Persia and the Caucasus · Volume 10, Rice, Reduction and the Country Beyond the Kebab House
Shirin ghatogh
Gilan, the east of the province
Illustration
- Time
- 1 hour 25
- Researched
- Researched from 49 sources in the brief
Shirin ghatogh, sweet khoresh in Gilaki, is chicken cooked with dried apricots, stewing plums, black plums and raisins until there is little sauce left, eaten with rice. Gilan's heritage directorate glosses it as khoresh-e alu qeysi, plum and apricot khoresh, and registered the skill of making it in January 2024. Mehr News wrote in 2016 that in the east of the province it is usually made as nazri, a votive offering, on Tasua and Ashura, and given out with rice.
Mehr names the ingredients and gives no quantities, and every quantified recipe found traces to one aggregator. The same recipes say it was first cooked in a gamaj, the Gilani clay pot; that is theirs alone.
As tradition built it
About 1 hour 25. A Tasua and Ashura nazri in eastern Gilan, given as the tradition tells it.
Ingredients
The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.
- chicken
- dried apricots
- stewing plums
- black plums
- raisins
- water
- rice, to serve
Method
- Cook the chicken in a little water.
- Add the dried apricots, the stewing plums and the black plums, and cook until the chicken is done and the sauce is short.
- Add the raisins at the end, and serve it with rice.
What a modern chef changes
The fruit plumped and fried, the sauce taken to a gloss
Rung 5
Method
- Brown the chicken and fry an onion to deep gold in the fat first, so the sweetness of the fruit has something savoury to sit on.
- Soak the dried fruit in warm water, then fry it briefly before it goes in, so it holds its shape and its skin catches.
- Reduce until the sauce clings and shines. Rung 5: a short sauce is the point of a ghatogh, and it should coat the chicken, not pool round it.
- Balance the sweetness at the end with a few drops of sour, sour orange or verjuice, tasted against the plums you used.