Tarragon Chicken salad in Endive boats

Recently I made appetizers for my dear friend, Erica's party at her beautiful boutique spa on Sacramento Street, Tre Balm.  (side note, for the next month, she's offering 40% off treatments, so y'all might want to get on that...)

The menu was:

Tarragon Chicken Salad in Endive Boats

Prosciutto-Cantelope Sticks

Caprese Sticks

Garlic Shrimp

Lots of Champagne, and lots of Vodka. 

So, my chicken salad: the basics are pretty much the same across the board for most of my salads -- cut the mayo in half and use greek yogurt (or maybe 1/4 mayo, 3/4 greek yogurt).  Honestly, you just need a little bit of that mayo flavor and then the greek yogurt will add lots of light fluffiness without adding to the fat content. Its important to use plain, non fat, bc any other flavor of yogurt would taste super weird. If you don't want to use mayo at all, use greek yogurt and lemon juice. Its really amazing.

For these endive boats, I tried to replicate a rather expensive, heavy chicken salad from Whole Foods: the tarragon chicken salad.  To make enough boats for 20-30 people, here's what you need:

-- 5 or 6 endive bulbs

-- One roasted chicken, pulled apart (save the carcass to make a broth if you want, or use some of the chicken for dinner if you don't need a lot of salad) OR load up a whole foods salad container with the roasted chicken in the salad bar -- maybe about 3/4 lb or 1 lb.. that way its already roasted and cold. Chop it into small pieces on a cutting board, and put into a big bowl.

At $8/lb at the salad bar vs. $14/lb of the prepared chicken salad, you're looking pretty good on costs so far. It would have been about $150 to buy as much chicken salad as I needed, but all the ingredients combined cost about $50. 

Combine: 

-- 3 TB white wine vinegar

-- 2 TB dried tarragon (or fresh if you can find it... I actually found some that was dehydrated instead of dried, so that the vinegar sort of "brought it back to life")

-- 1/4 cup dijon mustard

-- 1/4 cup mayonnaise

-- 1/5 cup non fat plain greek yogurt

-- salt & pepper

-- 4 stalks of celery, sliced long and thin, then chopped 

-- 4 scallions, trimmed and finely chopped

-- 1-2 teaspoon agave or honey

You might need more of the above, depending on how much chicken you have, but this roughly the right quantitates/ratios. If it doesn't feel moist enough when you're stirring it all together, start by adding a little more greek yogurt, or maybe some lemon juice. 

Take the outer leaves off the endives and arrange them on a big platter, and carefully spoon the chicken salad into each.  I also served a platter of chicken salad on pop chips in case people didn't like the slightly bitter taste of endive, but the pop chips got soggy... so you could do regular Cape Cod potato chips which hold up better, or crackers, etc... This salad is also really great ON an arugula or other salad.