Article: GATHERINGS <> The exotic side of chicken salad <> Turkish recipes give familiar a new flavor

Circassian Chicken, a centerpiece of Turkish cuisine, brings out the romance novelist in cookbook authors.

Circassia, a region of the Caucasus, was renowned for the beauty of its blue-eyed Asiatic women, the preferred trophy wives of area potentates.

Ayla Algar, in "Classical Turkish Cooking," introduces her recipe thus: "This dish conjures up by its very name images of Circassian beauties languidly reclining in the gilded captivity of the harem."

I first read those words back in 1994, after a two-week assignment in Turkey.

The food there was certainly seductive -- fresh, complex, colorful, delectably herbed and spiced, and prepared with care. I came home to Milwaukee determined to teach ...

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