Chicken Pasta Salad with Yogurt-​Mango Sauce

I paid a visit to my local hippie-​dippy mar­ket last week­end, and couldn’t resist gawk­ing at their deli counter. It’s filled with so many healthy things, just one set­back: all ridicu­lously expen­sive. Like, $8 for a mouth­ful. I caved and ordered the world’s small­est con­tainer of pasta salad, then reverse engi­neered the recipe at home. I used left­over roasted chicken meat from the pre­vi­ous night, and made enough salad for 6 large serv­ings. It would’ve cost me more than $50 to buy the same amount at the mar­ket, and the orig­i­nal didn’t even have chicken…!

First of all, the yogurt-​mango sauce. I like to use yogurt in dress­ings and sauces, but it never occurred to me to mix in mango purée. Add some curry pow­der, and the result adds some­thing new and exotic to a plain ‘ol pasta salad. Could I do the same with pineap­ple, or papaya, in the future? The raw shred­ded car­rots are a great idea, too — and if you can see in the cor­ner of the pic­ture above, I re-​used the deli con­tainer to store an extra batch to use on some­thing else later.

I love mak­ing stuff at home because I can be gen­er­ous with ingre­di­ents, so the veg­etable serv­ings here are three times the size of the market-​bought salad that inspired my recipe. I sautéed chopped zuc­chini, red pep­pers and added a sprin­kle of dried cran­ber­ries to the pasta.

Since the pasta salad can be eaten cold, it makes a nice take to work lunch.

Did you like the recipe idea? Pls com­ment and share, it’s much appreciated!

Chicken Pasta Salad with Yogurt-​Mango Sauce

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Course Main Course, Salad, Side Dish

Ingredients

  

• Sauce
• 1 cup plain greek yogurt fat free, or 2%
• 1 cup mango purée
• 1½ tsp curry powder
• 1 tsp turmeric
• Salad
• 300 g rotini pasta roughly ¾ lbs
• 1 tbs olive oil
• 1 zuc­chini cubed
• 1 red pep­per chopped
• 1 medium car­rot shredded
• hand­ful of dried cranberries
• 1½ cup shred­ded rotis­serie or left­over roasted chicken meat
• salt and pep­per to taste

Instructions

 

• Cook the pasta until al-​dente, drain and pour into a large salad bowl.
• Use a spoon to mix the yogurt, mango purée, the curry pow­der and turmeric. Note: if you’re mak­ing the mango purée from scratch, don’t purée the yogurt and mango together to save time. It will make the yogurt runny. Have your purée ready, and sim­ply mix with remain­ing sauce ingre­di­ents by hand.
• Heat the olive oil in a skil­let over medium heat. Sauté the zuc­chini and red pep­pers until soft­ened. Remove from heat and set aside.
• Mix all of the salad ingre­di­ents together and sea­son with salt and pep­per. Serve very lightly warmed, or cold.

Keyword Chicken, Yogurt-​Mango Sauce