picnic food | organised castle

**This post has been updated from 2016 in December 2020. I have made a couple of amendments to correct errors in the recipe and added photos taken today while making this dish in preparation for our Christmas holiday menu.**

As promised yesterday, here is the recipe for cold curried chicken.

Cold Curried Chicken

3 – 4 chicken breast fillets (around 800g)
1 onion, finely diced
3 tablespoons butter
6 teaspoons curry powder (adjust for personal taste as required)
3 – 4 tablespoons flour
900ml chicken stock
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons red currant jelly
150ml cream
Salt and pepper

Cold cooked rice
French dressing

Steam the chicken and shred into bite-sized pieces.

Melt butter, add onion and cook until soft. Add curry powder and cook for 5 minutes. Add flour and cook for another 2 – 3 minutes.

Gradually add the stock and stir until blended well. Bring to the boil while stirring then simmer gently for 10 minutes. Blend until smooth.

Add lemon juice and red currant jelly. Mix well and allow to cool. Stir in cream and season to taste.

Combine the chicken and curry sauce in a shallow dish and chill before serving.

Toss the rice in a little French dressing before serving.

I have successfully made this gluten-free by using gluten free flour to thicken it. You may need a bit more flour if using gluten free. I also substituted evaporated skim milk instead of the cream. You can make your own evaporated milk using equal parts of milk powder and water. If you want it a bit creamier just add more milk powder.

I stuck to my menu plan even though it would have been easy to capitulate and opt for takeaway.

Thai beef salad was on the plan for tonight before I realised we were going to a free screening of Casablanca. The scheduled time was 7pm for a 7.15pm start and we normally don’t arrive home until close to 7.30pm so clearly we had to make some adjustments. I caught a train which had me arriving home about 5.30pm and GMan came in at about 6.40pm.

I sliced the beef and marinated it last night. I used a splash of olive oil, lemon juice, 1/4 teaspoon of ginger and tiny red chilli (very hot) finely chopped. Here is the mixture this afternoon before I cooked it.

2016-02-03 01

I prepared the remaining ingredients for the salad – lettuce, carrot, cucumber and cherry tomatoes.

2016-02-03 02

The carrot and cucumber were cut using a spiral cutter.

Due to the time constraints we had decided to pack our dinner as a picnic to eat when we got to the hall for the movie screening.

2016-02-03 03

I fried the meat in a tiny bit of coconut oil. To add some extra flavour I mixed up a sauce and added that to the pan at the end. I used a tablespoon of lemon juice, a teaspoon of red wine vinegar, 2 teaspoons of crunchy peanut paste and a pinch each of ginger and chilli powder. I stirred the sauce through the meat and cooked for a further minute.

The meat was added to the salad and we were ready to go – complete with cutlery and serviettes.

2016-02-03 04