Smoky Chicken with Pistachio and Avocado Relish.
A Southern California-inspired sharing centerpiece perfect for barbecue season!
This month on ingredient we’re focusing on pistachios: the vibrant green nut from the cashew family which is a firm favourite regardless of if you’re going sweet or savoury.
You can already find the recipe for my vibrantly green, pistachio-heavy Spring Tabbouleh here, and I’ll be pressing on with testing some pistachio-based bakes as soon as we’ve polished off the rest of J’s birthday cake.
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Also, if you happen to be in London on Saturday I’ll be signing copies of my second cookbook One Pan Pescatarian along with ten other brilliant cookbook authors who will also be selling and signing copies of their latest releases at Toklas Bakery from 10am until 3pm. I’ve also got a stack of free recipe cards I’ll be giving out to people who come and say hello on the day - I can’t wait to meet some of you!
This barbecue chicken recipe (which I actually make indoors on my stovetop griddle most of the time, including in these pictures!) topped with a creamy, tangy, herby, crunchy pistachio and avocado relish is one of those dishes where the fact that I used to live in Southern California shines through in my cooking. It’s one of those ‘pile it all on a serving platter’ dishes with plenty of big, punchy flavours perfect for eating outdoors, and as I managed to get slightly sunburnt drinking beer and eating pizza in the pub garden at the weekend, I declare it officially barbecue season in spite of today’s rain!
Starting with the chicken, we’re keeping our skinless boneless chicken thighs (so much easier to keep moist and tender than breasts) simple with a dusting of sweet paprika and garlic powder along with some sea salt for a subtle dust of bold flavour. If you have any good garlic-infused oil kicking around, here is where you want to deploy it: in one of the tests I did for this dish I used the leftover garlic and herb confit oil from making this Garlicky Slow Cooked Lamb Shoulder recipe. It was excellent, but suggesting you make some especially just for this recipe is a ludicrous suggestion. I wrote it for regular oil, so regular oil will be fine here. My point is if you have a good garlickly oil to hand, use it!
Moving onto the relish, what I love about it is is once you’ve toasted the pistachios, it is literally just a chop, mix, taste, and season exercise with many of the flavours that could be called hallmarks of a Californian kitchen: creamy avocado, plenty of chopped coriander (or cilantro for my West Coast friends), and some finely chopped fresh jalapeño for more verdancy and crunch as much as gentle heat.
Once again pistachios are called on to provide another layer of colour and crunch, but it’s actually their slight creaminess and sweet flavour that make them work here the way other nuts might not, both complementing the flavours of the avocado and the paprika in the chicken without either getting lost in the relish, or competing with them too much.
Finally, for a little more colour and heat I’ve finished the dish with a generous sprinkle of the Aleppo & Other Chillies blend from Ottolenghi’s brand new pantry collection. It’s an excellent mixture of Aleppo, Arbol, Chipotle, Ancho chilli flakes and salt which has already taken up a permanent home in my kitchen for finishing dishes. As well as being great here it’s also good on avocado or tomato toast, or for making chilli sourdough crumbs to sprinkle over steamed and EVO tossed greens, but for this recipe as I know a lot of you reading are not based here in the UK, a good sprinkle of Aleppo pepper and some flaky sea salt would be perfect to finish this dish, perhaps with some chipotle chilli flakes mixed in too if you have them to hand.
Smoky Chicken with Pistachio and Avocado Relish
Serves: 2-4 (depending on side dishes, greed and the size of your chicken thighs!), Preparation time: 15 minutes, Cooking time: 25 minutes
I’ve included them above because people seem to get rather stressed online about recipes that don’t include cooking times, but I’d ignore them and take your time with this as the times really will depend on the size and thickness of your chicken thighs, your chopping speed, or if you choose to step away from the indoor griddle and cook the chicken outside on the barbecue instead. That being said, actual hands on prep and cooking time should not exceed half an hour.