Chicken Mansaf

Chicken and rice - how can one not enjoy those simple pleasures?  Simply, cook them in yogurt and let the olfactory repugnance turn your otherwise hungry stomach into a displeased organ.  Yes, I did so want to like Jordan's national dish, but it was one that might ultimately rank as a least favorite...in our home's history.  Ever.

Maybe I was just turned off by the fact that the entire plate of food was white.  Maybe I have never really been able to stomach plain yogurt for the fact that its consistency is just a wiggly disgrace to my proud teeth.  Or quite possibly I just wasn't hungry and I made mansaf on the worst of all days.  I don't know.  All I do know is that this was an endeavor that made our family say...."well, you don't know unless you try."  That's the spirit - those are just the words every cook wants to hear.  Hopefully our next attempt at world cuisine will make up for this one's shortcomings.  As with countries in the Olympics, not everyone can be a winner.

Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken, cut into serving pieces
• 1 1/2 quarts plain yogurt
• 1 egg
• 1 cup almonds, freshly toasted
• 1/2 cup pine nuts, freshly toasted
• parsley, finely chopped
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 2-3 cups long grain rice, like basmati
• pita bread

Instructions:

1. Place chicken in a large pot with enough salted water to barely cover it.  Cook over medium heat until almost done, about 45 minutes.
2. In a separate pan, cook enough rice for six servings.
3. In a large saucepan, stir yogurt until it is quite smooth.  Add beaten egg and heat over medium heat, stirring constantly.  Add enough of the liquid from the cooked chicken to make a thin sauce, about the consistency of very heavy cream.  Heat until almost comes to a boil and thickens slightly.
4. Add cooked chicken pieces to the yogurt sauce and finish cooking the chicken in the sauce, at a low temperature.
5. Cover a large platter with pita bread.  Mound the rice in the center to form a pyramid.  Arrange chicken pieces on the rice and pour most of the yogurt sauce over it, reserving the remaining sauce to be added, as desired, by the diners.
6. Garnish with almonds, pine nuts and parsley around the edges of the mound of rice and chicken.  Serve warm and eat with your hands. 

(The original recipe came from this website: http://www.food.com/recipe/chicken-mansaf-158813)