Creamy Chicken Salad with Mango and Almonds

As my friends and family in the Northern hemisphere languish in the icy grip of winter, we in Cape Town are enjoying enduring a heat wave. The country is in the strangle hold of the worst drought in 10 decades. People all over South Africa are donating bottles of water to be delivered to the towns were there is just no more water left.

Amazing pictures of truck loads of animal feed being delivered in convoy. While we are a country in distress, it is beautiful to see how people are standing together.

Cooking and eating big hot meals is about as far from my mind as the memory of rain is in Cape Town.

This creamy chicken salad, with mango and almonds was a huge winner - As we always say "Winner Winner Chicken Dinner"!!

Creamy Chicken Salad with Almonds and Mango
Serves 2

4 chicken breasts sliced into 1"chunks
1 Onion sliced
15ml Tomato Paste
10ml Curry powder
80ml Chutney
80ml Mayonnaise
5ml Sugar
20ml Apricot Jam
125ml Plain Yoghurt
10ml Lemon Juice
Salt and Black Pepper
Oil for frying

Salad for Serving
Salad leaves
1 disk Feta Cheese
1 Mango peeled and cut into bite size pieces
40g Toasted Flaked Almonds (I toasted them myself in a dry pan)
Fresh coriander or basil for garnish (optional)

Fry the Chicken in a little oil until turning golden, but not cooked through.
Remove the chicken from the pan and set aside.
Add the onions to the pan and more oil if necessary.
Fry onions until soft.
Add the tomato paste and the curry powder and fry for 1 minute.
Add rest of the ingredients (except the salad ingredients).
Stir the sauce and let it simmer for 5-8 minutes.
Add the chicken and cook until chicken is cooked through.
Check seasoning and adjust.
Turn off the heat and allow to cool.

Place the salad leaves on the plate.
Place the chicken coated in the sauce on the leaves.
I didn't use all the sauce but add as much as you would like to your salad.
Place pieces of mango around the plate.
Sprinkle with feta and almonds.
Top with garnish and black pepper.

Serve and enjoy

My Easy Cooking - Homemade Heaven Thai

I have been blogging for the last 2 years and 11 months (yes I'm counting) and it's been a journey of pleasure and learning. 

The first pleasure is when things go all my way, the lighting is perfect, the food is styled to look like it wants to jump off your screen and into your mouth and the story along with the recipe is not only grammatically correct, but well written.

The most lasting pleasure is the friends I have made. One of the first blog friends I made was Nina, from My Easy Cooking.  Nina is a blogger extraodinaire and I have blogged about her cooking, photographic and styling talents on many occasions. Nina can make a cheese and Marmite sandwich look so good, you'll offer your first born for a bite.

Other great thing about blogging are the "events". You get to make something, post about it and sometimes the organiser will offer prizes. Enter left stage Nina...with this challenge.

Click here for more details

What an incredible opportunity for me to get Keith out of his comfort zone (cheese and bread), spoil him with some fresh Thai inspired spring rolls for lunch.

Thai Inspired Spring Rolls

Rice Paper Spring Roll Wrappers (Soaked in warm water until pliable)
Carrot cut into julienne
Spring onions chopped fine
Rice Vermicelli Noodles cooked as per packet instructions
Avocardo cut into thin strips

Lay the pliable wrapper on a flat surface.
Place a little of the other ingredients in the middle of the wrapper.
Fold the wrapper in half.
Fold in the outer edges.
Roll the entire roll tightly into spring roll.

Thai Dipping Sauce

Freshly squeezed Lime Juice (SOUR)
Fish Sauce (SALTY)
Fresh Chopped Chilli (HOT)
Palm Sugar (SWEET)
Fresh Garlic Cloves
Fresh Chopped and Peeled Ginger

Starting with  half a  fresh chilli, 2 cloves of garlic, 1" piece ginger and 10ml of palm sugar - pound together.
Add the juice of 1 lime, 15ml of Fish Sauce and mix together.
Taste - adjust the first 4 ingredients until you have a flavour combination and quantity to suit your taste and needs.
Serve with the spring rolls.

Failure to Fantastic

Failure is not always a bad thing, some great inventions have come from failures - in the kitchen and in life.

Van Gogh sold only one painting in his entire lifetime. I guess he was a failure, or perhaps just misunderstood. Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame had his chicken recipe rejected 1,009 times before a restaurant accepted it.  Persistence? Definitely. Tradition says that the Tarte Tatin was first created by accident at the Hotel Tatin. 

There is a saying that "success is no accident" - this was obviously coined by someone who had never cooked before - and certainly never in my kitchen. I am more of a "necessity is the mother of invention" type cook.

On the weekend I tried to make these . Unfortunately, my potatoes are not as well behaved and I soon realised that they were not going to stay stuck together while I fried them. So, a back up plan had to come into place.

I simply placed a little Willow Creek Chilli Olive Pesto  (courtesy of Willow Creek in our goodie bags from the SA Food Bloggers Conference) on each potato slice and deep fried them olive side up until golden brown and then turned them gently and fried the the other side for another minute. Once done I drained them on kitchen paper.

They came out really good, and I will definitely make them again as a quick snack.

It is better to have enough ideas 

for some of them to be wrong, 

than to be always right 

by having no ideas at all.

Edward de Bono