Circassian Chicken

It took sifting through quite a few online recipes to find the correct one for this. This is a delicious dish from Turkey that sticks to the golden rule of high quality ingredients that are nevertheless quite basic. No funny spices or herbs, no nothing - just chicken, garlic, onion, walnuts, salt and bread. And a dash of red pepper oil and parsley for the topping. But even those two, more for their color effects rather than adding to the actual taste of the dish itself.

What seems to have happened instead is that the recipe authors (non-Turks, for the most part for whom the dish would not be part of their history) all decided to become creative, and added spices and especially herbs to the mix. Really powerful stuff too like tarragon, for example. Finally I found a recipe by a Turk, who presumably would have eaten this all her life, and who therefore left out all the fancy stuff that doesn't belong there - but even with her there is a bit of "interestingness" going on, when she uses coriander instead of parsley. Which I promptly replaced. Coriander indeed...

So, here we have a very close approximation of the original the dish (which is eaten at room temperature btw, it is an appetizer) that my Turkish grandmother used to whip out in no time, to all our great delight.


INGREDIENTS
  • 1 Whole chicken, trimmed of excess fat
  • 1 medium onion, peeled and quartered
  • 350 gr/12 oz walnuts, crushed
  • 4 slices of stale bread, crusts removed
  • 4 cloves of garlic, crushed with salt
  • 10 ml/ 2 teaspoon Turkish red pepper flakes – if not available, paprika or cayenne pepper
  • 1 small bunch of coriander (cilantro) leaves, chopped
  • Salt and pepper to taste
 For the garnish:
  • 30 ml/ 2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
  • 5 ml/1 teaspoon Turkish red pepper flakes/paprika flakes
  • 1 handful shelled walnuts, chopped
  • Roughly chopped parsley

INSTRUCTIONS
  • Combine the chicken leg and breast, the onion and water to almost cover the chicken in a large pan, season with salt and pepper. Cover and simmer until the chicken is tender. Remove the chicken from the pan and set aside to cool. When it is cool enough to handle, discard the skin (if whole chicken used), strip the meat from the bones, tear into thin strips and put to one side. Reserve the cooking liquid.
  • For the walnut dressing, soak the bread in a little of the reserved cooking liquid. Squeeze dry and crumble the bread into a bowl with walnuts, garlic cloves, salt and red pepper flakes. In a food processor blitz these together to form a paste. Add a spoonful at a time of the reserved cooking liquid until a creamy consistency is obtained. Fold in the parsley and season with salt and pepper if needed.
  • In a bowl, combine the chicken pieces with half the walnut dressing. Pour onto a serving plate and cover with the remaining sauce. You can refrigerate at this stage until required.
  • Heat the extra virgin olive oil and add the Turkish red pepper flakes, cook gently for about a minute. To serve, sprinkle the dressed chicken with chopped walnuts, sprigs of parsley and a drizzle of the red pepper flakes / paprika infused oil over it.


Shamelessly filched from: 
Thank you Özlem's Turkish Table! :-)

Images: Unsplash, Pexels and Freepik.


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