Recipe: Chicken Salad with Piquant Sauce

Like a good Southerner who frequents ladies' lunch places, I love chicken salad, and this version is one of my favorite summer meals. Its signature is a Piquant Sauce, whose taste is best described by defining piquant: "pleasantly pungent or tart in taste; spicy." It is sweet at the same time and very similar to polynesian sauce, my favorite for dipping nuggets at Chick-fil-A.

I like the sauce atop simple chicken-mayo-celery salad and lots of cool, creamy avocado with a side of sliced tomatoes. It's even better when I have leftover smoked chickens with which to make the salad. It's super refreshing at the end of a nasty hot day. The recipe came from my great aunt, and I first came to appreciate it whenever my taste buds matured to fully appreciate the wonder of avocados.

Piquant Sauce

1 cup sugar

1/8 cup salt

1/8 cup paprika

½ cup cider vinegar

1/8 cup prepared mustard

1/8 cup grated onion

1 tablespoon celery seed

2 1/8 cup oil (I use canola.)

Pour all ingredients in blender, adding the oil last. Blend until well mixed. Store in refrigerate and stir before serving.

Serve over avocado halves topped with chicken salad.