How to turn cooked chicken and old bread into a brilliant Turkish meze – recipe

Today’s Turkish dish is an effective way to remodel leftover cooked hen and day-old bread into an extremely moreish meze. It’s simple, too, as a result of it basically entails simply shredding hen leg or breast meat (or choose an entire roast carcass) and mixing it with stale bread soaked in hen inventory or milk, crushed walnuts, garlic and spicy paprika. Serve at room temperature, or chill and gown later. It's going to maintain within the fridge for as much as 5 days from when the hen was cooked and is scrumptious chilly, unfold on toast or as half of a bigger meze with flatbread, muhammara, hummus and grilled greens. Some variations of this recipe recommend mixing all the pieces in a meals processor, however to my thoughts that provides it too paste-like a texture; you’ll get a significantly better texture and flavour for those who shred the hen by hand and crush the walnuts in a mortar, earlier than including the opposite substances and kneading all of it collectively by hand.

Circassian hen

This moreish meze recipe upcycles leftover hen right into a spicy, rillette-style unfold. It’s super-quick to make, turning leftovers right into a centrepiece for an incredible sharing meal or right into a scrumptious sandwich filler. It’s pretty chilled or at room temperature. Right here, I served it on crostini made by gently frying stale ciabatta in extra-virgin olive oil.

Prep 20 min
Serves 2-4 as a part of a meze

1 giant slice stale bread, about 100g
100ml hen inventory, or milk
2 tbsp walnut oil, or extra-virgin olive oil
100g walnut halves, 50g crushed in a mortar, the remainder left entire
1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
2 tsp candy paprika
180g leftover cooked hen meat, shredded
Sea salt and black pepper
Chopped parsley, to serve (optionally available)
Bread, to serve (optionally available)

Put the bread in abowl, cowl with the inventory or milk, and go away to melt.

Tear the softened bread into items and add a tablespoon of walnut oil, the crushed walnuts, garlic, a teaspoon of paprika and the hen. Season, then combine totally by hand to mix.

Organize the hen combine on a platter. Warmth the second tablespoon of oil in a pan, stir within the remaining teaspoon of paprika and drizzle over the hen combine. Prime with the walnut halves and an optionally available sprinkling of parsley, and serve with bread.