Pasta, Chicken, Cheese, Mint, Lemon
The unofficial national comfort food of Cyprus goes by many names, but these ingredients are a constant. Words by Loukia Constantinou. Images by Issy Laight.
Good morning, and welcome to Vittles! Today, Loukia Constantinou shares a recipe for the ultimate Cypriot comfort food, a fragrant and deeply satisfying pasta dish.
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Pasta, Chicken, Cheese, Mint, Lemon
If you search for a Cypriot pasta recipe, chances are the first thing you’ll come across is makaronia tou fournou: baked ziti and mince, topped with a halloumi-enriched bechamel sauce. Makaronia tou fournou is considered one of the national treasures of Cyprus and is the pasta you’ll tend to see on Cypriot restaurant menus, but I would argue that it’s not our best pasta dish – and it’s certainly not the one we cook most often at home. That accolade goes to the recipe I’m sharing today.
There’s no one name for this dish. Rather, Cypriots refer to it by various monikers that list some or all of its constituent parts. My Turkish-speaking Cypriot friends call it ‘magarina bulli’ (pasta and bird) or ‘tavuklu makarna’ (chicken pasta). Among Greek-speaking Cypriots I’ve known it to be called everything from just ‘makaronia’ (pasta) to ‘makaronia me kotopoulo’ (pasta with chicken), ‘makaronia me trima’ (pasta with shavings), ‘horkatika makaronia’ (village pasta) and just plain ‘vraston’ (boiled). Whatever you call it and however many of its ingredients you list, you always know what you’re going to get: pasta with chicken, cheese, mint and lemon, a dish that is satisfyingly savoury, lifted and fragranced by citrus and dried herbs.
Part of every home cook’s repertoire, this is a meal eaten after travelling; to soothe illness, hangover, heartbreak or other ailments; or to break religious fasts (often at ungodly hours, following godly late-night services). It may not be the Cypriot national dish, but I’d wager it’s the nation’s favourite comfort food, and requires very little effort to put together.
Similar to our Levantine neighbours, Cyprus tends towards a vegetable-forward food culture, but like a lot of good comfort food, the joy of this meal lies in its simplicity and beige-ness. There isn’t a vegetable in sight in this dish, and it’s all the better for it. My favourite version is made using thin, hand-cut tubes of pasta – ‘makaronia tou sherkou’ (pasta of the hand) – but if you don’t happen to have a yiayia like mine, who produces it in vast quantities for the entire family, then any tubular shape (macaroni, penne, rigatoni) will work. The cheese should be halloumi or anari, aged and hard. The mint, dried. The lemon, plentiful. As for the chicken, it can be a whole bird or pieces of leg and thigh, ideally on the bone to bring more depth to the stock that you prepare and then cook the pasta in.
Although some cooks blast their poached chicken under a hot grill to get a crispy and bronzed skin or forgo the poaching altogether in favour of roasting, for me this misses the point of the dish. This is no place for crisp or crunch, or the layered flavours of grilling and roasting. Rather, I luxuriate in its inviting range of similar textures: the very slight bite of the pasta, the gelatinous lemon-drenched skin of the poached chicken giving way to its tender meat, the salty cheese that doesn’t melt but stretches with the heat of the stock, clinging onto whatever it comes into contact with. This is food that’s soft, subtle, yielding – the perfect soothing pick-me-up after a long day.
Pasta with Chicken, Halloumi, Mint and Lemon
The recipe I’ve provided includes instructions for making chicken stock from scratch, but if I’m feeling lazy, I just use a couple of low-salt chicken stock cubes instead. You can also make a quick, vegetarian version of this dish by leaving out the chicken and cooking the pasta in veggie stock (further details below).
Serves 4–6
Time 1 hr 20 mins (slightly less if you don’t prepare the stock from scratch)