Call me Scheherazade, but I’m in my turquoise gauze veil and jewelled slippers for this one. The cinnamon and lemony yoghurt marinade gives the chicken a soft, perfumed tenderness; the saffron in the rice, itself studded with nuts and the musky breath of cardamom, is almost lit up with gold. Cook this and people will want gratefully to strew your path with rose petals for evermore.
500g chicken breast, cut into 2 x 1cm pieces (please don’t get your ruler out: I mean this as an approx. guide only)
1 x 200g tub Greek yoghurt
juice of half a lemon
quarter teaspoon ground cinnamon
half a teaspoon saffron threads
1 litre chicken stock (instant bouillon concentrate is, as ever, fine)
15g unsalted butter
2–3 tablespoons groundnut oil
500g basmati rice
3–4 cardamom pods, bruised
juice and zest of 1 lemon
50g cashew nuts
50g flaked almonds
25g pine nuts
3–4 tablespoons shelled pistachio nuts
small bunch fresh parsley, chopped
Marinate the chicken pieces in the yoghurt, lemon and cinnamon for about an hour. Soak the saffron threads in the chicken stock.
Over medium heat, in a large pan with a lid, melt the butter along with 1 tablespoon oil and add the rice, stirring it to coat until glossy. Pour in the saffron and chicken stock, add the cardamom pods, lemon juice and zest and bring the pan to the boil, then clamp on a lid and turn the heat down to very low; a heat diffuser, if you’ve got one, would be good here. Cook like this for about 10–15 minutes, by which time the rice should have absorbed the liquid and be cooked through.
While the rice is cooking, shake the excess yoghurt marinade off the chicken using a sieve. Then fry the meat in a hot pan with the remaining spoonful or so of oil, and do this in batches so that the chicken colours rather than just pallidly stews to cookedness.
When the rice is cooked, take it off the heat and fork through the pan-bronzed chicken pieces. Toast all the nuts except the pistachios, by simply shaking them in an oilless frying-pan over a medium heat until they colour and begin to give off their waxy scent, and then add them to the pilaf along with the chopped parsley. Pile everything on to a plate and add a fabulously green sprinkling of slivered or roughly chopped pistachios.
Serves 6.