Whole Chicken

Armenian dishes are humble and rustic. This one is a party dish which combines everyday ingredients in a complex way. The serving is something of a ritual.

I have also made this Persian stuffing for Christmas turkey, using twice the amount.

This was a regular at my aunt Régine’s dinner parties. It is similar to dishes featured in medieval manuals. The French would call it a galantine.

Chicken with rice-and-ground-meat stuffing or hashwa is a classic festive dish of the Arab world. The old way was to boil the stuffed chicken first, then briefly roast it to give it a golden color. These days it is more common to cook the stuffing separately and to roast the chicken. For a large party you can make double the quantity, shape the stuffing in a mound in a large round oven dish, cover it with the cut-up pieces of chicken, then heat it through, covered with foil, before serving.

This multi-layered dish is complex and time-consuming, and I don’t expect many people to attempt it. But it is very important in the Arab world, especially in Syria and Lebanon. And it is one of those recipes which bring me a flood of memories. I had received a letter from a woman I did not know in Beirut saying that she would like to meet me and that she had recipes for me. It was the late Josephine Salam. On our first meeting—at Claridge’s tearoom, where a band played Noël Coward tunes—she brought me a bottle of orange-blossom water and a copper pan. She volunteered to come to my house and show me how to make fattet jaj. I got the ingredients, and we made so much that we had to call in the neighbors to eat. I saw her for many years after that, and we had many meals together. It was the time of the civil war in Lebanon, and I received through her an ongoing account of everyday life in the ravaged city. Her daughter Rana has become a conceptual artist. For her thesis at the Royal College of Art in London, she asked me to give a lecture on the history of Middle Eastern food. She filled the college with hangings announcing the event, with my portrait painted on by a cinema-poster painter in Egypt. She laid out foods and spices as in a souk, put on a tape of Egyptian street sounds and music, and offered Arab delicacies.

The last time I ate this famous Moroccan dish was in a restaurant in Paris where there was an evening of Arab poetry and tales accompanied by musicians. It was not the best example of the dish, but I always find it enjoyable. I love the special flavor of preserved lemons. At every vegetable market in North Africa, and now also in the south of France, you can see stalls laden with huge piles of soft lemons oozing with juice beside several varieties of olives. The two are often used together. The pulp of the preserved lemon is discarded, and the skin alone is used. The word mqualli alludes to the way the chicken is cooked, with oil and only a little water.

In Morocco they say that this dish, like many others, was brought back from Andalusia by the Moors after the Reconquista.

This Syrian dish is made with a type of pasta called lissan al assfour (bird’s tongues) which looks like large grains of rice. It cooks in the sauce from the chicken and acquires a rich, spicy flavor and light-brown color. You will find it in Middle Eastern stores as well as in the pasta section of supermarkets, where it is called “orzo.” An apricot sauce, salsat mishmisheya, sometimes accompanies the dish .

A Turkish dish in which yogurt, an important feature in Turkish cooking, is flavored with cardamom and ginger.

A magnificent dish, and a stunning example of the way Moroccans mix savory and sweet. Chicken pieces are first stewed with lemon juice and saffron, then baked with a topping of almonds and honey.

This Moroccan tagine is one of my favorites. The chicken cooks in the juice of the tomatoes, which reduces to a sumptuous, thick, honeyed, almost caramelized sauce. And it looks beautiful too.

Djaj is the Arabic word for chicken; ferakh is an Egyptian term. Every day, the trams and buses coming into the towns from the villages are crowded with peasants carrying crates of live, cackling poultry. The chickens are killed and plucked at the market or poultry shops. This is a simple and homely but delicious Egyptian way of cooking the birds.

The chicken acquires a delicate, tangy flavor and pale-yellow tinge. It was a regular dish in my parents’ home. Serve it hot with potatoes or with rice; as part of a cold buffet meal; or for a cold family meal in summer, accompanied by salads.

