Moroccan Chicken with Couscous: Chicken Tagine

A "tagine" is a type of North African pottery dish used for cooking stews. The name of this cooking dish has given its name to the stews cooked in such a dish, and besides chicken, these stews may have lamb, beef, fish or vegetables as the main ingredient. In Tunisia, recipes generally are not stews, but rather much more of a type of omelette, like a frittata. Tagine cooking dishes are often, but not always, glazed and decorated with designs, some of which can be quite colorful. The basic dish is a shallow flat bottom dish, but there is a sort of domed top for the tagine. You needn't run out and buy a tagine for this recipe, as you can just use a heavy bottom pan (preferably with a lid, but you can use foil) and large enough to hold the contents.

Most recipes I've seen for this dish use boneless, skinless chicken, although I have seen a few recipes that use cut up skin on, on the bone chicken pieces. Skin on chicken has more flavor, but when a recipe uses boneless and skinless chicken, I often use that, BUT I also buy a bone-in, skin-on piece of chicken or two and cook it with the dish, then remove it at the end of cooking. 

 

This chicken tagine is usually served with Moroccan couscous, a type of pasta made with semolina flour. In Morocco the couscous is of very small grains of pasta, and it is smaller than the couscous of the Middle East, Israeli and Lebanese, which are larger and take longer to cook. Harissa is a paste of hot chili peppers usually seasoned with some spices. Both harissa and preserved lemons are often available in supermarkets, in spice shops and certainly in many Middle Eastern grocery stores. You can substitute some freshly grated lemon peel or strips of lemon peel for the preserved lemon, and you can add some cayenne pepper, sambal oelek (an Indonesian sauce of chopped chili peppers, also made in the United States), or any hot sauce to your liking, or you can just add an extra 1 or 2 fresh hot chilies as a substitute for the harissa.    

Ingredients:

1 pound boneless, skinless chicken (chicken breast or thighs, or mixture of the two)

1 whole skin on/bone in chicken thigh

1 whole skin on/bones in chicken wing

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 cup chopped onion

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 inch piece ginger, grated, finely chopped, or thinly sliced

1 cup of either butternut squash, acorn squash, pumpkin or peeled sweet potato, diced

2 teaspoons ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

1 two inch cinnamon stick

2 teaspoons ground coriander

1 or 2 whole chili peppers, slit cut in it/them

1 tablespoon harissa

1/2 cup raisins

1 1/2 tablespoons honey

1 2/3 cups chicken stock

1 14 to 16 ounce can chickpeas, drained (also known as garbanzo beans)

1/4 cup slivered almonds

1 small preserved lemon (or 1/2 regular sized preserved lemon)

1/4 cup pitted green olives, halved

Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a heavy bottom pan. Saute the onion, garlic and ginger for just like 2 minutes, then add the chicken pieces, including the whole pieces, cumin, turmeric, cinnamon stick, ground coriander, chili pepper, harissa, preserved lemon and chicken stock, cover and cook 20 minutes, then add the squash or sweet potato, honey and raisins; reduce heat to low, cover and cook for one hour. Add the slivered almonds and chickpeas, cook another 20 minutes, then stir in the green olive halves, and cook for two minutes. Check to be sure the chicken is done (it should be).

 

For the Couscous:

1 1/2 cups Moroccan couscous

1 2/3 cups chicken broth

2 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil 

(optional) 1/2 teaspoon salt

 

Bring the chicken broth to a boil in a sauce pan (with a lid). Add the butter, olive oil and salt (if using). Add the couscous and stir very well to mix. Let cook like 30 or 40 seconds, then shut off the heat and cover the pan with a lid for about 5 to 6 minutes. The broth should be completely absorbed. Fluff the couscous with a fork. 

 

  

WORD HISTORY:

Mattress-This word goes back to the transliterated Arabic root "tarh/trh," which had the notion of "throw, throw or toss away." This gave Arabic the verb "taraha," meaning, "to throw down, to throw away," which produced the noun "matrah" (the "ma" part was a noun forming prefix), which literally meant "the object thrown down," and which was used as "al matrah" for "the cushion or rug thrown onto the floor or ground to lie on." This was borrowed by Italian (via trade with North Africans in the early Middle Ages?) as "materasso," which was borrowed by French as "materas," and additionally reinforced directly by Arabic? English borrowed the word in around 1300 from French, initially in the French form "materas," but what became the modern spelling seems to have then been influenced by the Italian form. Of course too, modern mattresses are often made with springs and various padding.