Spicy chicken tagine with apricots, rosemary and ginger

I love nothing better than pottering about the kitchen on Sunday afternoons cooking up a storm without having to keep one eye on the clock the entire time. Unfortunately, time wasn't on my side this Sunday night, but I was in luck, as this dish was ready in around half an hour--thanks to my trusty pressure cooker!

It's been a while since we've had Moroccan, and I really don't know why. This dish from Ghillie Basan's Tagines & Couscous: Delicious Recipes for Moroccan One-Pot Cooking ticks all the right boxes for me: sassy fresh ginger right in the fore; tart, fruity apricots taking up the rear; flavourful herbs and a slight chilli bite. It all adds up to a bold and lively dinner ready in almost no time.

This was the first Moroccan recipe I'd come across with rosemary as an ingredient, so I wondered if it was authentic. The jury is still out on that one--I've seen Moroccan sources say a very firm non to that, and others that say it is used in particular dishes. Perhaps it's a regional thing? One criticism I have of ethnic cuisine cookbooks written by by non-locals is that they often don't include the local-language name of the dish. Unfortunately, Tagines & Couscous falls into this category, so there is no way to check with other recipes for the same dish.

But that is a minor niggle, really. This tagine is truly superb and, authentic or otherwise, I will certainly not hold back with the rosemary next time! I used 1 tsp of freeze-dried rosemary, as I couldn't get fresh, but this dish could certainly stand up to more. I think 3 tsp would do the trick. I might also try grinding the ginger to a pulp with a Japanese oroshigane next time round for a different texture.

I've adjusted the original recipe for use in a pressure cooker. If using a tagine/tajine or regular pot, the the cooking time in the original recipe is 35-40 minutes, covered, at a gentle simmer.

Spicy chicken tagine with apricots, rosemary and ginger

2 tbsp olive oil plus a knob of butter
1 onion, finely chopped
3 tsp freeze-dried rosemary, 1 tsp chopped finely, the other 2 left whole
40 g fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped or grated
1/2 hot red chilli, deseeded and chopped finely (or to taste)
1-2 cinnamon sticks
4 chicken thighs
175 g whole dried apricots
1-2 tbsp honey
400 g tin plum tomatoes in juice
salt and freshly ground black pepper
leaves from a small bunch of fresh basil

Serves 4

1 Heat the oil and butter in a medium sized pressure cooker. Add the onion, chopped rosemary, ginger and chilli and saute until the onion begins to soften.

2 Stir in the remaining rosemary and the cinnamon sticks. Season the chicken thighs with salt and pepper and add to the pot. Brown on both sides. Throw in the apricots and honey, then stir in the plum tomatoes and their juice. (Add a little water if necessary to ensure there is enough liquid to cover the base of the pressure cooker and submerge the apricots.) Seal the pressure cooker and bring to pressure. Turn down heat and cook under low pressure for 5-7 min, or until the chicken is done.

3 Adjust the seasoning. Shred the larger basil leaves and leave the small ones whole. Sprinkle over the chicken and serve with flat bread or couscous.

Enjoy!

Djaj bil karmous wal joz: Moroccan tagine of chicken, figs and walnuts

Always luscious, well herbed and spiced, and often, though not here, featuring my beloved lemon, Moroccan food is an all-time favourite at the Saffron household. But even given all that, this dish is nothing short of alchemy.

It has just a handful of ingredients and only a smidgen of spice, and cooks up in just over 40 minutes. Oh, but the result!

With warm spices cinnamon and ginger, honey and caramelized figs, you might expect this braise to on the sweet side. Instead, it is deeply savoury and autumnal, especially with the added crunch of walnuts. Using little water, this would also be perfect to make in an actual tagine, if you are lucky enough to own one. (I am holding off on getting one, as the Saffron kitchen is already groaning under the weight of too much foodie paraphernalia.)

We had this with totally inauthentic rice for the sake of speed, but I'd love to do it again with a nice fruited and nutted couscous.

The original recipe is from Claudia Roden's Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon, which sometimes gets a bit overlooked in my collection, standing alongside Claudia's major works A New Book of Middle Eastern Food and The Book of Jewish Food.

