Nadine Abensur had a long-standing date at one of Yotam Ottolenghi’s best restaurants but when illness intervened she had to change direction quickly…
Many of my favourite recipes are born out of disappointment and failure. Sounds a bit dramatic but it’s true.
One of the would be highlights of my recent visit to London had been a booking, made six weeks in advance for dinner at NOPI, the most sophisticated of Yotam Ottolenghi’s many restaurants. Volumes have been written about the superlatively good food, its originality and multi cultural marriage of ingredients. If anyone could produce something new and scintillating, it would be Ottolenghi, especially in association with Ramael Scully, the cooking of the Far East merging to excellence with that of the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean. But on the awaited day, my son, in whose birthday honour the dinner had been planned, took ill, took to his bed in fact.
“No, no darling, it’s absolutely fine,” I said, masking my disappointment in the face of his green – tinged contrition, “another time.”
I munched on an apple as I jealously perused the missed menu.
Twice cooked chicken – simple but tempting – left tracks in my brains. Despite other plans, when came the time to write this article, twice cooked chicken it had to be.
The Ottolenghi/Scully offering is extraordinarily Antipodean, lemon myrtle its primary aromatic. But my love affair with Ottolenghi has its genesis in his affinity with my own culinary roots and so in a gesture of fraternity, my recipe refers to the Harissa and cumin, the lemon and garlic, the saffron and olive oil we both enjoy so much. And to the fragrance of roses. Pounded into the paste, they release soft notes into the kitchen and delicacy to an otherwise potent mix.
I am more than a little grain phobic – is anyone not these days – but today, I decided to experiment with Freekeh (the phonetic spelling of an Arabic word), a green wheat whose middle eastern origins lend it well to the chicken.
Served in garnish like quantities – nothing more than a scattering in other words – it felt benign enough. But not before having been cooked considerably longer than any recipe suggested. I cooked it for 50 minutes though if I hadn’t needed to get this to the printer’s, so to speak, I would have given it longer still. This modestly sized bird fed four. Doubling the recipe is easy to do and works.
Stage One
Pre heat the oven to 180C
Ingredients
1 smallish chicken, about 1.2 kg, organic
1 litre chicken stock, home made or shop bought
Juice of 2 lemons, plus one whole
3 – 4 fat cloves of garlic
1 knob of ginger, peeled
1 tbs Seasalt, a fat pinch of cracked black pepper and 6 rose buds pounded together
1 whole banana chilli cut in half and seeds removed (Keep a little aside for garnish)
Stage Two
Ingredients
1 scant tbs Harissa
1 tbs maple syrup or honey
1
tbs ground cumin
6 cardamom pods, seeds scraped out
1 tbs olive oil
A fat pinch
of saffron
6 -7 blood red, dried rose buds( Red Ginger in Byron Bay and Bangalow sell these)
1tsp freshly grated cinnamon
1 tsp Sea salt
Garnish
150g Frikeh
8 ladles of chicken stock
1 garlic clove
150g baby spinach
Handful parsley and coriander, tough stalk removed
1 tbs toasted pine nuts, optional
Pound the cumin, grated cinnamon, saffron filaments, cardamom seeds and sea salt together. Add the rose buds and pound, till crushed to a flake. Add the maple syrup and olive oil and bind the lot to a fiery paste. Set aside. Place the chicken in a bowl, pour the lemon juice over it and rub it well into the skin. Then rub chicken with the seasalt, rose buds and black pepper. Cut the remaining whole lemon into quarters and stuff into the cavity, together with the knob of ginger and the chilli.
Place the stock in a pan large enough to also hold the whole chicken and bring them both to the boil. Cover with a lid and continue to cook for 25 minutes, or till the chicken is cooked through. Remove and drain, reserving the stock, then transfer to an oven tray. Brush (use your fingers, if you’re game) with the Harissa mix, top, bottom, breast, insides, behind the thighs, into the fold of the wings. Be generous.
Pour a ladle of the remaining stock all around and place in the oven for 35 – 40 minutes, until crisp and golden, basting throughout with pan juices and small additions of stock if necessary.
To serve
While the chicken is on the boil heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a large frying pan, add in a crushed clove of garlic, sautéed until translucent, add 150g Frikeh and stir till well coated. Add eight (more if absorbed before the grain is quite soft), ladles of the stock, bring to the boil, reduce the heat, cover with a lid and simmer for at least 50 minutes till swollen to tenderness, only a little liquid remaining.
Remove the chicken from the oven, add what should now be the last ladle or so of stock and the spinach. Return to the oven for a final minute or two. The spinach will have wilted, and there will be a generous jus in the pan.
Scatter the Frikeh and its juice onto a large plate. Lift the chicken onto it. Garnish with little mounds of wilted spinach. Pour the pan juices over, also the softened garlic cloves, the lemon wedges, the crisp, caramelised knubble,(the word is not in the dictionary), sticking to the pan.
Scatter with the toasted pine nuts and the fresh herbs.
Serve. Eat. Enjoy.
