Quail "Chicken Salad"

A Recipe from Chími Nu’am by Sara Calvosa Olson of Mill Valley and the Hoopa Valley Reservation

I can’t tell you how excited I was to get my hands on a copy of Sara Calvosa Olson’s book Chími Nu’am: Native California Foodways for the Contemporary Kitchen (Heyday). Sara shared her food philosophy with us back when she was finishing up the manuscript for the book, and I’ve been waiting for it ever since. For Indigenous People’s Day, I thought I’d share a peek at the content along with one of the recipes from the book. This “chicken salad” made with quail, walnuts, citrus, and plum is an ideal meal for this time of year, when the weather is still hot and the last plums of the year are still in markets (even if they’re not the cherry plums she prefers in this recipe).

Sara’s book is full of thoughtful instructions for how to use native ingredients like wild meats, acorns, manzanita flour, mushrooms, huckleberries, and spruce tips. Along with the recipes and instructions, Sara also shares stories and provides readers with context about how Native Californians have lived for centuries. The recipes in the book—like Acorn Pumpkin Muffins, Rabbit and Dungeness Paella, and Niçoise Salad with Pickled Sea Beans and Quail Eggs—are decidedly modern, geared towards today’s tastes and cooking methods. But they’re not the kind of recipes you can just decide to may on any night of the week. As Sara says in an introductory chapter:

“It isn’t the type of book in which you find a recipe and then run to the store for the ingredients you need to fulfill your weeknight dinner grind. This book requires a connection to nature and food gathering that you will need to nurture, to become inspired by your role as an environmental steward.”

Perhaps most importantly, this book is intended specifically as a resource for Native cooks who want to include more traditional foods in their cooking, not as a way to make Native foods suddenly trendy. But Sara’s approach has a lot to teach all of us about how to responsibly use the resources around us. In our first interview, she talked about this tension:

“It’s fraught when you’re talking about traditional foods and walking that line between what is for us, that we want to preserve, and what is for everybody else. Because there is a line.

“We do need to engage everybody when it comes to climate change and reconnecting to natural rhythms and actually giving a rip about the earth. People are so disconnected that it’s difficult. It feels like this sort of existential crisis, but it’s not. We can go outside, and it’s very tangible and very real. And there are things that we can do now. And we need to engage everybody. And I think we should do it by centering traditional ecological knowledges and centering Native people in the way forward.”

Quail “Chicken Salad” with Cherry Plums and Black Walnuts

This recipe also works great with leftover grilled chicken or even a store-bought rotisserie chicken if you want to try it before committing to the quail—whatever makes your life easier. This salad utilizes cherry plums because it seems that wherever I am, there is a cherry plum tree that has escaped its garden, with the help of birds and squirrels scattering pits across the landscape. My fancy Oneida friend Dean shared with us the tip about finger limes, and if you are able to find them, they will blow your quail salad into the stratosphere. Serve the salad between two slices of toasted acorn bread for added deliciousness.

Serves 4

2 whole quails, backbones removed
Salt and black pepper
1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper (or any spicy pepper, cayenne works too)
2 tablespoons sunflower oil
½ cup rough chopped black walnuts
3 finger limes, caviar spooned out [and set aside] (or juice from ½ lemon)
½ cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon leaves
1½ teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 cup quartered, pitted cherry plums
2 celery stalks, sliced
1 spring onion or 3 green onions, chopped, white and green parts
2 tablespoons chopped parsley

1. Rinse and pat dry your quails, season both sides generously with salt, black pepper, and Aleppo pepper.

2. In a large cast-iron pan, heat the sunflower oil over medium-high heat. Add the quails, skin side down, and fry until crisp, 5 to 7 minutes. Flip over and cook on the other side until cooked through, 3 to 4 more minutes. Set aside to cool a bit.

3. In a small cast-iron pan, lightly toast the walnuts over medium heat. Set aside to cool.

4. In a small bowl, mix the finger lime caviar, mayonnaise, chopped tarragon, mustard, and a pinch of salt and pepper to taste. Store the dressing in the fridge until ready to use.

5. Shred or cut the quail meat from the bones and put in a large bowl. Add the cherry plums, celery, spring onion, parsley, and toasted walnuts. Gently toss together.

6. Add the dressing a couple of tablespoons at a time. Stir gently and taste. People have different preferences for how creamy they like their chicken salads, so make sure you’re not adding it all at once if you prefer a lighter dressing.

This recipe is excerpted from Chími Nu’am: Native California Foodways for the Contemporary Kitchen by Sara Calvosa Olson. Reprinted with permission from Heyday © 2023.

Photos: Sara Calvosa Olson