Moroccan tagine of chicken, figs and walnuts

25 g butter
1 tbsp sunflower oil
2 large onions
1 tsp ground ginger
good pinch saffron threads
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 chicken, jointed
salt & black pepper
1-1 1/2 tbsp clear honey
50 g walnut halves
4-8 fresh figs, peeled, or washed, and cut in half (4 in case of black ones, 8 in case of little green ones)
Squeeze of 1 lemon
Castor sugar

1 Heat butter and oil in a large pan. Put in the onions, cover and let them soften slowly over a medium heat, stirring from time to time. When they begin to colour, stir in the ginger, saffron and cinnamon. Put in the chicken pieces, season with salt and pepper, and turn to brown them lightly all over.

2 Add 250 ml water and cook, covered, turning the chicken pieces over at least once. Lift out the breasts when they are done, after about 15-20 min, and put them on one side. Lift out the remaining chicken pieces about 25 min later, when the are very tender.

3 Let the onions reduce to a rich brown sauce. Stir in the honey and taste to make sure you have enough salt to balance the sweetness and enough pepper to mitigate it. Add walnuts.

4 Meanwhile, sprinkle fig halves with a little lemon juice and a little castor sugar, and put them under the grill for a few minutes to barely caramelize. Serve them as a garnish on top of the chicken pieces.

Enjoy!

Fruit and nut couscous with chicken

Moroccan inspired, rather than derived, this delightful recipe comes from an unexpected source. I bought Barbecue Bible for Saffron-Papa's birthday some years back after lusting over it for many months myself. I still find its mouth-watering photography and yummy-sounding recipes very enticing, but due to space restrictions at the Saffron household, am content to refer to Saffron-Papa's copy whenever in Australia.

Jam-packed with fruit and aromatic spices and bursting with the zing of lemons, this recipe makes a lovely dinner, whether cooked outdoors or in. The chicken is skewered in the original recipe, but you could just as easily grill or pan-fry it, as the mood takes you.

Fruit and nut couscous with chicken

Serves 8

1 kg skinless chicken breast fillets or leg
4 tbsp olive oil
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground paprika
4 tsp lemon juice

Couscous
8 tbsp olive oil
2 small onions, finely chopped
2 tsp each ground cumin, cinnamon, pepper and ginger
125 g dried dates, chopped
125 g dried apricots, finely chopped
125 blanched almonds, toasted and chopped
1.2 l vegetable stock
375 g couscous
2 tbsp lemon juice
4 tbsp chopped fresh coriander
salt & pepper

To garnish
seeds from half a pomegranate or a handful of dried cranberries
lemon wedges
fresh coriander sprigs

1 Cut the chicken into long thin strips, place them in a shallow dish and add the olive oil, garlic, spices and lemon juice. Stir well, then cover and leave to marinate for 2 hours.

2 To prepare the couscous, heat half of the oil in a saucepan and fry the onion, garlic ans spices for 5 minutes. Stir in the dried fruits and almonds and remove from the heat.
3 Meanwhile, pour the stock over the couscous, cover with a tea towel and leave for 8-10 min, until the grains are fluffed up and the liquid absorbed. Stir in the remaining oil and the fruit and nut mixture, add the lemon juice and coriander and season with salt and pepper to taste.

4 While the couscous is standing, cook the chicken for 4-5 minutes on each side over medium coals, until charred and cooked through. Serve with the couscous, garnished with pomegranate seeds or dried cranberries, lemon wedges and coriander sprigs.

Enjoy!

Slatit batata helwa: Claudia's Moroccan sweet potato salad

Sweet potatoes are a funny vegetable. They pop up in many countries, and each has its own way with them.

In Australia, sweet potatoes often get flung in the oven in a medley with other root veggies with the Sunday roast. If a spice is used at all, it's likely to be cumin, otherwise it's topped with lashings of butter.

One freezing winter when I was studying in China, old guys used to hang around the university gates selling for pennies piping hot roast sweet potatoes, which they weighed on old-time pan and rod scales . With dormitory heating on only at set times of the day, we unacclimatized Aussie students were as likely to use those hot pods as handwarmers as we were to tuck into their belly-filling flaky sweetness.

Around Yokohama and Tokyo, the sound of the yaki-imo or stone-roasted sweet potato guy calling out, "Ishi yaki-imo, yaki-imo," from his wood-fired stove-bedecked truck is the first sign of autumn. But buy one from this old guy, and you're likely to pay a small fortune!

