Chicken with Walnuts and Pomegranate

Chicken with Walnuts and Pomegranate

 from Medieval Cuisine of the Islamic World

Made August 2013.

This barida recipe appeared in the book, now lost, of Caliph al-Wathiq.

Take a chicken that has already been cooked on the grill, divide it up into pieces, and arrange the pieces one on top of another in a serving dish [jam].
Beat some mustard with a good wine vinegar, a little murri, and sugar. Add to this rather sour-tasting
mixture some crushed walnuts and a bit of asafetida. Pour generously over the chicken so that it is well covered, then season with oil, sprinkle with chopped rue, and finally garnish with pomegranate seeds, God willing.

5/5/12 When a recipe calls for chopped rue I figure it means fresh rue. Since I don't know of any
source for fresh rue and many people don't like it because it is very bitter I will leave it out.
5/9/12 I just went today to buy the asafetida and found out she sells chopped rue (not just powdered)
so I decided to try it even though it is dried and not fresh. I'll find out soon enough if it will be good
with this recipe, the asafetida smells wonderful and I can't wait to cook with it.
5-29/12 I have made my first batch of this sauce. I have had my husband Matthew (Sebastian) and our friend Tristian try it and they both said it was good and would be good on chicken. For this first batch I only put half the vinegar in so I could use it as a sandwich spread since it will only keep a month in the fridge and it will be longer than that till I take it for Cooks Guild. As a spread it will fulfill my craving for a spicy brown mustard and I'm sure it won't last a month because I keep eating it. I started thinking that there would only be a little bit of ground walnut in it for flavor but when I first tried it steam shot out of my ears and my head blew up (It was like pure horseradish) and I realized that the walnut wasn't there just for flavor but to “cut the mustard”. Here is the recipe with measurements and the full amount of vinegar to make it a sauce and not a spread. I will probably have to at least double it to make enough to cover the chicken.

1 whole chicken for grilling (rubbed with extra virgin olive oil and a little kosher salt)

Grill the chicken till done. Tear it into pieces and arrange them on a serving dish.
¼ c brown mustard seeds
1 c (up to) red wine vinegar
2 T murri
2 T sugar
1 c + 1 T ground walnuts
½ t asafetida
Olive oil (to drizzle as a garnish)
Pomegranate seeds (enough to garnish)

I find it easiest to mix all of the dry ingredients together then mix in the murri. Add the wine vinegar
little by little, mixing until you have the desired consistency. Pour over the chicken then garnish by
drizzling olive oil and sprinkling pomegranate seeds.
6/22/12 I have decided since the rue in this recipe is to garnish I will not use the dried rue. That would work better mixed into something, fresh should be used for a garnish so again I am choosing to leave it out, besides in my redaction I am leaving the walnut skins on instead of blanching them since there is nothing in the recipe that leads me to believe that they should be blanched and that should give a little of the bitter flavor. I followed this recipe and made a batch for the 6/10/12 Cooks Guild Meeting. I didn't do the entire recipe of pouring it on pieces of a grilled chicken and garnishing it, I just grilled some chicken breasts in olive oil with a little salt and dried thyme and cut them into cubes, they were made available to dip in any sauce and one of the sauces out was this walnut-mustard sauce. Since asafetida, aside from all of its health benefits, is also a contraceptive/abortifacient I made a second batch of the sauce and substituted other ingredients for the asafetida so there wouldn't be any possible miscarriages causes from tasting the sauce. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asafoetida I made both sauces available for tasting but warned everyone that if there was any possibility that they were pregnant they should not taste the first sauce.

In my second batch this is the recipe I followed:
5 T brown mustard seeds
1 t garlic powder
3-4 anise seeds
1 t granulated onion
1 1/4 c chopped walnuts (approximately)
2 T murri
1-2 c red wine vinegar (because that was so much red wine vinegar I used mostly apple cider vinegar
with some red wine vinegar to reduce the cost.)

Grind the whole spices (mustard seeds, anise seeds) to a powder. Grind the walnuts to as close to a
powder as an oily nut will do. Mix all of the powdered ingredients together. Mix in the murri then a
little at a time mix in the vinegar until it is at the desired consistency (I like it thicker to use as a
sandwich spread and then thin it in small batches if I need it to be pour-able.)
8/22/12 I am making this dish for the 8/26/12 Cooks Guild meeting at the Potluck before the Populace Meeting. I have chosen to use the recipe for the second batch leaving out the Rue and using the substitutions for the Asafetida since there could be a lot of people trying it and since these are not
common ingredients those who should avoid them may not know it. This way my dish should be safe.

Instead of grilling a whole chicken I took 4 or 5 chicken leg quarters, rubbed them with extra virgin
olive oil and sprinkled them with kosher salt and a little dried thyme. Since the burn ban was still in
effect I put them on a baking rack and baked them at 350 degrees Fahrenheit until they reached an
internal temperature of 180 degrees. I then turned off the oven and cracked open the door and let them finish rising the 5 degrees more to the done temperature. I set them out to cool then broke them into pieces and refrigerated them in a sealed container until they were taken to the potluck the next day. I had a lot to complete with my dishes and managed to get all of the ingredients ground and in the container for the mustard-walnut sauce except for the vinegar. I took it to the location for the potluck and Erin was kind enough to mix the ingredients and thin it to a pour-able consistency with the red wine vinegar. Then she poured the sauce over the pieces of chicken and we sprinkled the dish with pomegranate seeds. It looked like it took less than half of the sauce so I didn't have to worry about it not being enough. She then helped me set up all the dishes, make ingredient labels for them and photograph them. I really don't know what we would do without her, she is so helpful. Here is the
picture of the finished dish.