Fesenjān is a dish that requires patience and an understanding of walnut chemistry — the tannins in raw walnuts are bitter, and they must be toasted and then slow-cooked into the pomegranate reduction until they mellow into something round and dark. Amanda Freitag, who built her name at Empire Diner in New York and has since taken her eye for American classics to Rise & Thyme in Dallas, knew the walnut problem before she walked in.
She toasted the walnuts until fragrant, ground them fine, and built the sauce by reducing pomegranate molasses by half before adding the walnut paste — concentrating the tartness first so it would balance the fat as it cooked in. The braise ran ninety minutes at a low simmer to let the walnut tannins fully integrate. Duck legs, not breast, for the collagen.
Bobby's fesenjān read as under-reduced, the judges said. Pomegranate molasses is already a reduction — to win with it, you have to reduce it again.
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