“I may not know much, but I know chicken shit from chicken salad.” -Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th American president and consistent deliverer of badass one-liners

When you live in a city as energetic and “vertically oppressive” as New York, it’s essential to get away once in a while for a moment or two of calm, wide-openness.  We’re not necessarily talking a quick little jaunt over to Europe or anything, or even the fact that you can board a plane from JFK in the morning and be poolside with a cocktail in the Caribbean by lunch-time (though these would be lovely conversations) - there are times when relief from New York “noise” is as simple as a Sunday morning upstate.

Luckily, I have a like-minded friend in the lovely, hilarious Kara.  In the winter-time, she’s my go-to gal for impromptu snowboarding missions in the Berkshires, and in the summer, I call on her first if I need to lace up some hiking boots and head up to Harriman State Park for some time in the woods.  Mysteriously, the two of us nearly always wind up turning our nature adventures in the direction of delicious food somehow, and this was no exception.  Kara was tasked with finding us a good, rigorous trail (She looked it up on hiking blogs!  How cute is that?), and I was tasked with lunch.  Enter the chicken salad sandwich to end all chicken salad sandwiches.

“OK,” you might be thinking, “What on Earth is this silly girl doing making such a boring, everyday, anyone-can-do-this kind of recipe and bothering to write home about it on her website, for all the Internet to see?”  I totally get it.  Chicken salad sandwiches are kind of lame.  And they can be horribly, tragically disgusting.  We’ve all been subjected to that sort of awful, homogenized mayonnaise mass at lunch-time.  It’s not cute.  Not at all.  This, I assure you, is different.  It is the un-lamest chicken sandwich you will ever eat.  And that is a RadioGastronomy promise.

Kara and I ate these babies sitting on toppled logs that had been re-purposed as campfire benches.  We were starving (despite foraging every ripe wild blueberry we could find along the trail), we were sweaty, and we were completely, totally content.  It may be a stretch, but there’s a bit of “trail mix” in this recipe.  The raisins have been swapped out for fresh, juicy red grapes, and the nuts are there, dry-toasted and chopped.  There is a celebration of nature in there, too.  A variety of herbs from my first-ever attempt at a real garden, as well as lettuce leaves clipped right from the plant that morning.  Add some protein by way of chicken meat to keep us truckin’, some carbs by way of ciabatta bread for quick energy, and the extra thrills, pills, and bellyaches of mayo, mustard, lemon, and celery, and you’ve got yourself a hiking meal.  (Not to mention the fact that it’s easy to pack compactly…..)  This is not the chicken salad from your local grocery store’s deli counter.  This is a thoughtful, complex, balanced, flavorful concoction that’s easy to make, perfect for summer, and understood by friends as a universal “yum.”  And that’s just the kind of food I love.

Ingredients:

4 ciabatta-style sandwich rolls, sliced in 1/2 lengthwise, and preferably toasted (NOTE:  You could really use any kind of bread suitable for sandwiches here.  Doesn’t have to be ciabatta.)

8 medium-sized leaves of lettuce, washed, dried well, and reserved between two pieces of paper towel (NOTE:  Butter, Bibb, Boston, Romaine, red-leaf, iceberg, watercress…..all are acceptable.  I used a really wonderful red-leaf variety from my garden, mostly because the beautiful colors in the leaves were perfect for this recipe.  The plants came from the awesome New Paltz, New York-based farm Evolutionary Organics, and not a single plant I’ve gotten from them has failed in my care.  That’s saying a lot.)

Approximately 2 cups hand-pulled chicken meat (breast meat, thigh meat, leg meat, it’s all good!) from either home-roasted, fully cooked chicken, or a store-bought rotisserie chicken  (NOTE:  Please try to buy responsibly-raised chicken.  It does make a difference.)

1/3 cup or so of mayonnaise (NOTE:  You want to coat the chicken meat with just enough mayo so that it begins to stick together, and so that it gives a gentle, light coating to the meat.  No overdo-ing it here, or it gets gross.  You might need more, you might need less.  See instructions below.)

1 tbsp.-ish of dijon mustard (The smooth stuff.)

1 tsp.-ish of country-style dijon mustard (You know, the kind with the bits in it.)

Juice of 1/2 lemon

Zest of 1/2 lemon

1 large celery stalk, washed, dried, and cut into cubes roughly 1/4″ in size

Big handful of seedless red grapes, washed, dried, and halved

Big handful of raw, whole almonds (or walnuts, or pecans), toasted lightly in a dry pan until fragrant, and then roughly chopped

Small handful of fresh mixed herbs (parsley, dill, tarragon, basil, chervil, and chives would all work well here), washed, dried very well, and chopped fine

Kosher salt & freshly ground black pepper

Instructions:

1.  Toast the bread, if desired, and line the bottom bread halves with lettuce leaves.  Set aside.

2.  In a medium non-reactive bowl, combine the chicken meat, mayonnaise, mustards, lemon juice & zest, celery, grapes, almonds, and herbs.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.  (Don’t be shy with the seasonings here.  Chicken is bland.  It likes salt and pepper a lot.)

3.  Divide into 4 even portions and pile onto the lettuce-lined bread.  Top with other half of the bread and serve.

Yield: 4 sandwiches/4 reasons to love hiking in the summertime with pals you adore