Coronation Chicken and New-Potato Salad

I've seen Coronation Chicken twice recently - once being made on TV, and once served at a lunch party - and I'm so encouraged to see this splendid classic of the Fifties getting the attention it deserves.

Soft, succulent chicken breasts and new potatoes in an aromatic,
creamy sauce. 

Late last year, my friend Michael Olivier made this dish on the Expresso show on SABC TV3, and did so with great affection and gusto (as he would, being an Older Person who remembers a time before sushi, pesto and Balsamic vinegar swept all the good old classics off the culinary map).

Then, just before Christmas, I went to a lunch party where a dish of perfect Coronation Chicken was contributed by my friend Emily. There were many glorious salads on the table, but it was her delicately spiced chicken that had me going back for seconds (and, okay, for thirds). I couldn't help feeling a bit envious, because I thought her version of Coronation Chicken, with its lovely tangy creaminess, was better than mine.

When I interrogated Emily, she told me she'd added some sour cream to the mayonnaise. In my 21st Century Coronation Chicken with Mango (February 2009), I used natural yoghurt to lighten and brighten the mayonnaisey sauce; clearly, sour cream is also needed if my version is to achieve Emily's heights of perfection.

And that's why you'll find a little sour cream in the recipe below. Leave it out and use the same quantity of yoghurt, if you're watching calories.

The inspiration for this salad comes from the delicious Bombay Potato Salad that I often buy at Giovanni's, Cape Town's best delicatessen. I've tried several times to reproduce this recipe, but I haven't been able to crack their special formula. The next best thing, I figured, was to use my own recipe for Coronation Chicken (with added sour cream!) and create an entirely new dish.

For reasons of economy and flavour, this recipe uses a whole chicken, which is cooked in a little flavoured liquid in the oven. You can use cooked deboned chicken breasts, if you like, but they won't have the same flavour and succulence.
If you must use chicken breasts, I suggest that you oven-poach them using this method.

The first time I made (and photographed) this dish, I topped it with a salsa of matchsticked red apple, granadilla pulp, lemon juice and red chilli. It tasted nice enough, but the salsa really wasn't necessary, so I've left it out of the recipe below. (You might want to give the salsa a bash, but why gild the lily?)

I've added a number of whole spices to the initial fry-up for the mayonnaise mix (and to the whole chicken) to give the dish a more complex, layered taste. If you're in a hurry, you can leave these out: the only thing needed for an authentic Fifties Coronation Chicken taste is a good, fresh, generic curry powder: I always use the Rajah brand (medium strength). Please resist the temptation to add fresh or dried chillies to this mixture: Constance Spry, one of the inventors of this dish, would turn in her grave.

I topped my salad with a  salsa made with apple sticks,
passion-fruit pulp and chilli, which was interesting, but not necessary.

Coronation Chicken and Potato Salad

For the chicken:
a large free-range chicken, trimmed of all excess fat
salt and pepper
half a large, unskinned onion
2 bay leaves
3 whole cloves
4 cardamom pods, lightly crushed
2 cloves garlic, lightly crushed
a lemon
boiling water

For the salad:
30 new potatoes
3 Tbsp (45 ml) vegetable oil
2 tsp (10 ml) black mustard seeds
a thumb-length stick of cinnamon
2 whole cardamom pods, lightly crushed
1 onion, peeled and very finely chopped or coarsely grated
a large clove of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1 Tbsp (15 ml) grated fresh ginger
2 bay leaves
2 slices of lemon, skin on
4 tsp (20 ml) tomato paste
4 Tbsp (60 ml) white wine
3 Tbsp (45 ml) apricot jam, or sweet, fruity chutney
4 Tbsp (60 ml) chicken stock (from the pan you used to cook the chicken)
1 tsp (5 ml) ground cumin
1 tsp (5 ml) ground turmeric
1 Tbsp (15 ml) medium curry powder
1 cup (250 ml) good home-made mayonnaise, or Hellman's mayonnaise
½ cup (125 ml) plain white full-fat yoghurt
½ cup (125 ml) sour cream
the juice of a lemon
salt and milled black pepper

To serve:
fresh parsley or coriander [cilantro]
a dusting of paprika

Preheat the oven to 180 ºC. Put the chicken into a large, deep roasting pan, and season well with salt and pepper, inside and out. Push the onion, bay leaves, cloves, cardamom pods and garlic into the cavity of the chicken. Cut the lemon in half and squeeze it over the chicken. Place one of the squeezed-out lemon halves into the cavity. Pour boiling water into the bottom of the roasting pan to a depth of three centimetres. Cover tightly with tin foil, and place in the hot oven.