Here we have a Moroccan treatment, with spices, lemon, honey and other goodies. This one is boiled, and with its unctuous spicy sweet and sour coating, looks and tastes quite impressive. I'm afraid that I disappointed my dear friend Hw when he asked how long this took to make; is twenty minutes really all it takes to get something this criminally good!

In all the years I've cooked this, I've not once not had to boil down the cooking liquid until it was syrupy. But that could just be the type of sweet potatoes I use. Anyway, this is more than made up for by spicy aroma that wafts through the house whenever I make this. You might want to wait to skim the scum off the surface before you add those spices, though.

This is also from the same article of Claudia's in the Guardian here. And yes, this and the tagine in the previous post are perfect partners.

Slatit batata helwa (Claudia's Moroccan sweet potato salad)

In this Moroccan salad, the mix of sweet and spicy is quite delicious. It is nice as it is but you may add, if you like, a handful of black olives, the chopped peel of a preserved lemon and a tablespoon of capers. Serve it as an appetiser.

Serves 6

700 g sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 4 cm cubes
½ tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp harissa or a good pinch chilli pepper
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tsps honey
salt
5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
4 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley or coriander

1 Boil the sweet potatoes in just enough water to cover. Stir in the ginger, cinnamon, harissa or ground chilli pepper, lemon juice, honey and salt, and cook, uncovered, for 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender, turning them over once and being careful not to let them overcook and fall apart. The sauce should be reduced to a thick syrupy consistency. If it is not, lift out the potatoes with a slotted spoon into a serving dish and reduce the sauce further by boiling.

2 Just before the end of cooking stir in the oil and the parsley or coriander. Serve cold.

Enjoy!

Claudia's Moroccan lamb tagine with peas and preserved lemons

Autumn is here and we've not had a lemon recipe for a while! Funny how one's thoughts turn to lemons as soon as the skies get moody...

This is one of the very first Middle Eastern dishes I ever cooked (as a way of using those magic preserved lemons), and it is pretty much a classic in my food repertoire now. It's clean, sunny taste is perfect whatever the season, but I reckon its at its best when the weather is less than stellar. It is also as great an introduction to the seductive taste of preserved lemons as you are likely to find.

I made it for an unseasonably cool January birthday party in Australia one year. There was a big spread, and when I first checked, it looked like my "exotic" contribution might have been a bit too exotic. But just a few minutes later, you'd've been hard pressed to get enough to coat a bit of bread. You can't get much more of a vote of confidence than that.

I've adjusted the recipe for metric and the pressure cooker, but the credit for it rightly belongs with my very, very favourite food writer, Claudia Roden, who wrote the wonderful article in the Guardian that it appeared in a few years back. A culinary tour Morocco is one of my dreams, and Claudia's writing is one of the main reasons. Rereading the article now, I wouldn't be surprised if I'm not the only one.

Now there is nothing exotic at all about the recipe, the preserved lemons notwithstanding (and they are only salt and lemons after all). If you don't have any, go and make yourself some now. They're a total doddle. Really. We'll still be here when you've got them ready.

I made the tagine with beef this time, and I can tell you that it is not a patch on the lamb version. Leg being my preference. Perhaps its as well, then, that we were not able to take it to its intended recipients due to the Young Man being sick with the cold. Sorry Sa, I'll make it again next time!

Lamb tagine with peas, preserved lemon and olives (if you can find them (g))

Serves 6-8

1 kg leg or shoulder of lamb, trimmed of excess fat and cut into cubes
2 tbsp vegetable oil [S: optional, I've never put it in, and never needed it]
1 onion, chopped
salt and pepper [S: go light with the salt as the lemons are salty]
1 tsp ground ginger
A good pinch of chilli powder or chilli flakes (optional)
½ tsp saffron powder [S: optional; it is a minor attraction on this dish]
500g shelled peas
2 tomatoes, peeled and chopped
Peel of 1 preserved lemon or more, cut into pieces
A dozen green olives

1 Put the meat in a large pressure cooker with the oil (if using), onion, salt and pepper, ginger and saffron. Almost cover with water and cook under low pressure for 45-55 minutes or until the meat is very tender.

2 Add the peas, tomatoes, preserved lemon peel and olives and cook uncovered a few minutes longer, until the peas are tender and the sauce reduced.

Enjoy!

Maghrebi Mania 2: Harira: Moroccan chickpea and lentil soup

It's been a while since I posted (and made this soup!). Apologies for the delay, but life happens (g).

