What do Granada, hand grenade and grenadine have in common? A red fruit with a hard skin and deliciously tart seeds. The pomegranate is completely hip, the juice is extremely healthy and the seeds work so well in an Ottolenghi salad.
The pomegranate tree in the hotel garden at Alonnisos in the Greek Sporades offered a daily treat. Every time we walked by we looked to see if we could find a ripe fruit. You could see how ripe they were by looking at the crown at the bottom: the wider the petals, the riper the fruit. Wonderfully fresh to eat out of hand.
But with instructions: you have to cut it open and knock out the seeds, for example with a wooden spoon. Just remove the white membranes, because they are bitter – that’s why the French do it too pomme d’amour because love is bitter and sweet. By the way, an apple ( pomme ) it is not, but a berry, albeit a large one with many seeds.
The flavors of the Middle East
We may have known the fruit from holidays in Greece or Turkey, but nowadays it can also be found on our supermarket shelves. Pomegranate seeds have become quite popular in our kitchen in recent years. Thanks to Yotam Ottolenghi and associates, who brought the flavors of the Middle East – and beyond, Central Asia – to our table. There they sprinkle the fresh seeds over salads and pasta such as hummus or tahina.
In salads they go perfectly with cucumber, avocados or beets, with spinach or walnuts – or a combination of the two. As fresh and sour elements, they are ideal components in stews and with lamb and poultry. We often make a salad with quinoa, feta, coriander and pomegranate seeds. Or we squeeze a smoothie with it.
The Latin name for the pomegranate tree, a small tree that can grow to about 6 meters in height, is Punica granatum . That name refers to the Phoenicians (or Punicians), the seafaring people that originated in the first millennium BC. on the coasts of Lebanon. For the Phoenicians, the fruit was a sacred fruit, a symbol of fertility. But it was not an average fruit in other classical cultures either: Egyptians associated it with life force and rebirth. That is why Pharaoh Tutankhamun received the fruit in his tomb. And in Buddhism it is one of the three blessed fruits.
And blessed is the fruit. The pomegranate contains a lot of fiber and vitamins B6, B11, C and K. The fruit also contains a lot of copper, which is important for the formation of our bones and connective tissue in our body. And the apple is also full of antioxidants, good for lowering blood pressure and reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Duck or chicken with walnuts and pomegranate molasses
Our distant ancestors already knew this, including the inhabitants of ancient Persia (modern Iran). That’s where the pomegranate comes from. You still see this in the rich dishes from Persian cuisine, such as fesenjan, a spicy dish of duck or chicken with walnuts and pomegranate molasses.
The pomegranate tree has spread considerably over the centuries. First to the east, towards India and China, then to the west, to the areas around the Mediterranean Sea. There are now large plantations in Turkey, and in Greece there is a species that is better equipped to withstand the cold and can even withstand freezing temperatures. There are also plantations in tropical Africa and recently we even saw an entire orchard of pomegranate trees in Peru.
The fruit is of course an interesting ingredient from a culinary point of view. The fleshy seeds or kernels are deliciously sweet and sour. The Iranian and Arabic varieties are often sweeter than the Indian ones, which contain more bitterness. The juice from the kernels varies in color from light pink to dark red and is sweet, but with a fresh and sharp edge.
The kernels can be squeezed into a juice. You can drink the sweeter varieties straight away, but the juice of the more sour and bitter varieties is often used in sauces for meat and fish. The Georgians in particular use the more sour variant. The boss sauce – based on ground walnuts and pomegranate – is a pretty hearty condiment that we once poured over our chicken. Had to have a strong glass of orange wine with it. They also have them in that region.
A dark, syrupy sweet and sour syrup
Much of the sap is also boiled down to make molasses, a dark, viscous sweet and sour syrup that has many culinary uses. For example, you can use it as a marinade for chicken, or in stews like the ones mentioned earlier fesenjan . The sweeter variant is an important ingredient for the muhammara , the originally Syrian dipping sauce made from walnuts and hot peppers. You can spread it on your (Turkish) bread or use it as a seasoning with meat and fish dishes.
Most of us will use the pomegranate seeds fresh. You can safely store a whole pomegranate in a cool place for a few weeks. Once you’ve deseeded it – a tough job – you can also freeze the seeds or squeezed juice for later use. You can also make the molasses yourself, but there are plenty of bottles for sale at various Arab, Turkish or Indian stores. A fine brand is Souq by Nadia Zerouali and Merijn Tol, the Dutch cookbook authors who are famous for their books about the cuisine of the Arab world.
Finally, you can also dry the kernels. They are used especially in Indian cuisine anardana used in curries and chutneys to give the dishes a bit of acidity. The dried berries look like red-black raisins, are a bit sticky but their skin is hard. The taste is fruity, somewhat sour and certainly spicy. In ground form, anardana powder is used as a garnish on rice dishes, apple sauce or potatoes. Try that powder – which you can also buy at various stores – on desserts such as chocolate pudding, waffles or ice cream dishes.
Back to the fruit. The second part of the Latin name, granatum comes from the word granum which means grain. Hence the linguistic switch to the hand grenade, which sprays the seeds – or shards – around after its explosion. Less violent, and a lot tastier, is the grenadine. A lemonade originally made from the juice of the pomegranate. Nowadays the word has been generalized into the name for all kinds of fruit juices. A kind of lemonade. So if you drink or make a tequila sunrise with grenadine, it’s the lemonade rather than the pomegranate juice.
Do we still have the name of the Spanish city of Granada? This could come from the Arabic word gar-anat, ‘city of the pilgrims’, after the description given to the settlement by the Moorish conquerors in this part of Spain in the eighth century. But it could also just come from the Latin garnatum. Finally, the city’s coat of arms depicts a pomegranate against a silver background. The Arabs may have taken the pomegranate tree with them. And it has really caught on in Spain: it is now one of the largest producers of pomegranates in the world.