Passport & Plate - Fahim's Fesenjan

carrie1la — Sat, 7 Mar 2015 09:31:36 GMT

Ingredients
For the fesenjan:

5-6 skinless chicken thighs
1 lemon
2 onions, finely chopped or sliced
2 cups walnuts, finely chopped or crushed with mortar
2 tbsps tomato paste
2 cups water or stock
1 cup pomegranate syrup (or, if making yourself, 2 pomegranates, 2 tbsps sugar, ½ squeezed lemon)
salt & pepper
1 tbsp sugar
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp cardamom
butter

For the rice (tahdig):

1-2 cups rice (depending on amount of people eating)
1 cup Greek/Turkish yoghurt
pinch of saffron
salt
olive oil

How to prepare this recipe
If making the pomegranate syrup yourself:
Place the seeds of two pomegranates in a blender, add a little water and blend. Pour the liquid through a fine strainer to get rid of the seeds.
Boil liquid with sugar and squeezed lemon and turn down heat, allowing it to simmer until the mixture has reduced and has the consistency of syrup.

For the fesenjan:

Marinate the chicken with lemon, salt, and pepper for a few hours. Fry until lightly browned. Set aside.
Melt butter in a large pan and caramelise onions with sugar. Tip: Add a little cinnamon and cardamom.
Add tomato paste and the crushed walnuts, frying them for a few minutes without allowing them to burn.
Add pomegranate syrup and water/stock and cook sauce on low heat for 10 min, then arrange chicken in sauce and cook for 20-30 min.

For the rice (tahdig):
Rinse the rice with cold water.
Boil rice with salted water until it is half-cooked, about 10 min.
Mix yoghurt, salt and saffron with rice.
Coat the bottom of a large pot with oil, place rice inside and pat down so that it covers the entire bottom of the pot. Poke holes into rice with back of a spoon to allow steam to escape.
Cover lid with a towel and place on top of pot. Cook for about 30 min until the bottom of the rice is crispy (this is called tahdig).
When serving, first take out the fluffy part of the rice and then the crispy tahdig, placing it on top of the rice, and finally covering it with fesenjan.

The story behind this recipe
"Just try, go to the population directorate. You never know what you might find," the hotel receptionist in Konya told me. I am grateful that he did. With only my grandfather's name and birthdate, my friends and I found the government building. Twenty minutes and several enthusiastic officials later, I held in my hand a list with his five siblings' names and the address of the house he built. What happened next felt magically surreal: driving down a dusty road in the Turkish countryside, pulling up next to a seemingly deserted yellow house lined with fig trees, an old, wrinkled man coming out, looking surprised. "You're Carolynn."
The trip was actually never about discovering my roots. I was craving time to think and eat well. In Antalya my best friend Hannah joined with her friend Fahim, whom she had picked up in Iran. I immediately took Fahim into my heart: he is a true scavenger who can always find something edible in his surroundings.
The old man, my great uncle, invited my cousin and we spent the day lazily drinking tea and exchanging life stories at the yellow house. Tales abounded of how my cousin used to chase my mom around the yard under the blazing sun. They had heard all about me and seen me in my grandfather's pictures. Suddenly, I had a family in Turkey. That night, Fahim taught me how to cook fesenjan so we could thank them for their hospitality. An Iranian dish was not hard to cook in Turkey; both countries' cuisines use similar ingredients. With the house smelling of sweet pomegranates and walnut shells lying all over the table, my relatives devoured the dish, which we prepared amidst laughter and conversations in the same rustic kitchen my grandfather once prepared his coffee in every morning.
The story does not end happily. A few months later I lost my wallet, and with it the scrap of paper holding my relatives' contact information. Perhaps when my Turkish improves I can repeat my journey, but until then I will have Fahim's fesenjan as a reminder.

