Cardamom and Tea

rice stuffed chicken | kthetha muhashta

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Assyrian cooking, like many Middle Eastern cuisines, is more vegetarian than you might think. Assyrians, in particular, fast from meat and dairy for a huge chunk of the year, and traditionally don’t eat meat on Fridays, so a meat-heavy dinner is not necessarily an everyday occurrence. When we do eat meat, it’s rarely chicken. Beef and lamb are much more common staples, which might sound a little counterintuitive.

Indeed, roast chicken might seem like a totally mundane dinner if you’re used to seeing a big glowing display of rotisserie chickens every time you go to the supermarket, but in our cuisine it’s traditionally a special occasion food. And while I believe that a beautifully roast chicken can be something special in and of itself, stuffing it with rice, pine nuts, almonds, and allspice is just gilding the lily. 

Just like those supermarket rotisserie chickens, in Hong Kong, where I recently moved, chicken is absolutely everywhere. Most markets have poultry shops where you can order a live chicken or one that’s been recently prepared. These chickens are really different from the poultry I grew up with in the US. I’m not sure whether it’s the freshness or the way they hang them, but the skin gets much crispier than chickens that have been chilled. While you can, you don’t need to do anything special. You can just butter the skin, bake it at 350° F, and it comes out of the oven with an effortlessly magazine-perfect lacquer (I swear, no blowtorches, WD40, or browning sauce were used in the making of this blog post). 

And speaking of crispy, this recipe has a lot of it. The rice turns into something very similar to tahdig, but instead of just the bottom of the pan getting crispy, the top becomes extra crunchy too. If you’ve cooked this whole dish, only to discover that you’re not the world’s biggest fan of crunchy rice (is there such a thing as an acquired texture?), don’t despair. The leftovers completely transform and become soft and chewy overnight in the fridge. I’ve also included directions to make sure you end up with your preferred level of rice crispiness. I love kthetha muhashta right from the oven, as well as left over the next day, but it’s just a matter of preference.

I don’t expect you to go out and track down a fresh chicken, so I’ve tested this recipe both ways, and chilled chicken roasts almost as well with one simple step: dry brining. This is my favorite poultry trick because it’s easier than a traditional wet-brine in every possible way, and according to J. Kenji López Alt (as well as my own experience), it leads to more delicious results. When the easier way is also the better way, I don’t ask questions.

So instead of dissolving a bunch of salt in water, waiting for it to chill, finding a bowl big enough, trying to completely submerge the chicken in the brine, finding room for the giant bowl in the refrigerator, and then cleaning up this whole big mess… you simply put the chicken in its roasting pan, blot it with paper towels, sprinkle it with salt, and leave it uncovered in the refrigerator overnight.

Dry brining dries the skin out, which makes it get crispier, but also somehow keeps the meat juicy, which is especially important when you’re adding a stuffing. Whenever you stuff the cavity of a chicken, you have to bake it about 15 to 30 minutes longer than an unstuffed chicken, which means that there is a danger (or more likely, an inevitability!) of the meat overcooking. But you’ll discover that when you’ve gone to the trouble of dry brining, temperature is just a number.

kthetha muhashta | rice stuffed chicken

yield: 4 servings
active time: 25 minutes
total time: 5 to 14 hours

to dry brine

  • 1 small chicken (about 2 to 2 1/2 pounds)
  • 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
  1. At least 3 hours ahead of time, pat the chicken dry with paper towels, and sprinkle its skin with the 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt, or a bit more to taste (just as if you were seasoning it for the oven).
  2. Place the chicken on a small casserole dish or cast iron skillet, big enough to eventually leave a border around the chicken for extra stuffing. Refrigerate uncovered for up to 12 hours. *

