Chicken Simmered in Pomegranate Sauce

A tomato-free dish popular in the southern region of Iraq, especially in Najaf and Karbala. Cooking with sour pomegranate juice and thickening sauces with walnuts is not new to the region. The medieval Arabic cookbooks abounded with stew and sauce recipes in which countless sour agents were balanced with sweet substances. Similar dishes soured by adding rumman (pomegranate) were simply called rummaniyyat, and sometimes narbajat, to give the dish an exotic Persian touch,