A-N-A-T-O-M-I-Z-E: Atta Chicken

By Raul Dias

The idea of rich, buttery pastry encasing a succulent piece of meat is represented to great culinary success by two of my all-time favourite dishes—the French poultry wonder that is poulet en croute and the very British dish of lamb wellington. It also finds itself (albeit, handled a tad differently) in another dish I’d wage war for i.e. parda biryani! Unlike the earlier two western preparations, where the ‘croute’ or pastry covering the meat is meant to be eaten, the ‘parda’ draping the Awadhi-style biryani, made up of a thick sheet of rolled whole wheat flour, is discarded to reveal the fragrant rice preparation within.
On a recent trip to the Delhi NCR, I encountered a very interesting preparation that had elements of both styles baked right into it. The atta chicken at Unplugged Courtyard Gurgaon is a succulent, spiced whole chicken wrapped in a dough made from wheat flour and then baked. Chef Akshay Bhardwaj, the restaurant’s corporate chef who has in the past worked at Chef René Redzepi’s two-Michelin star restaurant Noma in Copenhagen, came up with the idea of blending these two very different, yet strangely similar techniques to create one single dish.
Using a mixture of aromatic spices like ground cardamom, black stone flower, the ubiquitous garam masala, with raw mango and lemon rind powders thrown in for a tangy hit, the chicken is marinated overnight along with hung curd. To seal in its moisture, it is then seared off in a hot tandoor oven for a few minutes.
But before that all-important layer of wet atta covers the whole bird, a sheathing of banana leaves is used to give the dish a unique taste. Designed to keep in the juices, the atta covering is scored in a hedgehog pattern and the chicken is baked in an oven for 20 minutes at 180˚C. Once at the table, the baked dough seal is broken to reveal its steamy contents that are a treat to each one of the senses…

(An edited version of this column first appeared in the 3rd February 2019 issue of The Hindu newspaper's Sunday Magazine section on page 8 https://www.pressreader.com/india/the-hindu/20190203/283420602870802)