Levantine chicken with walnut sauce

A hack for Levantine chicken with walnut sauce, this is a tasty, quick-'n-easy meal that's nutritious and healthy. A quick version of a traditional Lebanese dish when you don't have the time to make something that tastes complex. Pull off complex flavours with this dish that isn't difficult to make.

In the Lebanon

This is a recipe first taught to me by the mother, Riva, of a Scottish-Lebanese friend in the 1980s. It's been a favourite ever since.

Based on the traditional Lebanese dish roz a djej (rice with chicken), this is a quick hack for achieving a very similar dish without nearly as much effort—or without some of the more specialist ingredients such as Lebanese 7 Spice, a blend of all spice, black pepper, cinnamon, ground cloves, coriander, cumin and nutmeg.

Lebanese 7 Spice is readily available online and in many specialist stores around the world. It's easy enough to make yourself in a spice grinder or using a pestle and mortar. I often make it when I have all the ingredients in store and time to make it since it stores well in a spice jar. If you have it or want to make it yourself, replace all of the dry spices in the recipe below with about 3 tspns of 7 Spice blend.

This dish contains less fat than roz a djej—which uses butter and ground beef—and uses olive oil and no beef.

I would describe this as a "fragrant dish with delicate spice flavours" rather than spicy i.e. it contains no chillies or cayenne. Over the years, I've also found it one of those dishes that kids like very much. So, it's one of those easy options to keep the nippers happy over those demanding summer holidays.

The chicken

I prefer to make this dish using the method below—where you sauté the chicken together with ingredients that add additional flavour and keep the chicken moist—but there are various methods by which you can cook the chicken.

You can roast or grill the chicken breasts, seasoned with the spices and brushed with olive oil with whole peeled garlic cloves and skin-on quarters of lemon cooked along with it. When cooked, rest, then carve into bite-size pieces or goujon-style strips and serve with the walnut sauce. You can prepare it the day before and reheat before pouring over the sauce.

If you're being particularly health conscious, you can poach the skinless chicken breasts in vegetable stock, browning the garlic and spices in the pot before adding the stock. When cooked, allow to rest, carve and serve. If using this method, keep the liquid in which the chicken was poached and use it to make the walnut sauce.

And, of course, it's a great dish for leftovers from a roast chicken. If using leftovers, flake the chicken away from the roasted chicken—more in keeping with the "pulled" chicken serving style of traditional roz a djej—and reheat before adding the walnut sauce.

Mushrooms, with delicate spices, are more often served as starters or salads in their own right in Middle Eastern cooking. Here, they're used to flavour the skinless chicken and become an additional condiment.

The walnut sauce

Lebanese cooking makes use of many varieties of nuts including walnuts, almonds, pine nuts and cashews among others. Indeed, exactly which combination of these turn up in roz a djej seems to largely be down to the personal preference of the individual chef.

In evolving this recipe over the years, I've experimented with all kind of nuts. If you really don't like walnuts, it works well substituting them with the equivalent quantity of toasted almonds, which gives a much milder flavour. Or, you can use a combination of walnuts and almonds. The reason I don't do this—unless using smoked almonds—is because the distinctive flavour of walnuts dominates. It's almost a waste of time using almonds together with them.

A note on the breadcrumbs: this is a great dish for using of bread that has gone stale. Traditionally this sauce is made from stale French-style baguettes i.e. white bread. You want to end up with about ½ to ¾ cup of toasted crumbs, so work out the quantities based on your bread. You can grate it by hand using a grater or do it more quickly in a food process or mini-chopper and toast in the oven on a dry baking tray, under the grill or in a dry pan. The crumbs shouldn't be particularly toasted or brown, merely very dry before adding to the sauce. But here's the rub: while brown and wholemeal stale bread works well, the whole multi-seed, specialist bread thing can end up with the sauce becoming soggy. I hate to say it, but usually bog-standard, store-bought toasted breadcrumbs deliver the best outcome.

The grains side dish

I'm using a combination of grains, namely freekeh, bulgar wheat and black rice cooked in a particular way (see below) with some chickpeas. It's partly because I have a current obsession with freekeh.

Fortunately, all kinds of grain mixes, including this Levantine combination, are now available online, from specialist Lebanese outlets or larger supermarkets in many parts of the world. However, there is no reason you can't cook rice or more widely available combinations of white and wild rice in exactly the same way—that's what I did before the Internet arrived or British supermarkets embraced global cuisines.

