I joined a Facebook group called Yotam Ottolenghi-inspired cooking housewives. It’s been fun and inspiring to see women across the globe posting pictures and recipes that they have created inspired by YO. They are beautiful and look delicious. There was a Paul Hollywood dish I wanted to make that was called Moroccan pie, however I’ve decided to make a Chicken Shawarma Pie, a Palestinian dish, that looked similar to his dish.

At first glance, the recipe looked rather intimidating. There are a number of ingredients, and fortunately we have most of them. The Filo dough scares me a little, but I was very impressed when mom found fresh Filo dough at Armenian Delight in Broomall. After watching a video made by the two chefs that developed this dish, it felt doable. Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley, authors of the cookbook Falastin about Palestinian food.

I enjoyed this article written about the two of them, from the Guardian. What is Palestinian food? The answer is complicated. In Gaza, it is dominated by fish and spices; in the West Bank, it is meats, flatbread and fermented yogurt. Tahini, za’atar and shatta, a condiment made from red or green chillies, are ubiquitous. “People are ready to zoom in, rather than just call it Middle Eastern food,” says Wigley, who worked alongside Ottolenghi on Plenty More and Simple. “No one needs to know from us how to make tabbouleh traditionally, so we’ve got three new tabboulehs. But we also have chicken musakhan, sumac onions and the “upside down” maqluba dish. Palestinian food is very earthy, it’s not pretty to look at. There’s a lot of beige and brown.”

We started by cooking the potatoes and chicken. Mom was responsible for the potatoes, which included slicing, seasoning, and roasting, I cook the chicken thighs after marinating them overnight. That included sautéing onions, adding the chicken with the marinade, after 10 minutes adding chicken stock. While they were cooking we made the tahini sauce. Once done, I needed to shred the chicken and then mix it in with the onions again.

The next step was the assembly. We had to butter and oil the Filo dough, then inserted into the springform pan. Not being deterred by any tears was challenging. It was very messy but we made it work. Once six sheets were in the pan, we started layering first the potatoes then the chicken and onions and then the tahini sauce. We then put a couple sheets of filo dough on top, moistened it with butter and olive oil, then sprinkle nigella seeds on it. I’ve never used nigella seeds before, they look a little bit like mouse turds so don’t be deterred.

The next step was to put the pan in the oven and let it cook for 45 minutes until it was browned. We were getting impatient and planed to have a salad with the dish, but just wanted to dig in once it was done. It’s a very rich dish and we both were filled by a small slice. What I make it again? Yes. I will probably cook the chicken and use that in a different way. But it was fun and different to make.