Recipe: Jordanian Mansaf Chicken

This staple Jordanian dish is sour, sweet, fragrant and meaty all at the same time. With meat falling off the bone, the textures of the soft meat, fluffy rice, crunchy nuts, crisp onions and silky sauce are the perfect combination. Teamed with yellow tumeric rice and served with pita bread, it is a dish that will take you far away from your kitchen table and into the Middle East with one bite.

To make sure you enjoy this meal as much as possible, and feel as transported to the other side of the world as hoped for, one should also:

• Sit cross-legged on the floor
• Eat with your hands
• Enjoy with a hot cup of sage tea made simply by brewing some black tea and adding lots of sugar to make it sweet along with some fresh sage leaves.

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Recipe: Jordanian Mansaf Chicken

Serves: 2-3

Ingredients

• 6x chicken drumsticks
• 500g kefir*
• 1x egg lightly beaten
• 1x sliced brown onion
• ½ cup pine nuts
• ½ cup slivered almonds
• 2x tablespoons ghee
• 1x teaspoon turmeric
• 1x teaspoon cardamom
• 1x teaspoon chilli flakes
• 4x tablespoons parsley
• 2x cups basmati rice
• Water (approximately 2-3 litres)
• Pita bread
• Salt and pepper to taste

* Kefir is a fermented yogurt found at specialty grocers. Traditionally mansaf is made using jameed which is a salted, fermented and dried yogurt. Jameed is not readily available in Australia but a similar flavour can be achieved by using kefir and then adding additional salt to bring out the fermented yogurt flavour.

Instructions

1. Brown the nuts in a frying pan over high heat. Once they are golden and you can really start to smell their aroma take them off the heat and set them to one side.
2. Place chicken in large pot with salted water that just covers the meat. Add the onion, chilli flakes and half the ghee.
3. Cook the chicken over low heat until almost done, about 20 minutes.
4. In a separate pot, bring eight cups of water to the boil with the rice, turmeric, cardamom, and remaining half of the ghee. Keep an eye on this, and once cooked to your liking, drain and set aside.
5. In another large saucepan, stir the kefir over low heat until smooth.
6. Add the lightly beaten egg to the kefir and continue to cook, increasing the temperature to medium heat, stirring constantly.
7. Add some of the stock from the chicken just to loosen the sauce and give a creamy texture.
8. Stirring constantly, heat the sauce until it almost comes to the boil and thickens slightly.
9. Add the almost cooked chicken pieces and onion to the kefir sauce. Turn the heat down to low and allow the chicken to finish cooking in the sauce.
10. As soon as the meat is cooked through taste the sauce and season appropriately with salt, pepper and paprika. If you haven’t tasted mansaf before, go slowly with the salt until you start to get a real zing from the kefir and then continue to season according to taste. The end result should be tart, sweet and fragrant.
11. Mound the rice on a large serving platter.
12. Arrange the chicken pieces on the rice and pour most of the kefir sauce over it.
13. Garnish with almonds, pine nuts, onions and parsley.
14. Add pita to the platter.
15. Serve immediately.

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