Similarly, you can serve it with warmed Lebanese flat breads as an alternative to the grains side dish, something that makes it even easier and quicker to cook.

NB: this time I added some leftover tinned chickpeas to the mix. If you do so, only add in the last 5 or 6min cooking. Dried, they need to be soaked overnight, which kinda ruins the "quick recipe" part. However, in some locations you can get pre-cooked versions of these grains including chickpeas—often traditionally included—that you merely reheat. It all depends where you are. I've left them out of the recipe because I don't usually include them.

The walnut sauce

The beauty of this sauce is how easy it is to make. My preferred version below uses widely available readymade chicken consommé. But, if that's not available, any form of clear chicken broth or diluted chicken stock works perfectly well as long as it isn't heavily spiced such as is the case with some clear Asian-style chicken broths.

Similarly, if you're making a vegan or vegetarian version of this dish, or you simply prefer it, clear vegetable soup or vegetable stock works very well.

This recipe is for 2 to 3 diners. Reach for you calculators to scale up or down.

Shopping list

for the Levantine chicken with walnut sauce

• 1 skinless chicken breast per diner, cut into smaller fillets

• 1 echalion shallot, diced

• 8 to 10 small closed cup mushrooms, sliced

• Salt and pepper to taste

• 3 cloves of garlic, finely diced

• 1 tspn ground cumin

• 1 tspn dried coriander

• ½ a cinnamon stick

• juice of 1 fresh lemon

• A little grated nutmeg

• Approx. 5 tbspns olive oil

• 1 tbspn honey

for the walnut sauce

• 1 (400g) tin chicken consommé (or alternatives, see above)

• Approx. 75g walnuts; roughly broken

• Toasted breadcrumbs, approx ½ to ¾ of a cup; as needed

• A small clutch of fresh coriander; roughly broken

• salt and pepper to taste

for the grain side dish

• ¼ cup freekeh; soaked (5min), drained

• ½ cup of coarse bulgar wheat; soaked (30min),drained

• ¼ cup black rice, washed

• A generous clutch of flat leaf parsley; finely chopped

• 1 vegetable stock cube, diluted in approx. 500ml boiling water

• 1 fresh lemon, cut into quarters

• A handful of dried cranberries or pomegranate seeds (optional)

• 1 tbspn of extra virgin olive oil (optional)

NB: if using one of the ready-mixed combination of Lebanese grains, you might not need to soak it. Check the package for instructions.

for the side salad

• green leaves of choice — I'm still on my little gem lettuce tip

• small tomatoes; halved or sliced

• pitted black olives, halved

• A clutch of flat leaf parsley, coarsely chopped or separated whole leaves

• ½ a raw shallot; very finely sliced

• vinaigrette or other dressing to flavour

Cooking Method

the chicken

1. Heat the olive oil in a deep frying pan on a medium-to-high heat. When hot, add the garlic and sizzle for 1min before adding the shallot and stirring together. When the shallots begin to soften, add all of the dry spices except for the nutmeg. Add the mushrooms and cook for about 4 or 5mins. Stir to prevent sticking and allow the aroma of the spices to unfold

2. Move the ingredients to the sides of the pan and sdd the chicken pieces. Stir or turn using tongs so that they are coated in the spices and seal on all sides. Reduce to a low-to-medium heat and sauté. When the chicken looks about halfway through cooking, add the lemon juice and allow to sizzle briefly. Add the honey and fully dissolve, stirring, adding a little hot water if necessary. Turn the chicken pieces in the mixture so that it almost forms a glaze

3. Add the grated nutmeg. Cook off the juices in the pan until the chicken is cooked. Add a little hot water, a couple of spoons at a time, until the chicken is cooked. You should end up with perfectly cooked chicken with practically no liquid left in the pan

4. Transfer the chicken to a heat-proof dish with a cover and keep warm in the oven while you make the walnut sauce and prepare your side dishes. Decant the mushrooms and larger caramelised shallot pieces to another small dish—these will become an additional condiment.

