Chicken Kabsa
A DELICATELY FLAVORFUL SPICED CHICKEN WITH RICE
By Dara O’Brien
Creative Director, Lake Isle Press
I’ve traveled quite a bit over the past six months. Senegal… Mexico… the Middle East… India… Peru. A heady array of encounters with other cultures — and I never left my kitchen.
My experience of these places has been through their cuisines. My guides were cookbooks published by the company I work for, Lake Isle Press.
I’ve been cooking a new recipe from one of our books at least once a week. Most of these books are written by immigrants or descendants of immigrants and are rooted in distinctive regional cuisines. The writers share their recipes along with the visceral connection to home these dishes hold for them. It’s about understanding heritage through food, not place.
Since I began this culinary journey I’ve explored recipes from West Africa with Chef and Activist Pierre Thiam; from Latin America with Iron Chef Jose Garces; and from India with MasterChef Vikas Khanna. For the past month, I’ve been focused on food from the Middle East, and my guide has been Mayada Anjari, a Syrian refugee who arrived in America just three years ago.
The title of Mayada’s heartfelt book written with Jennifer Sit is “The Bread and Salt Between Us.” The phrase represents different things in different cultures, including a welcome gift for a new home or a way to honor guests. In Mayada’s native Syria, it speaks to a celebration of shared experience (“There is bread and salt between us”).
That power of connection through the shared experience of food has become increasingly clear to me through my cooking over the last six months. Since I began my exploration at the onset of the Covid pandemic, for the most part, I’ve cooked and dined alone, with no one to share each meal. Nevertheless, I felt a connection through the food to the writer and the culture that crafted the recipe.
Mayada’s recipe for chicken kabsa is a Friday night favorite for her family, so last Friday night I made it for me. When I took the spiced chicken out of the oven and inhaled its aroma, then lifted the lid of the tomato-flavored rice to fluff it, I thought of Mayada serving it to her family, and her mother teaching…