Şato Piliç (Chateaux Chicken) – A Taste Of Hatay In Fethiye

Today’s blog post is about adding a favourite dish to the blog that we’ve been meaning to add for a long time. Over the years, we’ve made no secret of the fact that we enjoy eating our way through the menu of Hatay cuisine at Mozaik Bahçe Restaurant in Fethiye. Most recently, we finally got round to trying the well known Mozaik Bahçe dürüm and wondered what had taken us so long – just a perfect lunch. And yesterday when we were there, we remembered that blog post…and remembered we had said we’ve never written about another favourite dish from the menu, despite ordering it on numerous occasions.

We looked over at the opposite table of businessmen who were all tucking into their lunchtime dürüms. Hmmm, do we go for dürüm again, we thought…and then the waiter came to take our order…and I ordered lamb şiş and Barry did his bit for the blog and ordered şato piliç.

Because we just love this dish and it’s certainly one that we have never seen anywhere else.

So what is this Şato Piliç we write of? Well, it’s a Hatay dish that translates as Chateaux / Castle Chicken (this region of Turkey was under French control for some time). Picture these ingredients in your head: We’ve got minced chicken, we’ve got very finely chopped vegetables and a small handful of pine nuts.

These are all mixed together to form a large köfte (think big burger) but not before being stuffed with cheese, too. Spices and seasoning complete the picture. At Mozaik Bahçe, that is then served with with all-the-moreish lavash bread; a light onion salad; barbecued tomato, red pepper and onion and then a serving of bulgur wheat with chickpeas.