Mar 24, 2014 I recently bought a cookbook – The New Persian Kitchen, by Louisa Shafia, and it has me totally enamoured. I’ve read it cover-to-cover about three times. I haven’t cooked from it a ton yet, but I love Louisa’s style: fruit- and vegetable-centric recipes and inspired flavour combinations (mostly classic Iranian, plus many of her own twists). Think pomegranates, lime, fresh herbs by the bunch, yogurt, sumac, pistachios, saffron – really gorgeous flavours. This was the first recipe I tried, and I can’t believe I changed it (well, I can believe it actually). But my good friend Fariba is a wonderful Persian cook, and has made this (or a similar) stew for me with lamb. She always puts so much love into her food that I got the warm fuzzies when I thought about making it again in my own kitchen. Other than swapping the chicken out for lamb, though, I did follow Louisa’s recipe. The foundation for this stew is walnuts, providing a toasty-nutty backdrop, and a generous pour of tangy-sweet pomegranate molasses. The flavour is really interesting – quite tart indeed, but balanced by lots of onion and earthy beet. I like that there aren’t many ingredients – really simple to make, with impressive results. I served mine with fragrant saffron rice and a green salad. The only thing I’d do differently next time is double the recipe!
Ingredients
vegetable oil, for searing sea salt 2 lbs lamb leg or shoulder, cut in 1″ cubes (or skinless chicken legs, per original recipe) 2 yellow onions, finely diced 1 cup walnuts, coarsely ground 1/2 cup pomegranate molasses 2 cups chicken stock 1 cup peeled and grated beets
Preparation
