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

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...
Lunar Eclipse, 20th February 2008, from Druid backyard. Click on image to see a gif animation.

My review of the "Tiger in you" by Shiraz Mukherjee

[Here's a review I did in Goodreads for a book I just finished reading on the 8th of November 2016, which I enjoyed reading and recommend] Tiger In You by Shiraz Mukherjee My rating: 4 of 5 stars This sounded like a fantastic book to read - and it is on one level - Shiraz takes us on a very interesting and enchanting journey into the Sunderbans though the eyes of 5 Mumbai college friends. The characters and the events, who they are and what they encounter are well developed, with the interesting twist of looking for and trying to find, realize the Tiger in each one of us. I highly recommend it. The other fantastic, popular book on the Sunderbans, of course, is the well-written book by Amitav Ghosh - "The Hungry Tide." Ghosh is a better writer than Mukherjee, and had much better editors and proof-readers. I got irritated at some points - for eg on pages 220-221 - the amount of money collected for setting up an insurance fund for honey-bee collectors 'totale...