5. When you sauce and grain side dish is ready, plate the chicken and grains, pour over the walnut sauce and take to table. Serve with the salad and the mushrooms as a condiment

the walnut sauce

1. Pour the chicken consommé into the pan in which you cooked the chicken—with all of its residue—and heat on a gentle heat until it simmers. NB, the consommé will almost immediately turn cloudy. This is as it should be

2. While heating the consommé, place the walnuts into a suitably deep jug or container. When the consommé is properly heated—it doesn't need to be boiling, but it does need to be very hot—remove from the heat and gently pour half of it into the jug. Blend into a fairly thick mixture using a handheld blender. This should produce a fairly liquid, soup-like mixture

3. Add the coriander, toasted breadcrumbs and salt and pepper to taste and blend in (I don't add salt because the consommé and juice from the pan are usually enough). Depending on the consistency of your sauce, add more of the hot liquid from the pan, a little at a time, or more bread crumbs, and blend until you've achieved the optimum consistency. Essentially you want to end up something that has the consistency of a hummus on the more liquid end of the spectrum for pouring, but a little thicker if you want to use the leftovers much like hummus

4. Pour over the plated chicken and grains and serve

NB: whatever liquid you don't use in the pan, you can store sealed in the fridge—or better still, freeze—because it can also be used as a base for other excellent sauces. Similarly, whatever walnut sauce you don't use will freeze well but it will only store for a couple of days in the fridge before becoming a bit stodgy. That said, it makes a great alternative to hummus and is fantastic to use cold in much as you would hummus.

the grain side dish

1. Add the soaked or washed grains into a pot with a lid and stir together

2. Add the chopped flat lead parsley and cranberries (if using). Squeeze the lemon quarters so that the juice is sprinkled over the grains; stir in. Then add the squeezed lemon skins to the pot

3. Add the stock. The basic rule of thumb is that you want twice the amount of liquid to grains. Since your total grains is 1 cup, you want 2 cups (approx. 500ml of stock). Top up with boiling water as needed

4. Cover and bring to the boil on a high heat. Stir and boil vigorously for 4 or 5mins. Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer, cover and allow the liquid to simmer off. This should take about 15 to 20mins. If the liquid cooks off too quickly, add boiling water, no more than ¼ cup at a time, and cook until the grains are ready. These grains should still be fairly "chewy" when optimally cooked. So, don't overcook and allow it to become mushy. Once the grains are optimally cooked, remove from the heat and, still covered, allow any remaining liquid to evaporate

5. Dress with a little olive oil (optional), re-cover and keep warm until plating together with the chicken before pouring over the sauce

NB: the colour of the cooked grain dish can vary greatly from pretty dark to fairly light. Don't worry about it. This is down to the different ways in which freekeh is processed i.e. smoked. As long as it's optimally cooked and tastes good, it's not a problem.

the salad

1. The way to ramp up your five-a-day score, I prefer to keep it simple with these typically Mediterranean ingredients. Toss in a salad bowl or plate in individual bowls

2. Dress with your preferred dressing. One thing I noticed in Beirut is that the historic French influence seemed to show in the salads that often had French-style vinaigrette dressings rather than olive oil and balsamico. The choice is yours. My choice here is a vinaigrette made with rosé vinegar, lemon juice and mustard seeds.

Alternatives

This is one of those meals that I don't think works well as pescatarian. Most fish or seafood simply tastes rather odd with walnuts.

However, one vegetarian—vegan if you use vegetable clear soup or stock for the sauce and depending on your choice of bread for the crumbs—version that is great involves simply replacing the chicken with aubergine. Either cut the aubergine into fairly large "cubed" pieces and cook very much in the way the chicken is cooked above. A tip: sear the outer edges of the aubergine (not merely sealing as with the chicken) before adding the lemon juice and honey.

The alternative is to cut the aubergine vertically as you would for classic Italian dishes and then roast as with the chicken suggestion above. Or, better still, shallow fry in olive oil together with the garlic and spices. Cut these large slices into goujon strips before plating with the walnut sauce.

Pairings

Lebanon, as those in the know know, has a long and august history of producing fine wines. More often praised for their reds, Lebanese wineries can certainly also produce fine whites. The best I ever had with this dish was a bottle of Château Ksara Chardonnay Cuvée du Pape 2018 given to me as a gift by a client. While wines from Lebanon have become a little easier to get hold of outside their traditional markets, they tend to be pricey and their availability is often patchy apart from through committed specialist suppliers.

However, this dish is really great with many other workaday whites. I think chardonnay is a grape that often works well with this dish that has fragrant spices, but also a lot of green flavours. But, I've also loved it with chenin blancs. I've also really enjoyed it with a Sicilian Fiano. I can't remember exactly what it was but it scored a 3.9 on Vivino, which is pretty impressive for those snobby bitches. Those who feel otherwise, please feel free to wade into the debate...