It's no wonder fesenjan -- a Persian sauce for meat made of walnuts and pomegranates -- is among the most popular entrees Michael Mir serves to diners at his Orchard Market cafe: In Persian tradition, it promotes both love and health.
"Fesenjan is a very ancient dish," says Mr. Mir, who is owner and principal chef at the market/cafe tucked away on a side street in Towson. (It's pronounced FESS-in-juhn.) In the north of Iran, where there is a lot of rainfall, walnuts and pomegranates grow in profusion. "The people there are considered to be very healthy," Mr. Mir says, "because their cheeks always glow."
Walnuts and pomegranates are healthful things to eat, Mr. Mir says. Walnuts, even though they have oil, provide "a lot of energy." And pomegranates are believed to purify the lymph system and promote well-being.
Pomegranates, with their rich crimson color and interior full of plump, juicy, bright-red kernels, have a special role in Persian poetry and Persian folklore, Mr. Mir says; the lips of a beautiful woman are said to be "as red as the pomegranate." Babies and young girls are said to be "as beautiful as the pomegranate kernel."
Four main ingredients
As Mr. Mir describes it, fesenjan has just four main ingredients: Pureed or ground walnuts sauteed in a little bit of shaved onions, pomegranate paste, water or chicken stock; and sugar. It is seasoned with tomato paste, lemon juice and cinnamon, and served, elegantly, over poached chicken with basmati rice.
The preparation begins with grinding the walnuts. Mr. Mir uses a huge electric grinder -- he also grinds his own beef for cutlet and kebabs -- but home cooks can use a food processor. (The ground walnuts have a tendency to clump; you can use a spatula to break up the lumps between bursts of processing.) He recruits Naheed Vaszpour, his assistant in the kitchen, to hold the bowl while he pushes the walnuts into the grinder.
"If you want your fesenjan very creamy and very smooth, I recommend that you grind it at least three or four times," he says. "If you want to be able to feel a little bit of roughness in the sauce, twice. . . . We like to have our fesenjan not extremely smooth and silky, so we have only ground it twice.
Dish you should stay with
"Now we're going to get a semi-big pot, and get a couple of onions -- we sliver the onions, so they're small enough to melt away. You wouldn't want to see sliced onions in your sauce. So we have slivered onions, very fine, almost watery. . . . we're going to add just about half a cup oil -- we make sure we take out any big pieces of onions that there might be . . . and it's sauteed until it's golden brown. When it's nice and golden
brown, then we go ahead and pour our walnuts in.
"This is one dish you should definitely stay with; you cannot leave it or it would tend to burn. It becomes dry right away, but eventually you'll see moisture. At this point you shouldn't be scared it's burning . . . when it warms up to a certain point, its own oil will saute it."
The next step is adding the liquid; at the restaurant, Mr. Mir makes the sauce with water, but home cooks sometimes use chicken broth (homemade only; the canned and granulated types have too much salt for it).
A beautiful aroma
The walnut-onion and water mixture has come to a boil now. "See, it's becoming very foamy and very creamy." In goes a bottle of pomegranate paste. "It's becoming darker now . . . now you add cinnamon -- just to give it a beautiful aroma -- and we
think it makes the flavor very pleasant as well . . . and we just let it boil away until it's the perfect consistency."
The sauce should be nice and thick, but pourable, not gloppy.
"But one thing is that we need to stir it now and then," Mr. Mir says. The heavier ingredients tend to "go to the bottom," he says. "It will create a very thin crust and if you ignore it, that small crust will lose all moisture and burn. And if it burns, the aroma will ruin the whole thing.
"Now, what we do here, because this is our recipe -- this is our secret, I would say -- is to add a good spoonful of tomato paste." Walnuts have a rich, heavy taste, he explains, and the hint of tomato lightens the dish and gives a nice consistency.
Mrs. Vaszpour thinks the sauce is still a little too thick, so she adds more water.
"We're going to be cooking this for a long time, so whenever it becomes too thick, we just add water," Mr. Mir explains.
A fine balance
When the fesenjan gets to the right consistency it is time to add the sugar.
You add "a lot of sugar," he says. "Until it becomes not sour anymore. There's a fine balance between sweetness and sourness that you have to achieve."
The sweetness can be balanced with lemon juice, he says, but you have to taste the sauce to get the correct seasoning. It should have an underlying sweetness, but also a tart fruitiness. At this stage, it will still be "raw" -- the flavors will not have mingled completely -- but there should still be a balance between the sweet and the tart flavors. When it's seasoned to your liking, turn down the heat to medium and cover the pot and let it simmer away.
Mr. Mir, who was born in Tehran, came to the United States in 1973. He studied architecture, and got his degree in 1983.
