Fattet Musakhan

Sumac: this is the whole point of the dish, so use plenty and use a fresh jar. Old sumac goes flat and dusty and you lose the sourness. Good sumac smells sharp and tart and stains your fingers deep red.

Onions: yellow or white onions both work. You want a lot of them, more than feels right, because they cook down to almost nothing. Slice them thin so they soften evenly.

Bread: taboon or any thin flatbread is traditional, but pita, lavash, or even torn-up Arabic bread all crisp up beautifully. Slightly stale bread actually crisps better than fresh.

Pine nuts: toast them in a dry pan or in a little oil until just golden, then pull them off the heat straight away. They go from golden to burnt in seconds, so don't walk away.

Chicken: poached, roasted, or leftover rotisserie all work. Shred it rather than chop it so it tangles in with the onions instead of sitting in chunks.

Cook the onions low and slow until they're soft and golden, not browned hard. This usually takes 25 to 35 minutes. Rushing them on high heat gives you bitter, scorched onions instead of sweet jammy ones.

Crisp the bread separately first, either in the oven at 200C until golden or in a dry pan. If you layer soft bread under everything from the start, the whole base turns to mush.

Add the warm broth a little at a time, not all at once. You want the bread softened and savoury, not swimming. A few spoonfuls go further than you'd think.

Toss the shredded chicken with a good pinch of sumac and a little of the onion oil before layering, so the meat itself carries flavour instead of just sitting there plain.

Assemble and serve quickly once it's built. Fatteh is best eaten while the bread still has some bite. The longer it sits, the softer the bottom gets.

Keep leftovers in the fridge, covered, for up to 3 days. The bread will keep softening as it sits, so the texture changes, but the flavour holds up well.

I don't freeze this assembled, since the bread turns to paste. Freeze the cooked sumac chicken and onions on their own for up to 2 months, then build fresh with newly crisped bread.

Reheat in a hot oven (around 200C) rather than the microwave so the top bread re-crisps a little. Add a splash of warm broth if it's looking dry.

Add a layer of garlicky yogurt over the top, the way a lot of fatteh dishes are finished. The cool tang against the warm sumac chicken is lovely.

Swap chicken for roasted chickpeas to make it vegetarian. You still get the sumac and onion magic, just with a different protein.

Stir a spoon of pomegranate molasses into the onions for an extra sour-sweet edge, and scatter fresh pomegranate seeds on top for colour and pop.

Use roasted cauliflower instead of, or alongside, the chicken. It soaks up the sumac beautifully and adds a nutty depth.