Morocco: Chickpea Tagine with Chicken and Apricots

We landed in Tangier, Morocco, on North African coast. This is the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar, where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic. While most tourist head south to the ancient cities of Rabat, Casablanca, and Marrakesh, our destiny lies in the East, across the Mediterranean Maghreb; eating. We were met by our guide, Mr. Chebba, a Berber caravanner, who whisked us to the train station for a five hour train ride to Fnideq, a frontier town where we will meet our caravan. As the train passes the ancient coastal fortress of Ceuta we gaze north across the waves toward Spain for a glimpse the lights of Gibraltar, which we will see many months from now. We will travel by (a more or less authentic) caravan through Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya. Mr. Chebba will get us safely to the Suez in Egypt where we will begin the next leg of our journey.

The food in Fnideq, like Morocco itself, is a mix of is Berber, Arab, and Moorish styles, and heavily influenced by French and Spanish cuisines. Our one night in Fnideq we…

Ok, ok, this is a food blog! What did we eat? A tagine of course! A traditional stew of vegetables and meat, slow cooked and served over couscous. The recipe is by Mark Bittman in a recent NYTimes article. I changed it up slightly, skinning bone-in legs and thighs and using the dry spices as a rub on the meat prior to browning. Also, rather that bulgur, I added couscous to mine toward the end of cooking. As a result, I used a little less broth than Mr. Bittman suggests. The follow in my version of the recipe. The URL for his original recipe is at the bottom of the page.

Chickpea Tagine with Chicken and Apricots
Time: About 45 minutes

3 tablespoons olive oil
4 chicken thighs and 4 chicken legs, skinned
1 large onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 dried hot red chili pepper
1/2 cup chopped dried apricots
1 14-oz can of chopped tomato (with juice)
1 14-oz can of chickpeas, drained, with the liquid reserved
1 cup chicken stock, bean liquid or water, or more as needed
1/2 cup couscous
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley and 1/2 cup slivered almonds, for garnish.

1. Mix together coriander, cumin, cinnamon in as small bowl. Place chicken pieces in a large bowl, add about a tablespoon of olive oil over the chicken and stir to coat all pieces well. Sprinkle the spice mixture over the chicken and mix to evenly coat all the chicken pieces with spices. Let sit for one-half hour or refrigerate overnight.

2. Put remaining oil in a large, deep pot over medium-high heat. When oil is shimmering, add chicken and brown well on both sides; remove from pan and set aside. Reduce heat to medium, add onion to the pan and cook until soft, about 5 minutes; add chili pepper, garlic, ginger, dried apricots and tomatoes. Cook and stir just enough to loosen any brown bits from bottom of pan.

3. Add chickpeas and 1 cup of stock or bean liquid to the pan and turn heat back to medium-high. When mixture reaches a gentle bubble, return chicken and accumulated juices to the pan. Cover pot, turn heat to low and cook, checking occasionally to make sure the mixture is bubbling gently, for about 30-minutes stirring occasionally. Stir in couscous, adding more stock if necessary so that the mixture is barely covered with liquid. Season with salt and pepper.

4. Cover and turn off the heat and let stand for about 5-minutes or until the couscous tender. Taste, adjust the seasonings and serve in bowls garnished with parsley and slivered almonds.
Yield: 4 servings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/dining/14minirex.html?ref=dining.

“A Summer of Mediterranean Living”

So I came up with what I think, is a wonderfully creative culinary adventure for the Yellow Door. Earlier this spring, I was transplanting some of my perennial herbs out of my raised beds and to a new bed in the yard. When I was done, I realized almost all of these herbs (rosemary, sage, tarragon, oregano, marjoram) are from the Mediterranean. The idea sparked; we’ll have “A Summer of Mediterranean Living”. An entire summer filled with lemons and oranges, capers and olives, basil, Campari, calamari, garlic/rosemary/basil/oregano, olives, sparkling wine and sunshine, lamb, lavender, beaches, family, friends, flowers, fast ferries to Ptown, sea salt, pink salt, black salt, Chardonnay-smoked salt, sweet peppers in red, orange, yellow and green, kebabs, anchovies, olive oil, tomatoes, Tunisian spices, Spanish sausage, Israeli couscous... Well you get the idea; it will be fabulous!

As a cooking challenge, I will research traditional and gastro-nouveau recipes that will take the Yellow Door on a culinary tour around the entire Mediterranean basin; starting in Morocco and caravanning east across the wild Maghreb of northern Africa, cooking all the way. In Egypt, we’ll cross the Suez into the Sinai and (ignoring politics and boarders) sweep north into Israel and eat our way though the coastal Levant region and finally into Turkey and Greece. Our feasting will continue following the coast up through the Balkan states whose beaches touch the Adriatic, finally turning south down the coast of western Italy. From here we’ll board our chartered yacht and do some island hopping; exploring the major islands of the Mediterranean in random order. Landing back in Calabria, the toe of Italy, we head north up the western coast and into the glory of southern Europe; devouring everything from Monaco and Provence to the Cote d’Azur and Costa Brava. Finally ending our summer long fling with Mediterranean in the south of Spain, Gibraltar of course!


I hope you will join Gene and me on this gastronomic adventure! I promise to post often!!!