[Sca-cooks] Pomegranate chicken in hiding

[Stefan li Rous]

Gwen Cat asked:
> I know at some point in the last few weeks there was Much discussion of
> ARab/Middle Eastern dishes/Mastic.  I think I recall a chicken in a
> pomegranate glaze or sauce, (perhaps posted by Anahita?) along with a full
> menu of related dishes.

Well, there are quite a number of pomegranate chicken recipes in this
file in the Florilegium:
chicken-msg      (155K) 11/21/01    Period and SCA chicken recipes.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-MEATS/chicken-msg.html

I have pasted one of them below and a referance to another.

--
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
   Mark S. Harris            Austin, Texas          stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****

> Date: Sat, 2 Aug 1997 11:08:29 -0700 (PDT)
> From: rousseau at scn.org (Anne-Marie Rousseau)
> Subject: SC - pomegranite chicken!
>
> Hi all from Anne-Marie.
> Wow! No less than seven requests for this recipe! OK, here it is. I got
> the primary sources from Cariadoc's collection of medieval and
> Renaissance cookbooks. The reconstructions are mine.
>
> from _An Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook of the Thirteeth Century_,
> translated by Charles Perr.
>
> Another Tabahajiyya (A37)
> Cut the meat up small and fry with oil and salt, and when it is brown,
> cooki ti until done with vinegar. Pound a handful of almonds or walnuts
> and thrown them on and boil a while. Take pomegranate juice and dissolve
> in it a lump of sugar to get ride of its tartness, and sprinkle with
> cinnamon.
>
> Anne-Marie's Pomegranite chicken:
> 3 chicken breasts, hacked to gobbets
> 1-2 T olive oil
> 1/2 tsp salt
>
> Salt the chicken chunks, and sautee in a hot skillet with the oil until
> almost done and just starting to brown. Meanwhile, make the sauce:
> 1/4 cup water
> 1/2 tsp cinnamon
> 1 T sugar
> 1/4 cup pomegranite syrup (from middle eastern grocers. If you can't find
> the syrup, you can use the juice, but boil it for a lot longer, and omit
> the water).
> Boil these together in a small sauce pan to blend and dissolve the sugar.
>
> When the chicken is almost done, throw on 1/4 cup white wine vinegar
> (cider vinegar works too), the boiled sauce, and 3 T of pounded almonds.
> Continue to simmer until the chicken has absorbed most of the liquid.
> Serve on a bed of cous cous.

> Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 08:06:55 -0700
> From: Anne-Marie Rousseau <acrouss at gte.net>
> Subject: Re: SC - request for info
>
> hi all from Anne-Marie
> Rhiannon asks:
> >A short while ago I posted asking if the recipe for pomegranate chicken I
> >had found on this list was a redaction or an original recipe.  I know how
> >things can get lost in the shuffle of a busy list, so I'll ask once again if
> >anyone knows, and if it is a redaction, what the original source is.  I am
> >trying to separate the info I save from this list into interesting but OOP,
> >and period, documentable stuff.
>
> There are two versions of pomegranite chicken I know of. One is from a middle
> eastern source, the other is Italian (Libro della cocina. Translation and a
> modern version in Barbara Santiches _Original Mediterranean Cuisine_). The
> version I've reconstructed (which I believe is the one you have?) is the middle
> eastern. The only place I really cheated is by mixing a sauce of the
> ingredients instead of doing them in the specified order. No particular reason
> other than to meld the flavors better, and it doesn’t actually say WHEN you're
> supposed to add the pomegranite juice. Since I could find the pomegranite
> molasses instead of pomegranite jucie, I omitted the additional sugar (the
> molasses being plenty sweet) and added a bit of water (since the molasses was
> so darn thick). The italian version has you combine the sauce ingredients,
> except the spice which you add towards the end.
>
> enjoy! all rights reserved, no publication without permission, etc etc etc.
>
> Oh, and we've found lately that we've needed to add about twice the sugar. I
> wonder if the molasses has changed?
>
> - --AM