In this delicately flavored and scrumptious Moroccan qdra, the long-cooked almonds should become very soft. As so often in Moroccan cooking, one onion is cooked first with the meat or chicken, and when these are nearly done, the remaining onions are added. The first onion is used to add flavor to the meat, and it practically melts and disappears into the sauce. The onions added later keep their shape and add body to the sauce.

This was a family favorite that my mother often made.

Another Moroccan soup, this one too makes a good meal to serve at a party.

Melokheya is Egypt’s most popular national dish. It is an ancient peasant soup which is believed to be portrayed in pharaonic tomb paintings. It seemed to us as children that the fellahin (peasants) wore the same clothes, used the same tools, and repeated the same movements as did the figures working the land in pharaonic tomb paintings. Every peasant, however poor, had a little patch of ground for his own use, and in summer this was reserved exclusively for the cultivation of the deep-green melokheya leaf (Corchorus olitorius—in English, Jew’s mallow). The women prepared the soup daily in large pots which they carried to the fields on their heads for the men to eat at midday. When the work was done and the men came home, they ate it again at dusk. For many years, when we were relatively new in England, the leaves were very hard to find, and we hankered desperately for the soup. Some relatives of mine in Milan tried to grow the plant (it looks a bit like spinach) in the garden of their apartment building. After weeks of effort—getting the seeds (the same seeds were found in pharaonic tombs), planting them, watering, nurturing, harvesting—they invited a group of compatriots to eat the soup. The triumphant cook was horrified to find that the leaves she thought she had so lovingly raised were only local weeds. The melokheya had failed to grow. Everybody from Egypt adores melokheya, which has a mucilaginous, glutinous quality imparted by the leaves. But be warned: it is an acquired taste. There are various ways of eating it in several stages, and each is something of a ritual. The soup may be eaten first with plain rice (that is how I like it—pure and simple), or with fried or toasted Arab bread; then with portions of the chicken or meat which was used for making the stock. Or you can serve it all together in many layers on the plate. In either case, it represents an entire meal. The layers may start with pieces of toasted bread at the bottom of the plate, but usually begin with rice, topped with a piece of chicken or meat, over which the soup is poured. Recently the Lebanese custom of sprinkling chopped onion steeped in vinegar on top has been adopted by some Egyptians. In Egypt they use chicken, rabbit, goose, duck, or meat stock to make the soup. Many years ago I was employed in England to make the soup using a famous brand of bouillon cube for a television advertisement. Years later, when I went back to Cairo for the first time, I spied it being shown on television in a crowded café between episodes of “Dallas.” You are not likely to find fresh melokheya, but dried and frozen varieties are available from Middle Eastern stores. The frozen one is best. A lot of garlic is used in a sauce called takleya which goes in at the end, but it does not seem like too much when you eat.

A number of dishes that go under the general name of fatta all have in common a bed of toasted bread, soaked in stock, and a topping of yogurt. The name denotes the manner of breaking up crisp, toasted bread with your hands. To me, they recall a special person, the late Josephine Salam. Many years ago I received a letter from her from Beirut saying that she had a number of recipes she thought I would like. On our first meeting, at Claridge’s tearoom in London, where a band played Noël Coward tunes, she offered to come to my house and show me how to make fatta with chicken. We made that and many more meals together. It was the time of the civil war in Lebanon, and as she came and went from the country, I received an ongoing account of everyday life in the ravaged city. Her daughter, Rana, has become an artist and designer. For her thesis at the Royal College of Art in London, she asked me to give a lecture on the history of Middle Eastern food. She had ten portraits of me painted on cloth by a poster-painter in Egypt (he used photographs I gave Rana) and hung them around the college to publicize the event. She laid out foods and spices as in a souk, put on a tape of sounds and music recorded in an Egyptian street, and passed around Arab delicacies. When she visited me a few years later with her husband and new baby, I offered her the fatta with stuffed eggplants on page 300.

Perdeli pilav means “veiled pilaf.” The veil is a pastry crust in the shape of a dome. It takes time and care, but if you like artistry and dramatic effects, it is very worth making. Much of it can be made in advance, but the last bit—encasing the chicken and rice in puff pastry—must be done as close as possible to serving.