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And again

  • rosemary
  • Oct 3
  • 5 min read

"like a lot of good comfort food, the joy of this meal lies in its simplicity and beige-ness." Loukia Constantinou/Vittles


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"Again", in the sense that I find myself yet again writing about a very basic dish from home kitchens - this time in Cyprus - and how they vary slightly, and eventually evolve into something more complicated - either in another country to which the dish has migrated - or in upmarket restaurants.


The inspiration is from this particular version that the author - Loukia Constantinou - was writing about in my first edition of the Vittles newsletter, and as the recipe was behind a pay wall I don't have the recipe for this particular version. She calls it Pasta, chicken, cheese, mint, lemon with these additional words:


"The cheese should be halloumi or anari, aged and hard. The mint, dried. The lemon, plentiful. As for the chicken, it can be a whole bird or pieces of leg and thigh, ideally on the bone to bring more depth to the stock that you prepare and then cook the pasta in."


She also explains that it has many names:


for the Turkish Cypriots - ‘magarina bulli’ (pasta and bird) or ‘tavuklu makarna’ (chicken pasta) and for the Greek Cypriots ‘makaronia’ (pasta) to ‘makaronia me kotopoulo’ (pasta with chicken), ‘makaronia me trima’ (pasta with shavings), ‘horkatika makaronia’ (village pasta) and just plain ‘vraston’ (boiled)


Which made it slightly difficult to search for on the net.


I was attracted by the picture, but more by the reference to beige-ness which is something I have been thinking about of late, and am still mulling over in my mind.


Having now perused a few recipes here and there I have decided there is not much more to say really, and since it's late in the day this is just as well because I shall shortly have to go and cook our evening meal - an asparagus quiche.


So I have decided to summarise the steps and the variations therein, punctuating with a picture and a link to an actual recipe every now and then:


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Poach chicken (Makaronia Xoriatika - village pasta with boiled chicken) - Nikoletta's Kitchen). Occasionally people mentioned that they added a bay leaf or some lemon juice to the chicken. The chicken being mostly thighs, skin on and bone in, but sometimes chopped breast or thighs, and ever so occasionally a whole bird. Which probably depends on how many people you are preparing this for. Or some people roast the chicken or chicken pieces - sometimes just on its own, sometimes with lemon and dried mint. One person poached his pieces and then finished them off in the oven until crispy. This version doesn't look like it has a lot of chicken in it at all. However you have prepared your chicken - you now just set it aside. I suppose if you really wanted to cheat you could buy a roast chicken from the supermarket and shred it. I should have said that mostly people did shred the chicken, but some, particularly those who had roasted it left the pieces whole and placed them on top.


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Cook the pasta - (Xoriatika Makaronia - The Traditional Plate). if you are going to be authentically traditional then the pasta should be thin, hand-cut tubes of pasta – ‘"makaronia tou sherkou’ (pasta of the hand)'' but any tube-like pasta will do. It is indeed supposed to be tube-like, but I did see one made with linguine. The pasta is cooked in the stock created from poaching the chicken. Some people added a chicken bouillon cube to this for the pasta cooking bit. The recipe shown here is a minimalist version in that there is no chicken at all, but the pasta is cooked in chicken stock 'with lots of lemon'. And rather than the traditional grated cheese they have used ricotta.


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Plate the dish (Macaroni horkatiko - village macaroni - Dasaki). This is another one with no chicken, just pasta cooked in chicken stock. Whilst your pasta has been cooking you grate some cheese, which is supposed to be anari, but as this is not easily found, they almost all use halloumi. The amount seems to be up to you. Ditto for the herbs - dried mint - the most usual choice, chopped fresh mint - less usual but sometimes added as a final bit of green and dried oregano - sometimes omitted altogether. The plating is always the same however - pasta on the plate - chicken on top, then the grated cheese, then the herbs. Stock poured over the lot to your taste and all mixed together as you eat. Well it doesn't really matter what order you put things on the plate as you mix it all up to eat it anyway. And that's it. Well it seems some of the Turks sprinkle some chilli on top.


A few more examples that I found: Magarini bulli - Meliz Cooks - on TikTok with a video - the chicken is roasted and there is yoghurt on top - and this is the linguine version. Cypriot village chicken with macaroni - Earthropology and finally Makarna bulli (Poached chicken and pasta) - Hasan Semay/The Guardian



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Evolution? - as I said, this usually happens further up the cooking chain as it were. I don't actually have a lot to offer here - maybe I've just run out of time - but first of all there is Georgina Hayden a Greek Cypriot British author who presents Makaronia horiatikia (Cypriot village pasta with chicken, halloumi + lemon) with the untraditional roasted chicken, and a personal addition of shredded silver beet to the cooking pasta. She includes a video, but no recipe as such. I see there was garlic in the roast chicken as well. Garlic did not seem to be a usual addition.


Then we get to the chicken and rice dishes. I think these are a purely Greek thing and I even wrote about it back in 2022 - Too easy? Can it possibly be good?


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Which Nigella then turned into Chicken in a pot with lemon and orzo, which has become fairly famous. And which is not beige at all.


I shall continue to ponder on beige and it's companion adjective bland because like most things in life that appear to be bad in some way there is always another side.


Your food doesn't have to be gorgeous looking like Nigella's professionally styled chicken and orzo. The food we all eat at home, rarely looks as good, and even if it does it probably wouldn't look brilliant if you or I took a photograph of it. Which doesn't mean to say that what we are eating is not supremely delicious. Just about every one of those recipes I found included comments from the author and comments from their fans which were expressions of real emotional love for this favourite dish. It's one of those dishes that says home I think. I should try it.


YEARS GONE BY

October 3

2020 - Missing

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