I had guests coming and wanted to show off something new but I wanted comfort food.  It had been an awful week for all of us.  This dish hit all the comfort spots, meaty, fatty, carby, sweet and salty.  There isn’t anything this dish can’t help with when you’re needing comfort.

Morassa Palav

Chicken with Rice, Fruit and Nuts

Translation:

This dish is also called Molamma’ Palav. Its method of preparation is that chicken meat is cut into small pieces, and after skimming, once it is cooked, rice is added.  When the rice is half cooked, golden raisins, pistachio nuts, almonds, dates, figs, chestnuts, barberries, and a large amount of chickpeas are added and mixed, and fire is prepared as in other dishes and it is steamd. Each of the above mentioned ingredients is added at different stages; for example, dates are added after the rice drained in order to prevent them from becoming mushy. (Ghanoonparvar, pg. 27)

Ingredients:

1.5 lbs. cut up chicken

2 C. Jasmine rice

1 C. ea. Almonds, Pistachio, Barberries

2 C. Raisons, Figs, Dates, Chestnuts, Chickpeas

1 C. Chicken Stock

1 C. Butter

Salt to taste

Optional:

1⁄2 large onion

3 cloves minced garlic

Pinch saffron

1 tsp ground cloves

Redaction:

Gather everything together. Here I  make a substitution of golden raisins for currents. Usually it’s the other way around but not today.

Yes, those are fresh figs.  It’s fig season here and I had a bunch on hand.  So if you need a recipe for fresh figs, here ya go!

Add the chicken and rice together and cook. Here I added the chicken stock and butter instead of water.

Yes, you can use water, I wanted more flavor hence the addition.

Half way through cooking I added the nuts and chickpeas.

With 10 minutes left, I added all the chopped fruit and chestnuts.

Serve – One bowl is all I could eat.  This rich and satisfying as only a good chicken and rice dish can be.  

For the optional: Add the chopped onions with the chicken, rice and stock with the garlic.  Add the saffron and ground cloves when you stir in the nuts.