Name: Circassian chicken with walnuts
Yield: Serves 6–8 as an appetiser, 2–4 as a main
Cuisine: Persian
Ingredients: 2 garlic cloves, peeled; 300 g (10½ oz) walnuts; 100 g (3½ oz) stale bread (about 3 slices, no crust); 1 teaspoon salt; 1 bay leaf; 1 large onion, quartered; 1 kg (2 lb 4 oz) chicken (a mixture of different pieces with the bones in, or an entire chicken); ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper; 2 tablespoons olive oil or walnut oil, for drizzling; 1 teaspoon sweet paprika

Preparation info

Serves
6–8
as an appetiser

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Pomegranates & Artichokes

By Saghar Setareh

Published 2023

About

This chicken spread has been perhaps the most surprising recipe that I tested for this book. What first drew my attention to this dish was certainly not its appearance, as it’s a greyish-beige blob, sometimes garnished with a sprinkling of paprika, or walnuts. What it lacks in looks, though, it mightily compensates for in flavour.

What intrigued me was the main ingredients: shredded chicken with heaps of ground walnuts. As an Iranian, the first thing this combination brings to mind