Ever since I first had this dish at an Iranian restaurant with Tim and Charletta many years ago, I have been obsessed with this chicken stew dish. In fact, part of the fun of having a blog that goes back for over 10 years is that you can find my first reference to this dish back in August 2010. Despite being a little time consuming, this is a dish I have literally made twice on one week (it makes for a great meal for presenting to guests). However, it had been quite some time since, I had made it, so this afternoon I decided to give it another shot.
You can find the recipe here and I will say it is great as is, however because I almost always end up tweaking things as I go, below are a few notes.
- The meat in this flexible. I didn’t have enough chicken on hand, so I threw in some pork. I think this would also be fun to turn vegetarian, with perhaps butternut squash, or maybe chickpeas?
- The only hard to find ingredient in this is the pomegranate molasses. I found mine at Whole Foods, although your local co-op or natural food store would also probably be good options.
- I was also out of chicken broth for this, so I used beef broth instead and it tasted fine.
- Another fun addition is to throw in a couple of splashes of pomegranate juice when you add the ground walnuts.
- Don’t skip toasting the walnuts, you want the richness of flavor, believe me.
- However, feel free to reduce the final 1 hour simmer time. I really only simmered for 15 minutes past the 30 minute meat simmer and it tasted delicious.
- Also I think rice is really the way to go with this one in terms of sides. I tried quinoa this time and you really want a more absorbent starch with this meal.
There, now you have all you need to make a sumptuous autumn/winter dish.
Mennogirl 