^{Take me directly to the how to video.}

The other day I decided to experiment with one of the most flavourful dishes I’ve ever had, Fesenjan. This dish is a Persian dish and thanks to my beautiful grandmother, amehs and the lovely Persian restaurants up and down Yonge Street in Toronto, I’ve had my fair share of it. It’s so good we served it as a dish at our wedding. So so good, that my cousin of Irish decent served it at HER wedding which was far away from a distinct Persian sect.

Fesenjun is built around 3 main ingredients; walnuts, pomegranate and chicken. You could leave the chicken out or sub if you wanted to keep it vegetarian because the walnut and pomegranate are the stars of the show.

The snafu here is that Persian food is notoriously complex to make. Well, maybe not so complex at it is labourious and takes time. Time that I don’t often have between the job, the kiddos, building a house, writing this blog, watching “Too Hot to Handle”, cleaning the house yada yada. So I decided to take my own crack at this dish in my own way.

Cooking without a recipe or roadmap is my preferred way to cook and this is a perfect example of why it is beneficial above all else to trust your instincts and your senses to guide you in the kitchen. I wanted to be able to make this dish with frequency without having to put the hours behind it – that was my motivation. The payoff? Watch the video below to see just how easy, simple and brilliantly delicious it was to actually recreate this dish.

Fesenjun for life! See below for video, and under the video for the step by step “instructions”.

simple persian Fesenjun

“Instructions”

Grind up 3 – 4 solid handfuls of walnuts in food processor. Add in a touch of cold water and blitz again. Add cold water a wee bit at a time until its pasty.

Chop up 1 or 2 onions and chuck them in a deep pot or skillet in olive oil on low/medium.

Once the onions have cooked off a bit put the chicken in and brown all sides up.

Put in that walnut mix on top of the chicken and add in a few pinches of salt.

Now we’re adding in the pomegranate. Do it bit by bit. Smell and look to reaffirm how much to add. You want the chicken to be in a medium to high bath of liquid.

Let this all come together at a simmer for about 30 minutes with the lid on.

Check your dish with sight, smell and taste. It should already be delicious. Is it? If you can’t taste the pomegranate go ahead and add more. More salt? Go for it!

Serve this beauty over rice and enjoy!