I had been meaning to make this rich and filling soup for a long time. For Muslims it has particular significance as the soup Muslims in many countries choose to eat before tucking into a huge feast come sun-down during Ramadan. For non-Muslims, it is a great one-pot dish that with the addition of some bread makes a complete meal.

I have recipes for harira in several books, but chose to make this one from Claudia Roden's Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon, since it is a Moroccan rendition of the classic. Claudia's recipe feeds 10 (good if you have guests over for the breaking of the fast), but you might want to halve it if your table is less crowded.

One thing that interested me about this recipe was the unusual use of flour as a thickener. It is not added with the meat and vegetables at the beginning before adding water, but made into a white sauce-like batter, and added close to the end of cooking. This gives the soup an interesting satiny mouth-feel that Claudia calls velvety. I reckon that you might want to up the amount of flour if you are using the Japanese kind. I wanted mine a little thicker.

I've since read in Nawal Nasrallah's Delights from the Garden of Eden: A Cookbook and a History of the Iraqi cuisine that there are other soups made with this technique. She calls them "flour soups", which would not have sounded very enticing if I hadn't had this lovely one first. Perhaps when soup weather comes round again we might delve into this some more.

I made this with chicken, but that is just one variation; you could use any other meat you fancy. If possible, do use bones to enrich the stock. I used a couple of chicken carcasses, which my supermarket sells frozen. If you can't get hold of some bones, you might want to add some stock cubes (as Claudia mentions, but does not actually recommend). I also added some chopped preserved lemons (in addition to lemon juice), which perked this up nicely. Then again, I am a bit of a lemon junkie...

Remember to use less water if you are using tinned or frozen cooked pulses.

Harira: Moroccan chickpea and lentil soup

1 or 2 chicken carcases (optional)
500 g chicken [S: I used chicken thighs, which are more flavourful than breasts]
1 large onion, chopped coarsely
200 g chickpeas, soaked overnight
150 g large brown lentils, rinsed
250 g ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped
2 celery stalks, diced
1 tbsp tomato paste
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 cinnamon stick
1/4 tsp saffron threads or powder, or 1/2 tsp turmeric
salt
2.5 tbsp plain flour
75 g vermicelli (optional)
juice of 1/2 to 1 lemon [S: or more for lemon heads]
50 g coriander, chopped
large bunch of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
To serve: 2 lemons, cut into quarters; dates (optional)

If using chicken carcasses, blanch them in boiling water for a few minutes then throw out the water. Put the carcasses into a large pan with the meat, cut into 1 cm pieces, the onions and drained chickpeas. Cover with about 3 litres of water and bring to the boil. Remove the scum and simmer, covered, cor 1 hour. Remove the carcasses.

Add the drained lentils, tomatoes and celery (include some leaves), the tomato paste, pepper, ginger, cinnamon and saffron or turmeric. Simmer for a further 15 minutes, adding more water if necessary, and salt when the lentils begin to soften.

In the meantime, put the four into a small pan and gradually add 500 ml cold water, a little at a time, beating vigorously with a wooden spoon to blend well and avoid lumps. Put over a medium heat and stir constantly until the mixture thickens, then simmer for 10 min. Pour this batter into the soup, stirring vigorously, and cook for a few minutes until the soup acquires a light creamy texture.

If you are using vermicelli (crushed in your hand into small pieces), add this to the soup 10 or so minutes from the end, adding the lemon juice, chopped coriander and parsley at the same time.

Serve with lemon wedges and if you like, also dates.

Enjoy!

Fish tagine

Now here's a recipe almost custom-made for Saffron and Lemons. It is a quick and easy Moroccan-inspired fish stew containing two of my favourite ingredients (g), and it is just perfect for a weeknight.

The original recipe comes from a cookbook that by all rights should not even be in my collection (as I am holding off buying cookbooks for a while (g)), but one that I could not resist as it was on sale at 50% of its already half-price tag. Who could pass that up...?

It's a Marie Claire title, Kitchen, that has lots of takes on the classics, as well as some mouthwatering-looking creative ideas (that, if nothing else, will certainly provide food photography inspiration). The Marie Claire cookbooks had escaped my notice until a while ago (I try to stay out of the cookbook section, for obvious reasons (g)). But I was impressed by a new one spied at Yurindo earlier this year. It also turns out that Donna Hay published a couple of MC titles when she was their food editor. Anyway, it's good stuff, and interesting to see that the author of this title, Michele Cranston, is another Aussie. (I don't think this is surprising, though, as food is serious business in Oz, and the population composition makes exotic ingredients just another part of the culinary wallpaper. It makes for some fabulous fusions.)

