Musakhan: Palestinian Sumac Chicken on Bread That Drinks the Oil

The first time you make musakhan you will think you have misread the olive oil quantity. You have not. The onions are supposed to cook in an amount of oil that looks like a mistake, and the bread underneath is supposed to drink most of it.

That is the dish. Musakhan is widely regarded as the national dish of Palestine, and it is understood to have originated around Tulkarem and Jenin in the north, where it was made during the olive harvest to celebrate the first pressing of the year, as its history records. The oil is not a cooking medium here. It is the seasonal ingredient the whole plate is built to show off.

The name means "heated", which undersells it. Sami Tamimi's version of the dish keeps that principle intact. What you get is chicken roasted until the skin gives, a heap of onions gone soft and dark red with sumac, pine nuts fried to the colour of straw, and flatbread beneath it all that has gone from dry to saturated. Sumac carries the acidity, so there is no lemon needed and no sauce to make.

Ingredients

Serves 4 generously. About 1 hour 40 minutes, most of it unattended while the onions soften and the chicken roasts.

• 1 whole chicken, about 1.6 kg, jointed into 8 pieces (or 8 bone-in, skin-on thighs)
• 1 kg onions, about 5 large, halved and sliced thinly into half moons
• 180 ml good olive oil, plus 2 tbsp for the chicken
• 6 tbsp ground sumac, plus 1 tsp to finish
• 1 tsp ground allspice
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
• A generous pinch of saffron threads, soaked in 2 tbsp warm water
• 80 g pine nuts
• 4 taboon breads, or 2 large Arabic flatbreads, or 4 naan at a push
• 1 1/2 tsp fine salt, plus more for the chicken
• Black pepper
• Greek yoghurt and a simple green salad, to serve

Method

1. Heat the oven to 200C fan. Pat the chicken pieces dry, rub with 2 tbsp olive oil, season well with salt and pepper, and dust with 1 tbsp of the sumac, the allspice and the cinnamon. Set aside while you start the onions.
2. Put the 180 ml olive oil and all the sliced onions in a wide, heavy pan over a medium-low heat with 1 tsp of the salt. This is the step that decides the dish. Cook for 35 to 40 minutes, stirring every few minutes, until the onions have collapsed completely and turned soft and jammy. Do not brown them hard. You want them silky, not caramelised and crisp.
3. While the onions cook, roast the chicken. Put the pieces skin-side up in a roasting tin and roast for 35 to 40 minutes, until the skin is bronzed and the juices from the thickest part of a thigh run clear. Keep the tin juices.
4. Toast the pine nuts in a small dry pan over a medium heat for 3 to 4 minutes, moving them constantly, until pale gold. They burn in seconds once they turn, so take them off early and tip them onto a plate.
5. When the onions are done, stir in the remaining 5 tbsp sumac, the cardamom, the saffron with its soaking water and the remaining 1/2 tsp salt. Cook for 2 minutes more. The mixture should go a deep russet and smell sharp and resinous. Taste it. It should be assertively tangy.
6. Warm the flatbreads briefly in the oven, 2 minutes, just to make them pliable. Lay them on a large platter or a shallow baking dish, overlapping.
7. Spoon about half the onion mixture over the bread and spread it out, letting the oil soak in. Pour over any juices from the chicken tin.
8. Arrange the chicken pieces on top, then pile the remaining onions over and around them.
9. Return the whole platter to the oven for 10 minutes, so the bread crisps at its edges while the middle stays soaked.
10. Scatter with the toasted pine nuts and the last teaspoon of sumac. Serve straight from the platter, with yoghurt alongside.

Getting the onions right

Everything else in musakhan is forgiving. The onions are not.