to stuff and bake

  • 1 cup long-grain rice (e.g., basmati or jasmine)
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 tablespoon cold butter (for the rice)
  • 1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons room temperature water
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice (from about 10 pods, or straight from the shaker)
  • 2 tablespoons butter (for the nuts and raisins)
  • 1/2 cup pine nuts **
  • 1/2 cup sliced or slivered almonds **
  • 1/2 cup of your favorite raisins, such as golden raisins, sultanas (pictured), or black raisins ***
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons room temperature butter (for the chicken)
  • 1/4 cup water (or more)
  1. Preheat the oven to 350° F.
  2. Rinse the rice until the water runs completely clear. Bring the rice, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1 cup water to a simmer over medium-high heat. As soon as it starts to simmer, reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook for 7 minutes.
  3. Once 7 minutes have passed, add the 1 tablespoon cold butter. Mix it together by fluffing the rice until the butter melts completely. Then add the 1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons cold water and the allspice, continuing to fluff the rice with a fork for about 1 minute.
  4. Melt the 2 tablespoons butter over low heat. Add the almonds and pine nuts and stir them constantly until they start to turn very light golden, about 5 minutes. Toss in the raisins for about 30 seconds, and then remove to a paper towel lined plate. After letting them drain for 30 seconds, combine the raisins, nuts, and rice together.
  5. Smear the dry-brined chicken with the 1 1/2 tablespoons of room temperature butter.
  6. Stuff the chicken with a much of the stuffing as will fit without packing it too tightly. Tie the legs together with kitchen twine and tuck the wings behind the chicken. Fill the area around the chicken with the rest of the rice mixture. If any raisins are popping out, push them down a little so that they don’t burn.
  7. Bake for about 90 minutes. After 40 minutes of cooking, evenly drizzle 1/4 cup of water over the rice border. Make a decision: do you want the stuffing around the chicken to be extremely crispy or a little softer? Cover the stuffing border with foil after you refresh it with water if you want it to be softer, leave the foil off after adding the water if you want it to be super crispy. Or, if you want it to be somewhere in between, cover it for some period of time, tasting the rice every 15 minutes or so.
  8. Remove from the oven as soon as the internal temperature of the stuffing in the chicken reads 165° F.
  9. The stuffing inside the chicken will be very soft, and the stuffing around the chicken will be very crispy. Serve a mixture of both to guests, or let people choose their own ratio.

* You can skip the dry brine, but the meat will be less juicy, and the skin less crispy. Find a place in the refrigerator where it won’t cross-contaminate other food.
** You can use anywhere between 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup of the nuts, depending on your preference. Also feel free to use 100% almonds if pine nuts are too expensive.
*** If you really hate raisins, you can substitute another finely diced dried fruit. Dried apricot or dates work well, as long as they are minced into raisin-sized pieces.

kadeh | roux-stuffed brioche

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When I was a kid, we would often go to Andersonville to see my great grandfather, his sister, and my great uncle’s family. Umtie Yasmi would make a big pot of chai and thaw some kadeh. She would cut it into a beautiful trapezoidal design.

The freezer was always packed to the brim with loaves of kadeh, some with a middle layer of martookhah, or golden-brown roux, and some without. I was thinking about these memories recently, so I asked my Aunt Masy to teach me how to bake kadeh. And I’m so glad I did, because this is the kadeh of my childhood in all its buttery glory.

The most important thing in learning to bake like your elders is making sure you record the butter carefully. Because there is always more butter than you could ever imagine. Don’t let the adorable granny demeanor fool you: they will lie about this to protect you from knowing how much butter you’ve really eaten in your life. So instead of asking Masy how to make kadeh, I watched her make it and took careful notes. And I’m so glad I did, because I would have never guessed two and a quarter sticks.

But if you’re looking for a way to help two and a quarter sticks of butter become their best selves, kadeh is the answer. It is a love letter to butter. The dough is a rich brioche, with so much dairy fat that you don’t use flour to roll it out. There’s just enough flour to hold everything together and to give the yeast something to nosh.

As if a rich-brioche dough weren’t enough, the inside gets filled with a buttery roux, which might sound strange if you’ve only ever encountered roux when making béchamel or gumbo. But if you’ve ever licked the spoon early on while making mac and cheese, I’m sure you’ve thought to yourself, “wow, this would make a really good sandwich.” And I’m here to tell you that you can totally make a roux sandwich, and it’s just as delicious as you’ve secretly dreamed.

There’s not much more to say about kadeh, since it speaks for itself. It goes great with chai, as a not-too-sweet dessert. And my mom loves to split hers open and spread some grape jelly over the martookhah.

Kadeh is particularly beautiful when you cut it the traditional way. Just slice a few chunky strips horizontally, and then cut each strip in half on a bit of a diagonal to make little trapezoids.

It’s great the first day, but it stales just like any homemade bread. So you should store it in the freezer and then reheat before serving. Kadeh freezes beautifully, especially before slicing, so don’t feel like you’re losing anything by doing so.