Bake at 180º C for an hour and ten minutes, or until the chicken is cooked right through. Remove from the oven and set aside, still covered.

In the meantime, place the new potatoes in a pot of salted cold water, bring to the boil and cook until just tender (about 20-25 minutes). Drain and set aside to cool.

Now make the dressing. Heat the oil in a frying pan and add the mustard seeds, cinnamon stick and cardamom pods. Fry, over a high heat, until the mustard seeds begin to pop and crackle. Now add the onion, garlic and ginger, turn down the heat a little and cook gently for two to three minutes, or until the onion is soft. Add the bay leaves, lemon slices, tomato paste, white wine, apricot jam (or chutney) and chicken stock. Allow the mixture to cook at a brisk bubble for five to seven minutes, or until it has reduced slightly. You should have a slightly thickened, shiny spice paste. Stir in the cumin, turmeric and curry powder and cook for another minute.

Remove from the heat, fish out the cinnamon stick and cardamom pods, and set aside to cool for 10 minutes.

Strip the chicken from the bones and discard any skin, sinew or fat. Cut or tear into strips. Slice the new potatoes in half, crossways.

Put the mayonnaise, yoghurt and sour cream into a large bowl and whisk well. Add the cooled spiced paste, a few tablespoons at a time, until the mixture tastes right for you. I like a quite strongly flavoured dressing, but you might prefer a milder mix. (Any remaining spice paste can be refrigerated for use in a future curry.)

Stir in the lemon juice, along with the chicken and the halved new potatoes. Season generously with salt and pepper. Toss gently and thoroughly to combine.

Tip into a pretty salad bowl, and chill for at least an hour (but not more than two). Scatter with freshly chopped parsley or coriander and dust with a little paprika.

Serves 8.

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21st Century Coronation Chicken with Mango: light, bright and spicy

Coronation Chicken, that classic dish of the 1950s, isn't something you're likely to see on a restaurant menu these days. In fact, I don't recall ever having seeing this on a printed menu. The only time you might encounter Coronation Chicken is if you have lunch with an old granny with strong British connections, or you might be lucky enough to find it between two slices of wholegrain organic bread in a swanky sandwich bar in London.

What a pity this recipe has fallen out of favour, because - given a little healthy tweak and updated with fresh spices - it's delicious.

At a gloved and lipsticked suburban ladies' luncheon in, say, 1959, you might have been served up a dish of cold, poached chicken, coated with a thick, tangy-mayonnaise-and-whipped-cream sauce, flavoured with tomato paste, lemon, apricot purée and a few teaspoonsful of dusty, aged curry powder. A bed of shredded iceberg lettuce might have featured, plus many tufts of parsley and a few artfully carved lemon halves.

The dish was invented, apparently, by florist Constance Spry and her associate Rosemary Hume (original recipe here) for Queen Elizabeth's coronation luncheon in 1953. The recipe appeared in the The Constance Spry Cookbook, published in 1956, and within a few years had become an established classic.

My light, bright and delicate version of this dish uses virtually the same ingredients, but with a healthy twist: skinless, deboned chicken breasts, fresh spices, some good mayonnaise, and tangy white yoghurt. And, because I live in Africa, where mangos are in season, mango slices instead of apricots. But apricots or sliced, peeled fresh peaches would be just as good.

