Çerkez Tavuğu

The dish is credited to the Circassians, North Caucasus peoples who settled across the Ottoman lands in large numbers after the Russian conquest of the Caucasus in the 1860s and brought their walnut-thickened cooking with them. It became established in Istanbul kitchens and is documented as a refined cold dish of the late Ottoman and early Republican table. Walnut-and-garlic sauces of this kind are shared widely across the Caucasus and the eastern Black Sea, so the dish sits within a broader regional family rather than standing alone.

Cool and savoury, the chicken soft and finely shredded, the walnut sauce thick and faintly sweet-bitter with a real garlic edge. The texture is the point — smooth and spoonable, never dry, the bread in the sauce keeping it creamy. The red oil drizzled over the top adds a warm paprika aroma and a light bitterness from the walnut oil that lifts the richness.

Poaching the chicken gently keeps the meat moist and yields a stock that is reused to loosen the sauce, so the dish is built from one bird. Ground walnuts are emulsified with stale bread soaked in that stock and pounded with garlic: the bread's starch and the nuts' own oil hold the sauce together into a stable, creamy paste rather than a greasy one. Serving it cold lets the walnut oil and starch set so the sauce clings to the shredded meat instead of pooling.