Chicken with roses and pistachio

When we share recipe ideas with roses, often sweets and desserts are under the spotlight. But in fact, roses give room to much wider range of usage in your menu. We have already shared some ideas, for a starter, for a salad, for a hot drink, for a chilli sauce. And today we present you a recipe for a main course in which Bulgarian rose meets the inspiring Arabic cuisine, so that it can be transformed into a new, contemporary culinary temptation.

Chicken with rose jam and pistachio

Main ingredients:
1 kg farm fresh chicken

For the marinade:
5 table spoons olive oil
200 g rose jam
40 g pistachio
2 big cloves of garlic
2 table spoons ginger
4 pcs. bay leaf
1/4 tea spoon pink pepper
1 tea spoon salt

For the serving:
basmati rice
pistachio nuts
rose petals – dried
mint leaves – fresh

Preparation method:

1. Wash, dry and cut the chicken in portions.
2. In a bowl, mix the rose jam, the olive oil, the pistachio nuts, the ginger, the garlic, one bay leaf, the salt and the pepper. Grind all ingredients into paste using a mortar or in a blender.
3. Rub the chicken with half of the paste and leave for at least 2 hours, the best option is to leave it rest in fridge overnight in order to better absorb flavors.
4. The next day, take the chicken out of the fridge and leave it till it becomes room temperature.
5. Put in deep baking pan and bake covered in а preheated oven at 180˚C for 40 minutes.
6. Take out the pan to remove the cover and add the rest of the marinade; bake another 20 minutes, till the chicken gets golden crust.
7. Serve with basmati rice.
8. Sprinkle with dried rose petals and fresh mint leaves.

All you have to do now is to plan a culinary weekend!