Postscript: I have abandoned the cheffy method of cooking chicken breasts in clingfilm, below, in favour of oven-poaching, which produces a lovely, moist, flavoursome result. Here's how to oven-poach chicken breasts

21st Century Coronation Chicken: light, bright and spicy

10 skinless, deboned chicken breasts, poached, or an equivalent amount of cold sliced cooked chicken (see notes below)
2 T (30 ml) olive oil
1 small onion, peeled and very finely chopped or minced
4 t (20 ml) fresh, mild curry powder
3 ml ground cumin
3 ml turmeric
1 clove
a two-centimetre-long piece of cinnamon stick
2 whole cardamom pods
a bay leaf
4 t (20 ml) tomato paste
4 t (20 ml) apricot jam
the juice of one fat lemon
2 thin slices lemon, peel and all
1/4 cup (60 ml) stock (chicken stock, vegetable stock or water)
1/4 cup (60 ml) white wine
salt and milled black pepper
2/3 cup (160 ml) good home-made mayonnaise, or Hellman's mayonnaise
2/3 cup (160 ml) plain white full-fat yoghurt

First prepare the chicken (see notes, below) and set aside to cool.

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan and add the finely chopped onion. Cook over a brisk heat until softened and beginning to turn a golden brown. Add the curry powder, cumin, turmeric, whole clove, cinnamon stick, cardamom pods and bay leaf, and cook for another minute or so, to allow the spices to release their oils. Now turn down the heat and stir in the tomato paste, the apricot jam, the lemon juice and the lemon slices. Stir well to combine all ingredients, and then stir in the stock and the wine. Season with salt and pepper, and allow to bubble on a low heat for ten to fifteen minutes, or until the mixture is slightly reduced and glossy. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool for 10 minutes.

At this point, you can strain the mixture through a sieve into a clean bowl (press down, using the back of a spoon, on the solids) or, if, you would like to keep the sauce a bit chunky, with all its oniony bits - as I do - pick out the whole spices and discard them.

In a new, clean bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise and the yoghurt. Add two-thirds of the cooled spicy mixture, and stir well to combine. Now taste the mixture, and add more of the cooked sauce to achieve the strength that suits your tastebuds. If the sauce seems very thick (this depends on what sort of yoghurt and mayonnaise you have used) thin it down with a little milk or water. Chill the sauce.

Just before serving, slice the cooked, cooled chicken and arrange on a platter, or individual plates. Coat the chicken with the cool sauce. Serve with with peeled mango, apricot or peach slices, and a few green salad leaves.

Serves 6 to 8.

Notes:

Cooking Chicken for this dish:

I detest chicken breasts poached in water or stock: they go all stiff , in seconds, and the liquid gets all milky and curdled. I am also not very fond of pan-fried chicken breasts, which always seem a bit stringy.

Here are my suggestions: if you are making up a big, tossed platter of Coronation Chicken for a crowd, gently poach a whole chicken in stock or water, remove the skin, and then shred the chicken into biggish pieces, before tossing in the sauce.

If you are looking for something more fancy and cheffy, cook skinned, deboned chicken breasts as follows:

Half-fill a large pot with water and bring to the boil. Place a single piece of clingfilm on the counter top, and on to put put two chicken breasts, fillet side up, side by side. Season with salt and pepper.

Now place the salted sides together to make a sandwich. Pick up the edge of the clingfilm and roll the breasts into a tight sausage, as if you are making a Christmas cracker. Twist the ends of the 'cracker' in opposite direction so that you have a neat and uniform roll. Tuck the twists of clingfilm under the chicken roll. Now repeat the process with another sheet of clingfilm to make the package waterproof. Do the same to the remaining breasts. Put the the chicken rolls in the boiling water and turn the heat down to a simmer. Cook gently for 20-30 minutes, or until the breasts are just cooked through (how long will depend on how thick the breasts are: to test, slice right through one of the packages. If there is any pinkness remaining, re-wrap in a fresh layer of clingfilm and poach for another five minutes).

Remove the chicken parcels from the boiling water using a slotted spoon, and place on a plate to cool. Refrigerate for an hour or so. Then peel off the clingfilm and, using a very sharp knife, carve into disks. Print Friendly