Spice (34 page)

2 eggplants (about 2 pounds), peeled and cut into 2-inch chunks

1 tablespoon salt plus more to taste

¼ cup whole-milk plain yogurt, preferably Greek style

1 teaspoon smoked salt

1 teaspoon finely minced garlic (about 1 large clove)

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice (about ½ lemon)

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

½ cup toasted pine nuts (page 91)

2 teaspoons Urfa chilies plus a pinch for garnish

Pepper to taste

1.
Bring a large saucepan (big enough to hold the chunks of peeled eggplant) of water to a boil, and cook the eggplant in the boiling water with the tablespoon of salt. Lower the heat to medium and continue on a brisk simmer. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes, until the eggplant is soft and translucent. Check by squeezing the eggplant with a pair of tongs. Drain well in a colander.

2.
In a food processor fitted with a metal blade, purée the eggplant with the yogurt, smoked salt, garlic, lemon juice, and olive oil.

3.
Place the eggplant mixture in a medium mixing bowl and stir in the pine nuts and Urfa chilies. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

4.
Serve at room temperature or warm in small serving bowls, sprinkled with a pinch of Urfa chilies to show them off.

Chicken and Walnut Pâté with Smoky Paprika

I call this creamy chicken salad recipe pâté because it is similar in consistency to
rillettes
, which is a type of French pâté. Rillettes are made by cooking rabbit, duck, or pork slowly in a lot of fat until very tender; the meat is then shredded and mixed with enough cooking fat to form a paste, which is served on sliced bread. In this recipe, I use nuts, bread, and chicken poaching liquid to bind the chicken meat, for a creamy consistency without all the fat. Using nuts as a thickening agent is a sophisticated, heart-smart, healthful Arabic cooking technique (see also Turkish Tarator Sauce on page 353 and Garlic and Almond Soup on page 338).

This pâté recipe is a twist on Circassian chicken, a classic Ottoman dish. The Russians forced the Circassians out of their homeland in the North Caucasus Mountains in the 1860s, and 90 percent of these people fled to Turkey. Circassian women—renowned for their beauty and their cooking—were captured by or traded to the sultans and became part of the harem and cooking staff in the Turkish palaces.

The first time I prepared Circassian chicken was in 1999, when I was chef at the Casablanca restaurant in Harvard Square. Clifford Wright, the author of
A Mediterranean Feast
(a book that took him ten years to write and is my favorite reference on Mediterranean cooking), came into the kitchen and said, “No, it must be creamier.” He helped me understand the proper texture. And then when I first met my friend Hamza Zeytinoglu, of Circassian descent and hailing from Istanbul, he literally jumped for joy after I mentioned that I offered Circassian chicken on my menu at the Casablanca. Hamza came into the restaurant to try the dish and said, “No, it must be spicier.”

So this recipe was perfected by the palates of both Cliff and Hamza. It’s fun to play with any of the chilies in this chapter, altering the spiciness according to your preference.

Traditionally, cilantro is a main ingredient in Circassian chicken, but I like to use scallions instead, because I think the cilantro distracts from the beautiful flavor combination of smoky chilies and walnuts.

This recipe freezes very well.

Serve the pâté with a dry muscat from Portugal to make a perfect aperitif as a mezze course with homemade crackers (see recipe for Crick-Cracks, page 176).

M
AKES
5
CUPS TO SERVE AT LEAST
10

1 whole free-range chicken (about 3 pounds)

1 cup dry white wine (if you are drinking the Portuguese Muscat, use that)

1 small carrot, cut in half

½ onion, peeled and cut in half

10 black peppercorns

4 whole allspice berries

2 bay leaves

Ice cubes

¼ pound French bread, most of the crust removed (about ½ baguette)

2 cups walnut pieces or halves

2 tablespoons finely chopped garlic (about 6 cloves)

½ cup walnut oil

Salt and pepper to taste

¼ cup sour cream

6 scallions, bottoms trimmed and finely chopped

1 teaspoon Aleppo chilies

1½ teaspoons smoked paprika

Crick-Cracks (page 176) or your favorite crackers

Condiments (pickled hot peppers, additional Aleppo chilies, whole radishes, romaine leaves)

1.
Place the chicken in a large pot, add the wine and enough water to cover it. Add the carrot, onion, peppercorns, allspice, and bay leaves and bring them to a gentle boil over high heat. Turn the heat down to medium-low so that the pot just simmers; the chicken will be tough if the water boils too hard. Cover partially with a lid and poach for about 30 minutes. The leg should pull off the chicken easily when you tug at it with a pair of tongs.

2.
Remove the chicken and place it on a baking sheet to cool. Continue cooking the liquid on low heat, simmering, until it reduces by half, 30 to 40 more minutes.

3.
Strain the liquid through a fine sieve into a small, deep bowl.

4.
Fill a medium mixing bowl with ice and add some cold water to create an ice bath. Set the bowl of broth in the bowl of ice and drop 2 ice cubes into the broth. This will help the fat rise to the top quicker and the liquid to cool so that it can be skimmed.

5.
After the broth is cool, skim the fat off using a ladle or spoon in a circular motion. Discard the fat.

6.
When the chicken is cool enough to handle, discard the chicken skin and pull the meat off of the bones, using your fingers. Discard the bones.

7.
Shred the meat so that it forms thin strands, like broken fettuccine. You can do this with your hands or pull the meat toward you in little pieces with a fork. The last alternative is to chop the meat coarsely with a knife, which is the quickest technique but doesn’t allow for an extremely creamy
rillete
texture. Place the shredded chicken in a medium mixing bowl and set aside.

8.
Soak the bread in a little more than ½ cup of the chicken broth for a few minutes, until soft. Stir the bread to coat it with the broth and allow it to soak evenly.

9.
Using a food processor fitted with a metal blade, puree the walnuts with the garlic until they are ground to a paste.

10.
Squeeze the bread dry with your hands and add it to the walnut paste in the food processor. Purée until the paste becomes homogeneous and creamy, stopping once to scrape the bowl. You will have a thick paste that forms a ball.

11.
Scrape the mixture into a medium mixing bowl and whisk in about 1½ cups of the broth mixture to make a mayonnaise consistency.

12.
Whisk in the walnut oil and season with salt and pepper.

13.
Stir in the shredded chicken, sour cream, scallions, Aleppo chilies, and paprika. Add more broth to make the pâté creamier or more Aleppo chilies to make it spicier.

14.
I like to serve this pâté in a crock or Luminarc jar—the French glass jar that has a flip-top lid with a rubber gasket—with a wooden spreader. Serve with crackers and condiments.

Whipped Feta with Sweet and Hot Peppers

At Oleana, we serve this addictive staple as a bread condiment, under the
prêt à manger
section of our menu. We dish it up in a little crock and sprinkle it with a pinch each of Aleppo and Urfa chilies and paprika to really show the peppers off.

This untraditional recipe is my interpretation of a typical hot pepper and feta spread eaten as a mezze in Greece. It’s important to use a good creamy feta, such as a sheep’s milk French feta, so that it will whip up very smoothly. For salads and more crumbly applications, Greek-style or cow’s milk feta is fine. See page 349 for an explanation of different kinds of feta.

Serve this dish with manaaeesh (page 240) or with celery sticks, raw fennel sticks, or spears of endive as a salad course or snack.

M
AKES
2
CUPS TO SERVE
4
TO
6