Fesenjan

The ground walnuts are cooked until their oil comes out and the sauce goes dark.

Chicken, Duck. Not vegetarian — contains chicken, duck.

Ingredients

• 500 g walnuts, ground to a coarse paste
• 200 ml pomegranate paste
• 1 duck, jointed, or 6 chicken thighs
• 2 onions, finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
• 1 teaspoon ground dried rosebuds
• grated peel of 1 orange
• 2 tablespoons sugar, if needed
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 60 ml sunflower oil

Method

1. THE GROUND WALNUTS ARE COOKED UNTIL THEIR OIL COMES OUT AND THE SAUCE GOES DARK. Half a kilo of walnuts ground to a coarse paste, loosened with water, and simmered on their own for a full hour and a half before anything else joins them. For the first half hour it is a pale beige sludge. Then the oil begins to separate and pool at the edges, the colour moves through fawn to brown, and the smell changes from raw nut to something closer to chocolate. That hour and a half is the dish. Rushed, the sauce stays grey-beige and tastes raw and chalky.
2. THE WALNUTS ARE GROUND COARSE, NOT TO BUTTER. Pulsed in a processor until they are the texture of damp sand with some grit in it. Ground to a smooth butter the sauce goes claggy; left in pieces it never thickens.
3. IT IS STIRRED OFTEN AND THE HEAT IS LOW, BECAUSE IT CATCHES. Walnut paste sinks and burns on the base, and a burnt patch makes the whole pot bitter. Lowest heat, a heavy pan, and a stir every few minutes.
4. THE POMEGRANATE PASTE GOES IN AFTER THE WALNUTS HAVE DARKENED, NOT BEFORE. Its acid slows the walnuts breaking down, so adding it early stretches that hour and a half considerably. In it goes once the oil has separated, then another thirty minutes.
5. THE BALANCE IS ADJUSTED AT THE END AND THE ARTICLE SAYS HOW. If the pomegranate comes out too sour, sugar and fried onions are added to sweeten it. Taste first: pastes vary from mildly tart to fiercely sour, so the two tablespoons of sugar here are a maximum rather than an instruction.
6. DUCK OR CHICKEN, BROWNED SEPARATELY AND ADDED FOR THE LAST HOUR. Its article gives poultry -- duck or chicken -- as the usual choice, and also allows minced meat, meatballs or chunks of lamb. Brown the joints hard in a separate pan and lower them into the sauce; the rendered duck fat is worth adding too.
7. THE SPICING IS WARM AND SMALL. Its article names turmeric, cinnamon, orange peel, cardamom and rosebud. All of them in quarter and half teaspoons: the sauce is already rich and dark and these are there to lift it, not to flavour it.
8. A HOT IRON IS SOMETIMES USED TO DARKEN IT FURTHER. Its article records the practice -- a hot iron applied to cause oxidation and deepen the colour. It is a cosmetic step and the long cook does most of the work.
9. IT IS A DISH FOR AN OCCASION AND IT IS SERVED OVER PLAIN RICE. Its article has it on the table for the longest night of the year and at Persian Jewish weddings and New Year meals, and lists ten varieties recorded in an 1881 cookbook -- walnut, almond, aubergine, kidney bean, quince, potato, carrot, pumpkin, fish and yogurt.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Iran · All recipes