Passport & Plate - Weird Character Noodles

carrie1la — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 07:29:00 GMT

Ingredients
Noodles:
2 1/2 cups plain flour
1 egg
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup room temp water
sesame oil

Meat:
cooking oil
300g diced beef
1-2 cloves minced garlic
thumb-size piece fresh minced ginger
2 tsps Chinese five-spice powder
2 star anise
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp black vinegar
1 tsp chicken or beef stock powder
water

Toppings:
2 to 3 pak choy
handful of sliced carrots
1 tbsp sliced spring onions
a few sprigs of coriander
2 tsp dried chili flakes
1/2 tsp ground Sichuan peppercorns
1/2 tsp five-spice powder
1/8 tsp ground cumin

How to prepare this recipe
1. Mix the flour, salt, egg and water in a medium-sized mixing bowl and knead until smooth. Cover and set aside for 15 min.

2. Heat up a pan, add oil and throw in the minced garlic and ginger. Then add the diced beef and fry until brown on all sides. Next, add spices and sauces and pour in water until the beef is barely covered. Put lid on and let cook until you're finished making the noodles, about 30 minutes. If the liquid evaporates you can add slightly more water, you want the meat to have a nice sauce.

3. Uncover dough and cut it into 6-7 pieces. Place in a bowl and lather with sesame oil. Take one piece out at a time and work the sesame oil into the dough. If necessary, dip the pieces into the sesame oil again, you want it to have a squishy texture that allows you to pull the dough apart a little without it breaking. This is what will allow you to later pull it and make noodles.

4. Now comes the hard part, once your piece is moist enough, roll it out a little with a rolling pin, then take one end into each of your hands and shake the piece up and down pulling your arms wider as you go. Try slapping it on the board as you shake it to thin it out, but don't let it break. If it does, try rolling it up again and adding more sesame oil, it may have been too dry. Once you manage to stretch it to a decent length, lay it out on a flat surface and go over it once more with a rolling pin to make each piece equally thin.

5. Boil a big pot of water and throw the noodles in. Be careful carrying them to the pot as this is when they like to break.

6. After about 4-5 min, take noodles out with a sieve ladle and put into bowls. Use remaining boiling water to boil the carrots and pak choy. Drain and put vegetables on top of the noodles.

7. Take your braised beef off the stove, pour it on your noodles with the sauce, and add the rest of the toppings. If you like it more saucy, feel free to add more soy sauce and/or vinegar. I also like to add chili flakes.

8. Enjoy!

The story behind this recipe
“Go to the restaurant at the end of the street and order the dish with the most complicated Chinese character on the menu, you'll know which one it is when you see it,” my friend in Beijing told me when I first moved there. Without knowing what this mysterious dish was, I pointed at the most difficult character I had ever seen, and minutes later was served a bowl of steaming hand-pulled noodles, covered in a variety of condiments and spices, and was reminded of why I had fallen in love with a country so far away and decided to study such a hard language. Chinese food started it all. I don't mean the greasy stuff you get from your local take-out. There was a reason, after all, that Marco Polo came back to Italy loaded with culinary treasures, he must have been convinced, as am I, that China's cuisine had the most diversity, detail and flavour of any in the world.
What's amazing about biang biang noodles is that the person eating can be just as creative as the chef. When you order them in Shaanxi, their province of origin, you are served a bowl of just the wide, flat noodles along with some meat and steamed vegetables, and the table is covered with a variety of toppings that give it flavour: walnut paste, chili oil, vinegar, coriander, and more. It was originally known as a poor man's dish, but has recently become trendy across China, especially due to its intriguing name. The 57-stroke character biang does not appear in any Chinese dictionary, and most people in China have no clue how to pronounce it. My friends and I still call it weird character noodles. Some say it was called biang because it sounds like the noodles being pulled and slapped against the table, but others say an ancient Chinese emperor decided to give a unique name to his favorite dish. No one really knows the truth, but what I know is that when I make this dish in my kitchen, it brings me back to the smells and tastes of my favorite country in the world and the adventures I had while living there.

Food is Love

Passport & Plate - Fahim's Fesenjan

Passport & Plate - Weird Character Noodles