Fattee

We had a housewarming dinner party this week for Simon and I threw vegetarian sensibilities to the wind and cooked a Chook (damn it!). I used the sumac and zaatar roasted chicken in a fattee, which is a layered dish of crispbread, rice, chicken and eggplant with a tomato sauce. I tried to photograph this dish but the photo seemed to get eaten by the camera. Shame, it’s quite spectacular.

You’ll need:

1x zaatar and sumac roasted chicken

Tomato sauce

• 5 tbsp olive oil
• 5 cloves of garlic
• 2 x tings of 400g tomatoes
• small cinnamon stick

Rice

• 300g basmati rice
• salt and pepper
• half a diced onion
• 75g butter
• 1x 400g chickpeas
• 485ml of chicken stock (I use the juices from the roast chicken mixed with water)

Fried eggplant

• 2 diced eggplants
• some olive oil

To finish

• 1 slice of pitta bread crisped in the oven and broken up
• 500g greek yoghurt

• a handful of chopped parsley
• a handful of toasted pinenuts.

To cook

1) The sauce – fry the garlic and cinnamon and until golden, add in the tomatoes and simmer for 30mins

2) The eggplant – dice and fry until golden

3) Rice – rinse the rice and soak for 1 hour. Fry the onion in the butter with the cinnamon then add the drained rice. Fry for one minute then add the stock and chickpeas, cover and boil for 5 and simmer for 5.

Once all the ingredients are cooked layer the fattee. First place the crisp bread, then the rice, then the chicken and any juices in the pan, then the eggplant and pour over the sauce. Finish with a drizzle of yoghurt, pine nuts and parsley. Serve straight away!