bowl
Cooking Review:
Cook Chicken: 1 Hour 35 minutes
You could just use a rotisserie chicken or use some shredded chicken you already have, but I went ahead and salted and seasoned a whole chicken and baked it for an hour and 25 minutes. While it cooked, I prepared some of the other ingredients.
Prep: 14 minutes
While the chicken was cooking, I combined the ingredients (white wine vinegar, water, salt, sugar, and turmeric) for the turmeric pickled raisins in a small pot and brought it to a boil. I ended up quartering the quantities that the recipe calls for in the turmeric pickling liquid, as I didn’t have enough white wine vinegar to do a whole recipe and I just needed it for the raisins instead of all of the vegetables. As the liquid heated up, I chopped the cilantro, walnuts, and garlic. If you had raw walnuts, you could go ahead and roast them at this point to have them ready for later. Once the liquid came to a boil, I poured it over the raisins and let it cool.
Shred Chicken & Soak Bread Crumbs: 44 Minutes
You should do this concurrently, which will save you some time, but I didn’t think of it until I had already started shredding the chicken. I reserved 4 cups of the chicken to use in this recipe and saved the rest for something else. Next, I put the breadcrumbs and milk in the food processor to soak for 30 minutes.
Mix & Refrigerate 1 Hour 9 minutes
I added 3 tablespoons of the cilantro, salt, pepper, garlic, and walnuts to the soaked breadcrumbs and processed the mixture until smooth. While the sauce was processing, I added some salt to the shredded chicken and combined it to taste. Once the sauce was smooth, I added it to the chicken and mixed until well combined. I transferred it to the refrigerator to chill for an hour.
Finishing: 6 minutes
To finish this dish, I rinsed a few leaves of lettuce and spooned some of the chicken salad onto them. I topped each leaf with some olive oil, flaky salt, and pickled raisins. You could also top them with the remaining cilantro and candied walnuts if you made them.
Analysis:
This chicken salad is pretty refreshing. I mean that from both flavor and convention perspectives. Typically, chicken salad is made with mayonnaise, which has a fairly strong flavor that can really subdue the flavor of the chicken. By using a milk, walnut, and breadcrumb based sauce instead of mayo, the flavors are a lot lighter and refreshing. You can really taste the chicken as well as just about everything else that goes into this salad. As a big fan of walnuts, I really enjoyed the walnut flavor in the background, complemented by the hint of cilantro and subtle sweetness from the raisins. If you really like sweetness, definitely either add more raisins or add the candied walnuts. I also like that I can actually taste the seasoning I used on the chicken. I feel like it would have been smothered by a mayonnaise based chicken salad. Oh, and there’s a pretty good variety of textures here. There’s a nice crisp crunch from the lettuce, chew from the chicken, and softer crunch from the bits of walnut that didn’t get completely smoothed out. I’m going to give this recipe a 7/10. It seems like it might take a long time, but you could definitely cut at least an hour and a half out if you already have a cooked chicken. If you’re looking for a healthier alternative to the typical chicken salad, I feel like this is a great option that will feel and taste lighter (in a refreshing way, not a bland way).
