Skip to main content

Emperor Shah Jahan's chicken dinner with naan

Emperor Shah Jahan's chicken dinner with naan (bread)
Mughal feasts #5 on 30 October 2011

For the Mughal feast #5 cooked 2 recipes on Sunday afternoon on the 30 October 2011 for Emperor Shah Jahan from Shah Jahan's section in the S. Husain "Emperor's Table". The two recipes were
1. Chicken Royal or "Murgh-e-Taaus" and
2. Almond Pistachio Bread or "Nana-e-Nemat"

This was a delicious, nutty, and sweet combination of dishes, both using almonds, pistachios, saffron, ghee, and yogurt. The bread complimented the saucy chicken curry.  Neither of them used the more common curry spices of cumin, coriander, or cayenne pepper, but the chicken included some cinnamon, cloves, white or black pepper, and turmeric. These get an overall rating of B+, with the chicken rating an A- and the bread a B-. The chicken was very rich and filling in its white yogurt marinade and sauce, added to which were several small amounts of pastes from poppies, almonds, and sunflower seeds, enriched by some cream, sprinkled with mace, green cardamom power and saffron, and garnished with nuts - pistachios, pine nuts, and walnuts. Not to be outdone by the chicken, the naan was garnished with almond power, pistachio slivers, chopped raisins, and saffron dissolved in rose water. It is perhaps these garnishes that made these recipes distinct for the Shah Jahan's dinner.  Deej's one remark - cardamom flavor dominated the chicken too much.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Lunar Eclipse, 20th February 2008, from Druid backyard. Click on image to see a gif animation.
Babur's supper - Mughal feasts, food, cuisine I'm interested in Indian food, especially food from historic times, like the Mughal's. So, I'm going to experiment and cook some of the recipes from Salma Husain's The Emperor's Table (2008. ISBN: 8174364536) . We start with two recipes from the time of Emperor Babur (1494-1530), Karam Dulma or Stuffed Cabbage Rolls and Kyulcha or Spicy Wholewheat Baked Bread . I cooked these last night, Saturday the 5th of Februray 2011. I write a narrative of the details of making these below. Overall? Very interesting tastes. I'd give the Karam Dulma an A- rating, while the bread or Kyulcha gets a B- or even C- rating. Very heavy food. I should have been content to eat just one of the Cabbage Rolls, but they were so, so good, rich, flavorful, juicy. And the bread turned out more like a stiff, spicy pie crust - don't know what's going on with that, but I have some suggestions (below). (See Picasa photo album
This morning Deej's friend's guys came and cut up one downed rotted maple, and then fell a second rotted one, sawed it up, and took it all away in two hauls in about 2 hours - fast work, and pretty cheaply - boy, am I glad to have that over. We've continued to have high winds all day long, but no further big trees knocked over. Here's how the back yard looked, the day after the high winds on the 26th December 2007: And here's a composite photo from today: Here's a little 31 second video of cutting down the dead tree: also at Google Video