I’ve made several variations of this recipe from Encarnacion Pinedo’s 1898 cookbook, El Cocinero Espanol. This time, I wanted a thicker incarnation of the dish than I ended up with in my previous attempts.
In the original Spanish, the recipe, titled “Salsa de Almendras para Gallinas,” is just 24 words long (42 in translation). It is a bare-bones list of ingredients with no guidance at all about quantities and proportions. Here’s the translation of the original recipe that I reprinted in Vintage California Cuisine in a chapter about Pinedo and her book:
Almond Sauce for Hens
Put the stock used for cooking the hen in a saucepan. Add sliced tomatoes, garlic, slices of peeled and cored pineapple, chorizo sausage, a tablespoon of vinegar, raisins, almonds, small pickled chile peppers [chilitos], salt, pepper and the de-boned pieces of hen.
Source: El Cocinero Español (1898)
The first time I made the recipe, I started with several cups of chicken broth, the yield from poaching a small fryer. The recipe seems to suggest doing that, and hence, using a fair amount of stock. But the end result was a soup, not a “sauce,” and the almonds were lost in all that broth. I must say, it was a very delicious chicken-tomato-pineapple soup. But it wasn’t anything like an “almond sauce,” which is what I was determined to end up with this time. My benchmark this time was my favorite Iranian dish, a similar, fruity nut sauce for chicken called fesenjan, made with ground walnuts instead of almonds and pomegranate syrup instead of pineapple and tomato.
I looked up some fesenjan recipes to get an idea of an appropriate ratio of (solid) nut meal to (liquid) fruit and stock. Most fesenjan recipes have about a 1:1 ratio of walnut to liquid (a mixture of chicken stock and pomegranate syrup). Since the fruit components of Pineda’s almond sauce, particularly the pineapple, are considerably more solid than the liquid components of fesenjan, I guessed that a 2:5 ratio of nut meal to pineapple-tomato-stock might be about right for this dish.
The following recipe is what I came up with. Since the chicken in real Iranian fesenjan is always chicken breast, I used boneless breast this time, instead of the deboned meat of a whole fryer that I used last time I experimented with Pinedo’s recipe. I had extra chicken stock and ground almond on hand to adjust the thickness as the stew cooked, if necessary. In fact, the proportions I used on my first attempt, as shown below, worked out just right. What I came up with I will call…
Old California Almond-Pineapple ‘Fesenjan’
1 pound boneless skinless chicken breast
2 cups diced pineapple
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2 cups toasted ground almond
1 cup chicken stock
½ cup chopped raisins
6 oz. chorizo sausage, crumbled
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbs vinegar
Several pickled hot chili peppers (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste1. Puree in a blender or food processor one cup each of the pineapple and tomato, with a little water or chicken stock to thin if needed.
2. Lightly toast the ground almonds in the bottom of a heavy sauce pan for several minutes, stirring and shaking constantly to prevent burning. Add chicken stock, pureed pineapple and tomato, crumbled chorizo, garlic, vinegar, chilis (optional) and chopped raisins. Stir and bring to a simmer over low heat.
2. Stir in the remaining one cup each of diced pineapple and tomatoes, and the chicken breast, cut into pieces.
3. Continue cooking on low heat for 15 or 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, adding salt and pepper to taste. If the stew gets too thick while cooking, stir in small amounts of chicken stock, as needed.
