Tavuk Göğsü

Tavuk göğsü is shredded chicken breast cooked into a sweet milk pudding until it disappears into the texture entirely. It's an Ottoman dessert built on a genuinely strange-sounding idea for anyone unfamiliar with it — chicken in a sweet pudding — but the entire craft of the dish is making sure the chicken is never actually tasted, only felt as texture.

What it actually is

Chicken breast boils until fully tender, then shreds into threads so fine they're barely visible, pounded and pulled apart by hand until any trace of chicken flavour has cooked or rinsed out entirely. Those shreds fold into a sweetened milk pudding thickened with rice flour, simmered until smooth and thick, and the shredded chicken adds a faint, springy, almost taffy-like chew to what otherwise tastes like a plain milk pudding.

No chicken flavour should be detectable at all. That's the entire point and the entire skill — the chicken is rinsed and shredded specifically to strip out any savoury taste, leaving behind only its stringy texture inside a dessert that should taste purely of sweet milk.

How it's served

• Chilled, in a shallow dish or glass, sometimes with a dusting of cinnamon.
• As a dessert, traditionally at puddingshops (muhallebici) alongside other milk puddings.
• Cut into pieces or spooned, depending on how firmly it's set.

Writing it on a menu

• Flag dairy; the milk base carries it.
• Say plainly that it contains chicken, since the name and appearance alone don't make that obvious, and some guests will want to know before ordering.
• Note that the chicken is meant to be flavourless, purely textural, since a guest expecting a savoury taste should know what to expect instead.
• Mention if a version without cinnamon is available, for guests who prefer the plain pudding.