Here’s my middle eastern chicken with flatbread. I’m on the hunt for good but simple flatbread recipes, and this recipe from Gourmet Traveller did the trick. I did however add twice as much water, and then had to add more flour and yoghurt to compensate! Nevertheless, I’m standing by the recipe!
The chicken recipe came from The Lebanese Kitchen by Salma Hage and is for Chicken Sharwama.
Cut chicken breast into strips and soak overnight in a mixture of 3 tbsp malt vinegar, juice of 1/2 lemon (maybe 2 tsp?) and 3 tbsp water.
The next day toss it in Lebanese seven spice seasoning, add some salt and pepper. You can buy the seasoning or make it yourself. Hage’s spice mix is as follows:
5 tbsp ground allspice
3 1/2 tbsp pepper
3 1/2 tbsp ground cinnamon
5 tbsp ground cloves
4tbsp ground nutmeg
4 tbsp ground fenugreek (coriander is an alternative)
4 tbsp ground ginger
The recipe says to bake the chicken strips at 200C for 30 minutes. I thought that this would dry them out and it did – I pulled them out of the oven early. Next time I’d just sear them in a pan.
The chicken is served on some baked veg with home-made baba ganoush and saffron-cumin rice cooked in chicken stock.
Pine nuts, pomegranate seeds, some chard from our garden, a slice of lemon and yoghurt. A great combination.
The filling is made from pork belly braised in a kind of master stock and then shredded and mixed with reduced cooking sauced, thickened with potato starch. The recipe said to simmer for 20 mins but mine took closer to 90 mins to become soft.