Cooking with İkbal: Turkish Tavuk and Pilav

This chicken dish is the equivalent to chicken noodle soup (just without the soup). İkbal showed me how to make it on a cold and rainy day, which was just the perfect day for some comfort food.

Again, there are no measurements so use your best judgement for how much food you think you will eat.

Ingredients for chicken:

• chopped carrots
• onion, quartered
• chicken (İkbal used bone-in thighs)
• salt
• water

Ingredients for pilav:

• piliç (short-grain rice)
• tel sehrıye (short, vermicelli-type pasta, can be excluded if you can't find it)
• butter
• chicken stock (from above recipe)

Rinse and soak the piliç. Set aside.

Place chicken, chopped carrots, and quartered onion into a large pot. Add enough water so that it barely reaches the top of the ingredients. Add salt.

Cover, bring to a boil and allow to simmer until the chicken is thoroughly cooked.

While the chicken is simmering, add butter to a non-stock pan or pot. Please don't use butter as liberally as İkbal does (wow, no wonder I'm not losing any weight). A tablespoon or two would be more than enough in my opinion.

Add tel sehrıye (about a quarter of the piliç) and stir.

Drain piliç and add to the pot. Add chicken stock. Keep in mind that for every cup of piliç you use, you will need the same amount of chicken stock. Since İkbal is cooking for the entire family, we used three cups of piliç, which required three cups of chicken stock to cook.

Stir all the ingredients until well mixed. Cover and simmer on low heat until the liquid is absorbed into the piliç and tel sehrıye. It took us about 20-25 minutes.
Serve the chicken over the pilav. It's the perfect meal for a rainy Spring afternoon!
If you have extra chicken stock left, don't just drain it! You can reserve it for another meal.

If you'd like to add a delicious, simple and easy to make Turkish salad to complete your meal, chop up some lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, parsley and cilantro. Top with olive oil, fresh-squeezed lemon juice and salt. Toss and enjoy! It's really light and refreshing. A perfect addition to any meal!

© Connie Hum 2009