Tandoori chicken salad with mint chutney dressing

Salad based dinners always seem like the ideal choice for summer evenings, especially when the salad greens are any form of lettuce - crunchy, and one of those humble ingredients that pairs perfectly with almost any accompaniment. I often take salads with grilled vegetables as my base, and try to create variations with the use of proteins, or an interesting dressing. Maybe for the abundance of options, or the lack of them, I chose to pair mister humble lettuce with grilled chicken marinated in yogurt and garam masala, and top all of that with a mint chutney, which is a classic dip sauce served at Indian barbeque joints.

Serves: 2 meal portions

Time to prepare: 15 minutes

Time to cook: 40 minutes

Ingredients

1. 2 cups Greek yogurt 
2. 1/2 cup mint leaves
3. 1/2 cup coriander leaves and stalk
4. 1 lime, juiced
5. 1/2 tsp honey
6. 300gm chicken thigh roughly chopped
7. 1 zucchini/courgette chopped into circles
8. 1 eggplant/aubergine roughly chopped
9. 1 capsicum/bell pepper roughly chopped
10. 2-3 cups of salad greens 
11. 2 tbsp garam masala 
12. 1 tsp turmeric powder
13. 1 tsp black pepper powder
14. A few strands of saffron 
15. 10 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
16. Salt to taste

Method

1. Prepare a the marinade with 1 cup of yoghurt, 1/2 lime juice, turmeric, pepper powder, saffron, and 4 tbsp olive oil and mix thoroughly. If possible, set aside for 10 minutes for the saffron to release its flavours into the mix.
2. Clean the chicken and marinate it worth the mix for at least 20 minutes and up to overnight.
3. Add 4 tbsp olive oil, some pepper and salt to the veggies and grill them on a hot griddle. Follow with grilling chicken. I start with veggies because that prohibits contamination for vegetarians, and gives chicken the time to marinate. 
4. If using the oven, grill both the chicken and veggies for about 40 minutes at 180°C. Of course if there are vegetarians, grill the veggies first and follow up with the chicken. 
5. In a blender, blitz 1 cup of yoghurt, half of the lime juice, mint, coriander, honey and salt to taste to form the mint chutney dressing. Taste the dressing and adjust salt. Set aside. 
6. After everything is set, mix the salad greens, veggies and chicken with the mint dressing. 
7. Bon apetit!