Circassian Chicken

Take a large pot and add your water, whole onion, bay leaves, pepper, sea salt and chicken over high heat. Do not add any oil as the chicken has enough fat. Once it comes to a boil, lower the heat and simmer on low for 45 minutes, until the meat is nearly falling off the bones. Once it is cooked, discard the onion and bay leaves. Take out your chicken and put aside to cool. Strain the broth and keep it on hand for later.

Once your chicken is cool enough to handle, pull the meat apart from the bones and place meat in a separate bowl. Discard the bones. You can keep the chicken meat in large shreds for a main course or shred them finely for a fantastic appetizer. It’s up to you. I do both for different occasions.

Take your day-old bread and rub it in your hands over a mixing bowl until you have fine crumbs – or use your food processor on pulse. You are aiming for fine bread crumbs.

Take your walnuts and either pound them with a mortar and pestle (my favorite!) or whiz them up in a food processor with the olive oil.

Again, crush, pound or micro-plane your garlic so there are no chunks. Mix your walnuts, bread crumbs and garlic together.

Slowly add your strained broth, ladle by ladle, until you achieve a paste. Don’t add too much – you just want to reach paste consistency. Add a little salt to taste. Now, mix the paste and your shredded chicken, ladling in the remaining broth. You do not need to use all the broth.

Once your chicken, paste and broth mixture is moist but not sloppy – it should be creamy for a main course and spreadable as an appetizer – melt the remaining butter gently over medium low heat and add the paprika to the butter. Remove from heat as the butter will begin to smoke and you don’t want that.

Move your chicken mixture to a flat serving dish.
You should have a reddish-brown butter to pour evenly over your chicken as a garnish that will flavor it like you would not believe.

We traditionally serve this with corn bread but any dense sour bread or crusty bread will do. Trust me – this is very special.