I was so impressed, I think I'll make up this week's menus from Kitchen as well.

As always, I have done a bit of fiddling with the recipe. I do the saffron the Middle Eastern way, and I added a tsp of the tagine spice mix from a little while ago. I think it adds a little something. Anyway, I loved this, and next time will give it a burl with chicken as well.

Fish tagine

4 tbsp olive oil
1 large red onion, roughly chopped
10 saffron threads, ground in mortar with a little salt and dissolved in 1 tbsp boiling water
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp tagine spice mix
4 large potatoes, sliced into thick medallions or cut into bite-sized chunks
2 celery stalks, roughly chopped
400 g tin chopped tomatoes
1 small cinnamon stick
600 g fish fillets, cut into 4 cm chunks
1 handful flat-leaf parsley [S: or celery leaves as I did]
2 tbsp finely chopped preserved lemon

Serves 4

Heat the olive oil in a deep-based frying pan or flame-proof casserole over medium heat. Add the onion, cumin and tagine spice mix and cook until the onion is soft and caramelized. Add the potato, celery, tomatoes, cinnamon and 250 ml water. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes. When the potato is soft, season the fish fillets with sea salt and add them to the stew with the saffron water. Simmer for a further 10 minutes, then season with freshly ground black pepper. Garnish with the parsley or celery leaves and preserved lemons.


Tagine spice mix (source: love to cook)

2 tbsp paprika
2 1/2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp chilli powder
1/2 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground green cardamom

Enjoy!

Tagine of pumpkin and chickpeas

So, how are those preserved lemons coming along?

I made mine earlier (in November, in fact), so they were just coming good when I decided to make this happy tagine for a friend who sometimes takes the same train as me in the morning. He suffered a not-so-minor health setback a few months back, so I wanted to make something that would be both cheery on a cold winter's night and virtuous, health-wise. This tagine was just the ticket. Although it sounds and tastes a bit exotic, it is a total doddle to make (just don't tell my friend (g)).

I originally got the recipe from the website of The Age, but it shows up on Cuisine as well (where you can see how it looks when a professional photographs it (g)). While I suspect this may not be authentic Moroccan, it is in the Moroccan style and the preserved lemons are Moroccan through and through so I will tag it "Moroccan". If authenticity is an issue, stay tuned as Moroccan is one of my all-time favourite cuisines, and I will come back to it and the preserved lemons again before too long.

I've made this a few times before, so for a change, I decided to make it a bit chunkier than usual. And since I had some yummy sweet winter carrots, they made it into the pot as well. What did not make the pot was the saffron--my own fault, for not reading the recipe properly--but the tagine was no worse for it.

I served it with rice as a main course following the "two dips" in the post below, and everyone was pleasantly full at the end of the meal.

Tagine of pumpkin and chickpeas

Ingredients
1 cup chickpeas, soaked overnight
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, sliced
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
1 cinnamon stick
1/4 tsp dried chilli flakes
1/4 tsp saffron threads, steeped in 100ml hot water
500g pumpkin, peeled and cut into large pieces
2 waxy potatoes, peeled and cut in half
half a 400g tin tomatoes [Saffron: I didn't need a spare half tin so I threw the whole lot in]
2 zucchini, sliced
1/2 a preserved lemon, chopped
cooked cous cous or rice, to serve
1/2 cup yoghurt
1/2 cup coriander leaves

Method
Put the chickpeas in a pot with plenty of cold water and boil for 30 minutes. Drain.

In a large pot, heat the oil and butter and cook the onion and garlic until soft and lightly golden. Add the spices (except saffron), cook for a couple of minutes, then add the partially cooked chickpeas, saffron, pumpkin, potatoes, tomatoes and just enough water to cover. Season with salt and simmer gently until the potatoes are almost soft (about 30-40 minutes). Add the zucchini and preserved lemon and cook for 5 more minutes or until the potatoes and pumpkin are soft (but not mushy).

To serve
Serve with cous cous or rice and a dollop of yoghurt and some freshly chopped coriander. If you like it hot, serve a little harissa on the side (available at delis and some supermarkets).

Serves 6.

Enjoy!