Chicken fatteh
The album track that should have been a single.
Although I’ve shared recipes for a living for the best part of a decade, I still find it very difficult to know how each recipe will be received.
All too often, the ones I’m most excited about are met with a damp squib, whereas the recipes that are so quick and easy I wasn’t even sure whether to publish them, are instant hits.
Luckily, there are cookbooks. They take the pressure off individual recipes. There’s a bit more room for the quirky stuff.
In many ways, publishing online feels akin to releasing a string of singles. Each and every recipe is expected to become a hit, and should follow a reasonably mainstream formula.
A cookbook is more like an album. With each recipe playing but a small part of a greater whole, there’s space for the more unusual or time consuming dishes – the experimental tracks and 8-minute belters of the cooking world, if you like. Gems that may not appeal to everyone, but that some people will absolutely love.
The recipe I’m sharing with you today is from my very first book, published in Norway six years ago. It’s a recipe that was an album track, but should have been a single.
Though I never made much fanfare about it, chicken fatteh has become one of the most popular recipes from the book. My chief editor from that time still makes the dish regularly when she has people over. It’s also one of my personal favourites.
I hope you enjoy this month’s free new recipe as much as I (and others!) do!
Vidar 🧿
Fatteh is a dish that’s found all around Levantine food cultures. The premise is simple: Bread with something on top (the name is Arabic for something equivalent to “left-over bread”).
As you can imagine, its variations are as many as the imagination is wide.
Perhaps best known is hummus fatteh, where toasted bread is topped with chickpeas (“hummus” in Arabic) and a tahini yoghurt.
This version is with chicken, but not just any chicken. A whole chicken that’s been poached with a handful of incredible aromatics typical of Levantine cuisines.
Tahini yoghurt is a crucial part of the dish, though the amounts can vary considerably from one fatteh to another. In my research, I found recipes calling from anything from 500 g (generous 1 lbs) to 2 kg (4½ lbs) of yoghurt per chicken! My version remains generous at 1 kg (2¼ lbs), but I know that some prefer to use less. Feel free to reduce or even halve the amount of tahini yoghurt, if that’s your preference.
I’ve also taken the liberty of adding chili butter on top. Not entirely authentic, perhaps – it’s more Turkish than Levantine – but an important part of making this a true flavour bomb.
Chicken fatteh happily takes centre stage and is great for entertaining, but if you feel like making a smaller weekday version, you can use two chicken legs instead of a whole chicken and halve everything else. In either case, a generous fresh salad is wonderful alongside.
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