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kadeh | roux-stuffed brioche

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  • Prep Time: 1 hour
  • Total Time: 4 hours 15 minutes
  • Yield: 2 loaves (cut into about 18 to 20 pieces total)

Ingredients

For the dough starter (khmira)
1 1/2 teaspoons yeast
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vegetable oil
1/4 cup 115° F water

For the dough (leasha)
15 ounces flour (about 3 cups unsifted, 3 3/4 cups sifted)
3/4 teaspoon salt (add an extra 1/4 teaspoon if you prefer saltier kadeh)
1/4 cup sugar
9 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted (1 stick and 1 tablespoon)
1/4 cup + 3 T milk (115° F) (plus more, if necessary)

For the roux (martookhah):
10 tablespoons (divided into 1 stick + 2 tablespoons) unsalted butter
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup flour

To assemble the loaves:
Cooled martookhah (above)
2 risen dough balls (above)
1 egg beaten with 2 teaspoons water
2 teaspoons sesame seeds

Instructions

  1. Make the starter: Combine the yeast, sugar, vegetable oil, and water and mix to dissolve.
  2. Cover and let it sit for 15 to 20 minutes, until it’s very foamy.
  3. Make the dough: Sift together the flour, salt, and sugar.
  4. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture, add the butter, 1/4 cup milk, and starter/khmira, and stir together to combine. As it starts to come together, add one more tablespoon of milk at a time until it comes together into a soft, flexible dough. Knead by pulling the sides of the dough into the center of the bowl. If it looks a little dry, add another tablespoon of milk, let it sit for 5 minutes, and then continue kneading until it comes together into a pliant dough. Knead until it’s elastic and smooth.
  5. Cover the dough and let it rise for 1 hour and 15 minutes while you make the roux/martookhah.
  6. Make the roux/martookhah: Melt the stick of butter with the sugar and salt in a small saucepan over medium heat.
  7. As soon as the bubbling becomes a little quieter (about 3 minutes after the butter melts), immediately add the flour and whisk continuously for about 5 to 10 minutes.
  8. The martookhah might be clumpy in the beginning, but it should thin out after a few minutes of cooking. Once it thins out, determine whether to add the extra 1 or 2 tablespoons of butter. The martookhah should thin-out into a slow-flowing viscous liquid that is thick enough that you can leave a trail with a spoon. If it is clumping together, it needs more butter. Add the additional one or two more tablespoons of butter if you need to, and continue cooking.
  9. The martookhah is ready once it is golden-brown (according to your preference); make sure you pull it off the heat when it’s about a shade lighter than you’d like it to be; it will continue to cook for another minute or two.
  10. Let the martookhah cool while the dough finishes rising.
  11. Assemble and bake the loaves: Once the dough has risen, divide it into two equal pieces and shape each piece into a smooth ball. Let the dough balls rest, covered with plastic wrap, for 30 minutes.
  12. Once the dough balls have rested for 30 minutes, preheat the oven to 350° F.
  13. Roll each ball of dough out into a circle with a thickness between 1/8 and 1/4 inch. ** Try to make the circles as symmetrical as possible by lifting the dough and rotating it as you work, and let them rest for about 3 to 5 minutes if they’re really stretchy and difficult to roll out.
  14. Move the rolled-out discs to a sheet pan.
  15. Divide the cooled martookhah evenly between the circles of dough. Smooth it out so that the martookhah is covering half of each disc, with a margin of about 1/4 to 1/2 inch around the edges. Brush a light layer of the egg wash along the border around the martookhah.
  16. Fold the dough over like you’re making a calzone and press down around the edges to start to seal them shut.
  17. Finish sealing the edges either by crimping the dough with the back of a fork or your fingers, or by folding it over on itself as you work your way down the edge.
  18. Dock the dough with a fork. Pierce all the way through to the bottom and over the entire surface of the filled part of the dough. After you fully dock the dough, gently pat the surface to make sure that all the air bubbles have been pressed out.
  19. Brush the surface of each loaf with a light layer of eggwash.
  20. Sprinkle each loaf with a teaspoon of sesame seeds.
  21. Let the loaves sit for 10 minutes.
  22. Bake for about 25 to 30 minutes, until the surfaces are golden brown and the loaves have puffed up and cooked through.
  23. Let the loaves cool for at least 30 minutes before slicing. To cut traditionally, follow the pattern pictured above. First slice it into about 5 pieces vertically, and then cut each vertical piece in half diagonally, so that you end up with a bunch of trapezoids (and a few triangles toward the ends). Or you can cut it up however you’d like, if you don’t want to go the traditional route. Store at room temperature for up to 12 hours, or the freezer for up to 3 months.

Notes

* If you overcorrect by adding too much butter, you’ll see a lot of butter pooling on the surface. Simply catch the problem toward the beginning, and add 1 or 2 more tablespoons of flour. The measured amounts in the ingredients list are tested, so you should be fine with just 10 tablespoons of butter and 3/4 cup of flour. But always trust your common sense more than ingredient quantities.

** if you’ve kneaded the dough into a smooth ball, you should not need any flour to do this, since it will be both buttery and glutinous.

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