Moroccan Chicken Tagine
My parents came back from America this week and ended up spending a couple of day with me so I fed them moroccan chicken tagine which is the autumn menu main course to go with the herb scented couscous.
The moroccan chicken was quite easy to do compared with the amount of time I took to do it. In the book it mentions taking two days to make it so I started making it on the Saturday and fed it to my parents on the Monday evening. So I made it in three stages, Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
The Saturday was about preparing the chicken. A fair amount of spices went into this so there was much measuring of spices as well as chopping up the chicken and removing most of the fatty bits(I don't know why I spend time meticulously removing all the fatty bits from chicken because I invariably look at the pile of fat and think I wonder what that would be like fried up and then eat the crispy fatty bits out of the frying pan). The spices used were ginger, black pepper, cinnamon turmeric, paprika, and cayenne pepper and I had a bowl full of the mixture by the time I had measured it all out. The chicken bits were put in a bowl with half the mixture and thoroughly coated and the left for a day to absorb all the flavours.
One thing I noticed about the recipe is that the first thing it says to do is preheat the oven then it tells you to leave the chicken overnight, that's a long time to have the oven on. So I decided to diverge slightly from the recipe on this point and only put the oven on when I was about to use it.
The Sunday was about putting it all together. The chicken was cooked and then onion and garlic cooked with the other half of the spices. Then chicken and onions were mixed together with dates, almonds, honey, saffron, chicken stock and chopped tomatoes. At this point I left it in the fridge again overnight, it doesn't say in the recipe to do this but my parents were arriving the next day and there was too much to eat by myself.
The Monday was mostly about cooking the thing and making the couscous to go with it. I had a bit of a problem since the recipe calls for a casserole dish that can be used on the hob and in the oven and I had no such thing. I had to start the thing boiling in a saucepan and then transfer it to an oven proof dish to be cooked in the oven. It is cooked for an hour so there is plenty of time to make the couscous while it's in the oven. It did turn out a bit more watery than I was expecting though so I think I didn't bring it to the boil enough before putting it into the oven.
So while it took two days to make the days consisted of a few simple steps so the thing as a whole was quite easy.
Taste wise it was really nice, spicy and warming, and went really well with the couscous. It'd be really good on a cold, wet day in autumn. It was a bit too hot for my mother who doesn't like spicy things that much but that didn't stop her from copying the recipe so she could try it without quite so much cayenne pepper. So overall I think this one was a success.
The moroccan chicken was quite easy to do compared with the amount of time I took to do it. In the book it mentions taking two days to make it so I started making it on the Saturday and fed it to my parents on the Monday evening. So I made it in three stages, Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
The Saturday was about preparing the chicken. A fair amount of spices went into this so there was much measuring of spices as well as chopping up the chicken and removing most of the fatty bits(I don't know why I spend time meticulously removing all the fatty bits from chicken because I invariably look at the pile of fat and think I wonder what that would be like fried up and then eat the crispy fatty bits out of the frying pan). The spices used were ginger, black pepper, cinnamon turmeric, paprika, and cayenne pepper and I had a bowl full of the mixture by the time I had measured it all out. The chicken bits were put in a bowl with half the mixture and thoroughly coated and the left for a day to absorb all the flavours.
One thing I noticed about the recipe is that the first thing it says to do is preheat the oven then it tells you to leave the chicken overnight, that's a long time to have the oven on. So I decided to diverge slightly from the recipe on this point and only put the oven on when I was about to use it.
The Sunday was about putting it all together. The chicken was cooked and then onion and garlic cooked with the other half of the spices. Then chicken and onions were mixed together with dates, almonds, honey, saffron, chicken stock and chopped tomatoes. At this point I left it in the fridge again overnight, it doesn't say in the recipe to do this but my parents were arriving the next day and there was too much to eat by myself.
The Monday was mostly about cooking the thing and making the couscous to go with it. I had a bit of a problem since the recipe calls for a casserole dish that can be used on the hob and in the oven and I had no such thing. I had to start the thing boiling in a saucepan and then transfer it to an oven proof dish to be cooked in the oven. It is cooked for an hour so there is plenty of time to make the couscous while it's in the oven. It did turn out a bit more watery than I was expecting though so I think I didn't bring it to the boil enough before putting it into the oven.
So while it took two days to make the days consisted of a few simple steps so the thing as a whole was quite easy.
Taste wise it was really nice, spicy and warming, and went really well with the couscous. It'd be really good on a cold, wet day in autumn. It was a bit too hot for my mother who doesn't like spicy things that much but that didn't stop her from copying the recipe so she could try it without quite so much cayenne pepper. So overall I think this one was a success.