Recipes

Chicken and cucumber salad with pul biber and tahini lime dressing

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on September 12 2022 at 21:08

Anyone who is a fan of Sabrina Ghayour will be thrilled that there's a successor to her best-selling book Persiana. Actually there have been several but this one relates back directly with a collection of easy, but supremely tasty family-friendly recipes.

This is for anyone who loves a chicken salad which certainly includes me.

Sabrina writes: "Although I love salads, for me they need to have bags of flavour and tick many boxes. Fresh, zingy, crunchy, sometimes sweet and spicy – I always need a salad to be a filling meal in its own right.

This stunner using leftover chicken is a nod to chicken satay salads but using the Middle Eastern staples of tahini and cucumber, and we Persians have an unhealthy obsession with cucumber!

It really is refreshing and full of flavour – perfect for sharing, or not…

SERVES 2–4

1 large cucumber, peeled and cut into thin batons or strips using a vegetable peeler

2 cooked chicken breasts, shredded (or use chicken thigh or leg meat)

3 spring onions, thinly sliced diagonally from root to tip

1 teaspoon pul biber chilli flakes

handful of salted peanuts or cashew nuts

handful of fresh coriander leaves

Maldon sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper

For the dressing

1 heaped tablespoon tahini

juice of 1 lime

1 tablespoon light soy sauce

1 heaped teaspoon clear honey

Arrange the cucumber, chicken and spring onions on a large platter and season with a little salt and pepper.

Mix all the dressing ingredients together in a small bowl and drizzle over the salad.

Sprinkle with the pul biber, scatter over the nuts and coriander leaves and serve. This needs no accompaniment.

What to drink: I'd probably go for an off-dry white like a pinot gris or riesling with this. Or a viognier FB

Persiana Everyday by Sabrina Ghayour is published by Aster (£26). Photography by Kris Kirkham

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