Musakhan

Ingredients

• Chicken — in pieces1.6 kg
• Onions1.5 kg
• Sumac60 g
• Olive oil250 ml
• Taboon flatbreads6
• Pine nuts80 g
• Ground allspice2 tsp
• Ground cardamom1 tsp
• Ground cinnamon1 tsp
• Yoghurt — to serve300 ml
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Rub the chicken with salt, pepper, allspice, cardamom and cinnamon and leave it half an hour.

   35 min

2. 2

   Slice the onions into thin half-moons; a kilo and a half takes about twenty minutes.

   22 min

3. 3

   Stew the onions in the olive oil over a low heat for forty minutes, until translucent and sweet.

   45 min

4. 4

   Stir two-thirds of the sumac and salt into the onions and give them five more minutes.

   7 min

5. 5

   Brown the chicken and roast it at 200 °C for twenty-five minutes.

   40 min

6. 6

   Toast the pine nuts in a dry pan until golden, watching that they do not scorch.

   6 min

7. 7

   Lay down the bread, the onions on it, the chicken on top, spoon over the pan oil and scatter with sumac and nuts.

   10 min

About the dish

There is as much onion as chicken by weight. It is not a garnish but the base of the dish: it stews until it collapses into a thick mass.

Sumac goes in generously and in two stages — into the onion and over the finished dish. It supplies the acidity that stands in for lemon here and dyes everything deep red.

The bread is not dried out. It has to soak up the oil and onion juices completely and turn soft — a crisp crust counts as a fault in musakhan.

Worth knowing

• — The onions must not be fried hot. Browned they turn bitter; what is wanted is sweet onion collapsed to a paste.
• — Do not stint on the oil. It is the fat, the sauce and what soaks the bread all at once — halving it means cooking a different dish.
• — Musakhan is eaten by hand, tearing bread with the chicken. In Jordan and Palestine that is the table norm rather than a liberty.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

780 kcal

Protein

44 g

Fat

46 g

Carbs

48 g

More from Jordan

• Mansaf — Lamb in a sauce of jameed, fermented dried yoghurt, over rice and flatbread. Jordan's national dish.
• Maqluba — Rice with meat and fried vegetables cooked in one pot and turned out whole onto a platter.
• Galayet bandora — Tomatoes cooked down in olive oil with chilli and garlic to a thick sauce.