Chicken Salad With Coconut Crunch
Crunchy vegetables, chicken and peanut-coconut dressing under a sweet-spicy coconut granola you'll eat by the handful.
Ingredients
Produce
- 2limes
- 1(½-inch) piece of fresh ginger
- 1½ pounds mixed crunchy vegetablessuch as snap peas, carrots, Broccolini, radishes, cucumbers, daikon, kohlrabi, and/or celery
- 1 bunchof cilantro
Protein
- 1large egg
- 2 cuppicked rotisserie chicken meat or other leftover cooked protein
Pantry
- 3 tbspplus 1 teaspoon brown sugar
- 4 tsptoasted sesame oil
- 1 tspcurry powder
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
- ½ tspcayenne pepper
- 1½ cups nutssuch as raw cashews, roasted peanuts, and/or raw almonds
- 1½ cups unsweetened coconut flakes
- 2 tbspwhite and/or black sesame seeds
- ⅓ cupfull-fat coconut milk
- ¼ cupcreamy peanut butter
- 1 tbspvegetable oil
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 325°F and line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Separate the egg. Put the white in a large bowl (save the yolk for aioli another day) and whisk hard until fluffy and foamy, with soft peaks. Your arm will complain. Your arm is not in charge.
- Add 3 tablespoons brown sugar, 3 teaspoons sesame oil, 1 teaspoon curry powder, ¾ teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon cayenne, and whisk it in.
- Add 1½ cups nuts, 1½ cups coconut flakes, 2 tablespoons sesame seeds and the zest of 1 lime. Fold with a rubber spatula until everything is coated.
- Spread it in an even layer on the baking sheet and bake, stirring halfway, until the coconut is lightly golden, 20 to 25 minutes. Let it cool a little, then break it into big chunks with your hands. Coconut goes from golden to burnt in about the time it takes to answer one text. Stay close.
- Finely grate a ½-inch piece of ginger into a large bowl. Add ⅓ cup coconut milk, ¼ cup peanut butter, 1 tablespoon vegetable oil, the juice of 1 lime, the remaining 1 teaspoon sesame oil and the remaining 1 teaspoon brown sugar. Whisk until smooth and season with salt.
- Chop, slice, julienne, trim, shave and/or dice 1½ pounds of crunchy vegetables, and add them all to the dressing. Any shape is fine. Crunchy is the only rule.
- Roughly chop the cilantro leaves and tender stems and add them to the bowl.
- Add 2 cups chicken and season with salt and pepper. Add a few handfuls of coconut crunch and toss, then add more lime juice to taste.
- Divide among plates and pile more coconut crunch on top.
Kitchen's closed Store the extra crunch airtight and it stays crisp for days. Hide it behind the oats if you want it to last that long.