Khoresht-e Fesenjan: Lamb or Chicken in Pomegranate Sauce

I've made this with chicken and lamb, and have tweaked the spices, quantities, and procedure slightly. If using lamb, be careful that the rich sauce and spices doesn't overpower the mild flavor of the meat. This is a very rich dish and will feed about 8 with the proportions given.  1.5 hours cooking time

Fesenjan served with basmati tahdig

Adapted from a recipe posted by Emma Fernlund (thanisa@df.lth.se), from Persian Cooking: A Table of Exotic Delights, by Nesta Ramazani 1974, ISBN 0-8139-0962-7.

Serves: 8

2 large     Onions, chopped or sliced 

5 Tbsp     Butter 

2.5 pound   Chicken or Lamb, cut into 1-inch cubes

2 cup     Chicken, Lamb, or Veal Stock

2 1/2 cups  Walnuts, ground: some fine, some corn-kernel size

1 cup       Water

4.5 Tbs     Pomegranate Syrup (substitute sour cranberry juice) 

2-3 Tbsp    Sugar 

2-3 tsp     Salt 

1/2 tsp     Saffron (or turmeric) 

1/4 tsp     Cinnamon (ground from stick instead of pre-ground)

1/4 tsp     Nutmeg 

1/4 tsp     Pepper 

2 Tbsp     Lemon juice

6 pods     Cardamom, ground

3     Cloves, ground

Saute the onions in 2 Tbsp of the butter until golden brown.

Remove from the pan.

Add 3 more Tbsp of butter and saute the chicken/lamb pieces until lightly browned.

Drain fat.

Add the Stock and sauteed onions.

Cover and simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Bone if needed.

While that's cooking...

Grind the Walnuts to a mix of sizes;  the texture too thick if ground uniformly fine. 

Toast the ground walnuts in a saucepan or skillet until aromatic.

Prepare the sauce by stirring the water into the ground walnuts.

Stir in the pomegranate syrup and sugar, and simmer gently over a low heat for 10-15 minutes.

Roughly grind the walnuts

Add the walnut sauce to the cooked, chicken/lamb and onions.

Add the seasonings and the lemon juice.

Cover and simmer gently for another hour.

Adjust the seasonings by adding a little sugar if too sour, or more pomegranate syrup if too sweet.

The chicken/lamb pieces should be coated with a rich, dark, sweet-sour sauce; there should be plenty of thick sauce.

Serve with rice, preferably Tahdig. Couscous also works well, as would unleavened bread.

Basmati rice tahdig

Canelones de Bacalao y Samfaina

Canelones are a traditional dish in Catalunya, imported from Italian canoli. They have myriad different fillings;  a combination of meats seems most common, but I wanted one with bacalao -- the dried salt cod that has an appealing texture and funky aroma when rehydrated.  Many recipes I found had a loose chunky filling that looked floppy and unappealing, others ground the fish into a paste resembling cat food: I wanted texture and structure so the rolls were firm and well-defined. I found this recipe which used a traditional Catalan sauce "Samfaina" that's somewhat like French ratatouille, but more cooked down. It proved to be an excellent vehicle to hold the fish, and provided an attractive bright contrast to the Béchamel sauce and gratin of Manchego cheese.

Three pieces per person is a bit much, it's rich

We used what we had on hand, with hydrated bacalao and dried scallops for the fish, and made some substitutions for a couple of the ingredients in the samfaina, but it shows we don't need to be pedantic to make a great dish.  We also made our own pasta instead of using the pre-made dry pasta sheets they have in Catalunya. This was too much food for the two of us, and could have fed three as it was quite rich.  

Pasta:

  1       Egg

100 g     All Purpose Flour

Fish:

135 g     Rehydrated Bacalao

 25 g     Rehydrated dried Scallops (save the hydration water)

          Olive Oil

          Flour

Samfaina:

          Olive Oil

1 medium  Onion, chopped fine

3 cloves  Garlic, sliced thin

1 C       Tomato, chopped coarse

1 C       Green Pepper, chopped

2 large   Roasted Red Pepper (from a jar)

1 C       Squash flesh

Béchamel:

1 Tbs     Butter

1 1/2 Tbs Flour

1 C       Fish stock and/or fish rehydrating water

1 C       Milk

          Nutmeg

          Manchego Cheese, grated

Whiz the egg in a food processor, add flour and pulse until it combines, first into a coarse sandy texture then into a ball; form by hand if it doesn't come together. Wrap in plastic and let hydrate overnight in the fridge.

Rehydrate the Bacalao, changing the water a couple times to reduce salt; also rehydrate the dried Scallops overnight. The water from the dried Scallops is quite flavorful, and you can save if for the sauce.

Heat the Oil and cook the Onions about 10 minutes until softened; add the Garlic, cook a bit more. Add the other Samfaina ingredients and cook low for at least an hour, but two is better. If it's getting too dry, cover the pot. We want a thick-ish consistency that will bind our fish.

