SC - A Chicken dish from al-Baghdadi

[Wajdi]

Greetings the list,

Recently I was able to procure pomegranates at an insanely cheap price (for
Alaska) and went looking for recipes that included the seeds or juice. A friend
(with whom I cook with every other week) had pulled out a chicken and so I was
on the quest for a pomegranate and chicken dish. Al-Baghdadi was just the thing.
The recipe that resulted is sort of a hybrid dish composed of various parts of
several chicken dishes.

The original:
CHICKEN DISHES - Boil the chicken, then quarter it. Fry lightly in fresh
sesame-oil, with dry coriander, mastic and cinnamon. If desired sour, after
frying make a broth either with sumach-juice or pomegranate-seed, or lemon-juice
or grape-juice, or the two last mixed, or vinegar and sugar as for zirbaj. Peel
sweet almonds, grind small, mix with water, and throw into the saucepan. Spray
with rose-water, and rub over the pan some sprigs of dry mint. If not made a la
zirbaj, omit mint. If made a la masus, fry lightly in sesame-oil after boiling,
adding celery and vinegar coloured with saffron: some garnish with poached eggs.
If made a la mamqur, after frying lightly throw on vinegar and murri mixed in
equal parts with alittle of the boiling-water. If made a la mutajjan, throw on a
little of the boiling-water and some old murri: when removed from the fire
squeeze on it fresh lemon-juice but first fry in sesame-oil until growned. If
made maqlu, fry in sesame-oil, throw on a little of the boiling-water and
garnish with poached eggs. If made a la isfidbaj, boil the chicken with mastic,
cinnamon and salt: then grind small sweet almonds, mix with water, and add,
together with a handful of chick-peas, peeled and soaked, and a ring of dill.
....

(Kind of) Zirbaj Chicken

1 whole chicken
1/2 cup gomegranate juice (the juice from 1 baseball sized fruit)
2/3 cup crushed almonds
1 cup water
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp dried coriander
salt
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
sesame oil
water
vinegar

Put chicken in large pot, cover with water, add salt (about 2 tsp) or not, cover
and boil until done (about 45 minutes). Remove and cool. Cut into pieces.

Heat sesame oil in pan until hot. Add chicken pieces and sprinkle with spices.
Fry on both sides to coat with oil and spices, about 5 minutes. Remove to plate.
Add to pan pomegranate juice, water and almonds and heat until gently boiling.
Add drained, rinsed chickpeas and cook until reduced and thickened. Sprinkle
with vinegar and salt to taste, and serve over chicken pieces.

NOTE: There's no cumin mentioned in the recipe but I like it in combination with
dried coriander. Salt is only mentioned once in the whole listing of recipes and
mastic is something I didn't have and couldn't find in this area. I didn't do
the finishing, the rosewater and mint, because there wasn't any of either where
I was cooking. The 1/2 cup of pomegranate juice was not enough to make it sour
so I'd increase the amount to a whole cup. The addition of vinegar and chickpeas
is not specified in zirbaj  but common enough in the other dishes.

This dish is very fragant even without the rosewater and mint. With more
pomegranate juice, it would have been more sweet and sour tasting, but had an
engaging enough flavor for the non-SCA roommate to eat it with gusto. Except for
the difficulty and expense of obtaining pomegranates, this dish would be easy
enough and tasty enough to use on a feast menu.

Cedrin