Chicken Breast Pudding

Talk about a one-dish meal!  This is an entree and dessert rolled into one awfully strange yet tasty sweet pudding.

Please, hold your disappointment -- I do not have a recipe to share.  I tried this during a recent visit to Istanbul, while on a wonderful Context tour of city markets led by the amazing Aylin Oney Tan, one of Turkey's leading food writers. There were so many highlights during the tour; nearly every food in Istanbul has a fascinating story behind it, and Aylin knows them all.

As we tasted our way through the city, Aylin kept us on our toes, having us guess the "secret" ingredient in each dish.  This is one I never saw coming.

Chicken breast pudding is a famous dish in Turkey, served to sultans in the Topkapi Palace during the Ottoman Empire where, at its height, had 850 pastry chefs in its kitchen. The pudding, said to be the ancestor of blancmange,  is essentially a sweet milk pudding.   Those strands (see below) throughout the creamy white pudding are shreds of chicken.

Bon appetit or, as they say in Turkey, iştah iyi!

The menu, below.