Cut the Pasta dough into two pieces, and roll out each with a pasta maker, reducing down to its finest setting -- #9 on our Marcato Atlas model. Lay it on a dish towel and roll out the other one. You should end up with each sheet being about 20 inches long, by the 6-inch width of the machine. Cut each sheet into 3 pieces.  Cook in boiling salted water until done, but it still retains a little "bite". Let cool and dry on a kitchen towel. The pasta sheets will have expanded significantly, but the width should fit in a lasagna pan. 

 

For the Béchamel, melt Butter in a pan, add the Flour and cook until lightly colored. Add the fish stock or hydrating water, and cook down; it should thicken and reduce. Add the Milk, and cook until it thickens. Grate in a bit of Nutmeg, season with Salt.  Add a bit of the Bechamel to a lasagna pan to prevent the pasta from sticking, or use a bit of oil.

Roughly chop the Bacalao and Scallops, and saute in Olive Oil a few minutes until just cooked. Sprinkle with a bit of Flour and cook out the raw flavor. 

Add the Samfaina, stir to combine, and cook a together a little longer. If Oil starts separating, dust with a bit of Flour and cook a bit to bind it all together. Taste and adjust Salt.

Bacalao and scallops combined with Samfaina

Roughly divide the filling in the pan into six sections, then lay a snake of filling on each pasta sheet, across the 6-inch dimension. Roll each up and put, seam-side down, in the lasagna pan. I separate them a bit (groups of 3) so I will be able to use a spatula and pull out a serving at a time.

Cover (but don't smother) with Bechamel, then top with grated Manchego. 

Broil until the sauce starts bubbling and the cheese browns attractively. Carefully pull out the Canelones and plate; two pieces this size should be enough for each person.

Spaetzle made with a potato ricer

Spaetzle is German cross between noodles and dumplings, with an appealing toothsome texture. They're great with Beef Bourguignon, our Jurassic Chicken, and many German dishes. We use a potato ricer's large holes to get fat, textured strands. 

We based this on a recipe from sports-glutton. The batter was a bit thicker than I expected and quite sticky. It required some force to push it through the large holes of a potato ricer. I was concerned that the strands would stick as they emerged, so I submerged the end in the simmering water as I squeezed the ricer. 

  2 C    All Purpose Flour

  1 tsp  Salt

3/4 C    Milk

  2      Eggs

         Butter

Get a large pot of salted water boiling.

Our ricer has two disks, we used the larger holes, about 1/4 inch.

In a bowl, whisk Milk and Eggs together.

Add the Flour and Salt.

Stir with a strong spoon or spatula until fairly smooth, this will take some time and muscle: it will become thick and sticky from gluten development (maybe a stand mixer would help).

You could add a bit of Water and a little Butter to loosen it, but I didn't; it should not be runny.

Turn the water down to a simmer.

With the batter next to the pot, fill a ricer about 2/3 full -- this is messy.

Press down to extrude the batter through the holes;

if you think it's in danger of having the strands stick together, submerge the head in the water a little as you squeeze out the batter. 

Repeat until the batter is used.

Give the pot a gentle stir to make sure nothing's stuck to the bottom.

Adjust the heat to return the water to a gentle simmer.

When the spaetzle floats to the top, give it another 30 seconds or so to finish cooking.

Fish out the strands that have finished into another bowl.

When it's all cooked, add a bit of butter to the bowl and toss to prevent sticking.

You can hold the cooked spaetzle in a ziptop bag in the fridge for a few days.

Biscuits: 2-ingredients, with self-rising flour

These biscuits use equal measures by weight of cream and self-rising flour. We don't tend to stock self-rising, so we make it by adding some baking powder and salt. These are not flakey layered biscuits but have an even tender crumb that's a little pillowy. I rolled then cut rectangles so I didn't have to re-roll scraps with round biscuits and toughen the resulting dough. This is from Serious Eats, with the baking powder amounts from the comments.

You can cut rectangles or squares, or circles

280 g  9 1/2 ounce  Flour, all-purpose
 14 g    1/2 ounce  Baking Powder
  7 g    1/2 tsp    Salt (weight is better, coarseness varies wildly)
300 g     10 ounce  Heavy Cream

Preheat oven to 425F convection, 450F conventional.
Line a cookie sheet with parchment.

Whisk the dry ingredients.
Drizzle in the Cream.
Stir well to combine roughly.
Scoop out onto floured counter and roll into a rectangle about 12x18-inch;
fold and roll again into a rectangle;
fold and roll again into a 12-inch square.
Cut with a knife, bench scraper or pizza wheel.

Place cut biscuits on parchment-lined cookie sheet.
Brush tops with a bit more cream.
Bake 12-15 minutes until risen and golden brown.

Biscuits, ham, poached egg