Circassian chicken

The chicken is poached and the meat pulled apart into threads. Walnuts, stale bread and garlic are pounded together and loosened with the poaching stock until they turn into a thick paste. The chicken is either folded into that sauce or laid underneath it, and rice is cooked separately in its own stock. The dish goes to the table cold, which is why it is known as a mezze rather than a main. It is not a Syrian dish as such: it belongs to the Circassian community in Syria.

How it is made

The body of the sauce comes from two things — oil out of the walnuts and starch out of the bread. Pounding releases the oil, the bread holds the liquid, and together they thicken enough to sit on a spoon. The seasoning is light: garlic, salt, in some households a pinch of red pepper. The stock is boiled unsalted. Salt goes in at the end, because the sauce reduces and an early hand with it lands heavy.

Why it is served cold

The sauce thickens as it cools and the flavour settles; hot, it is both runny and flat. So the dish is made in advance and left to stand, then brought out cold. The practical result is that nothing has to be cooked at the last minute, which makes it food for a full table.

How it reached Syria

The dish comes from the North Caucasus and spread across the eastern Mediterranean after it entered Ottoman palace cooking. Its Syrian thread is one of people rather than recipes. After the exile of 1864, Circassians were settled in Ottoman Syria, and in 1878 villages were founded in the Golan and around the province of Damascus. Before 1967 roughly half of Syria’s Circassians lived in the Quneitra province; Marj al-Sultan in the Damascus countryside and villages north of Homs belong to the same settlement.

Where to find it now

It is rarely printed on a restaurant menu. This is home food. It is still cooked in Circassian households in the Damascus countryside around Marj al-Sultan, and at community gatherings. You find it by asking rather than looking — in a kitchen that serves mezze, describing it as chicken in walnut sauce usually gets you there.