Baltimore seemed right
"But during my schooling, and during my residence in the United States, I always worked in restaurants and hotels. And before I knew it, I was a lot more interested in food and cooking and restaurants and hotels. I became a hotel manager for a while, and I was managing hotel restaurants in D.C. -- but one of my private dreams was always to have my own. And eventually, in 1988, I opened this place."
Why did he choose Baltimore? "It was coincidence, actually. It was my older brother and some friends who told me there was a location here, and one night I came over and saw it, and it seemed right."
He has always been a student of cooking. When he eats out -- which he has always done frequently -- he pays "extreme attention" to the food. "In my mind I always analyze it: How was this food cooked, how was it prepared, and when I got home home I always tried it once or twice. And if it didn't turn out the first time, the second time was always very close to it. And before you know it, I had all these different recipes lined up. And my friends were telling me, you're a wonderful cook, why don't you open your own restaurant?"
Preparing the rice
Mrs. Vaszpour interrupts to ask Mr. Mir to hand her the pitcher of salt. She has begun preparing the chelo, or saffron-accented rice, that is a necessary accompaniment to the fesenjan. First she rinsed the rice under lukewarm water, very gently, stirring it with her fingers, being careful not to break the kernels. Then she drained it and put it in a large container, and covered it with about an inch of fresh water.
"What she did immediately is pour salt on it -- at least a cup of salt." Mr. Mir explains that the amount of salt is not cause for concern, because it will all be rinsed off later. But it has to be added now because it prevents the rice kernels from breaking apart. "If you don't do this, you will get mushy rice," he warns.
The rice sits in the salty water for a while -- at least 15 minutes and up to an hour, depending on how much time you have -- becoming moist, and elongating slightly. Then it's ready for the pot of boiling water: "A very nice big pot, half full of water," Mr. Mir says. "When you pour all this rice in there, it should be able to dance around and bubble." If the space is too confined, the kernels will collide and break.
The salty water is poured off, and the rice goes into the boiling water. (The water in the pot has a tablespoon of salt in it, he says, but again, the salt will be rinsed off.) "We'll shut the lid in order for the pressure to build up and for it to come to a fast boil," he says.
"When all the kernels are dancing and the rice is bubbling," you're at a very important stage. The rice must be removed from the boiling water at just the right point, before it gets too mushy, but not while it's still hard. It's something you have to learn by experience, he says. He compares it to cooking pasta: not too soft, not too hard and "chalky." It usually takes just a few minutes, so you have to watch it closely.
Rice gets a shower
When it reaches the perfect texture, remove it from the stove, take it to the sink and pour everything into a huge colander. The rice, now 50 percent done, should be long and unbroken.
Then the rice is rinsed with lukewarm water. "Now what you have is a colander full of wet rice."
Back on the stove, the bottom of a large, non-stick pot is oiled with vegetable oil or butter, then the rice is gently added. Then the rice gets a "shower." Mr. Mir mixes equal amounts of oil and water, then sprinkles it over the rice through a large perforated spoon. Turn the temperature down to low. "Take the lid of the pot and wrap it in a clean towel or a whole lot of napkins and you put this lid right on top of it." He explains that as the moisture cooks out of the rice, it creates a cloud of steam that rises in the top. If it touched a bare metal lid, it would condense, and fall back on the rice like rain. Wrapping the lid allows the steam to circulate, but traps the drops that would otherwise make the rice too wet and mushy.
An aura of romance
The fesenjan has been cooking for some time now; the oil from the walnuts has begun to bubble around the edges. The dish is telling you it is done, Mr. Mir says. In the past, the oil was considered a delicacy, but he says that in these health-conscious days, no one wants the oil. It can be scooped off with a spoon, or absorbed with paper towels.
The oil has one saving grace: Fesenjan freezes nicely, he says.
Now the fesenjan is ready to serve. It has turned a beautiful reddish brown, and the texture is smooth and creamy. The flavor is not like anything else, a mixture of sweet and tart, fruit and nut, and that hint of cinnamon.
The exotic flavors and the aura of romance that surrounds them make fesenjan a special food indeed. Mr. Mir smiles as he tries to explain its appeal: "It's a little bit of a seductive dish, a lustful dish. . . . I almost consider it an aphrodisiac."
Orchard Market deli and cafe is located at 8815 Orchard Tree Lane. It is open Tuesday through Saturday for lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. On Sunday there is a buffet from 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. It is open for dinner Sunday through Thursday from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. and on Friday and Saturday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. It is closed on Monday. Besides the cafe, there is a selection of Middle Eastern and other items, including basmati rice and pomegranate syrup, used in Persian cooking.
This is one of an occasional series of visits to the kitchens of some of the area's fine chefs, where they will tell us how to prepare one of their signature dishes.