CHICKEN TAGINE WITH OLIVES & PRESERVED LEMON

Few days ago, my mom and I decided to cook a Moroccan cuisine after watching a cooking show of two men travelling to the ethnic side of Morocco. We are also inspired by the recipes from the book we bought (the one in the picture above). It was an impromptu recipe so we did not follow exactly as what is in the recipe book. The recipe says to cook the chicken in an oven but uh uh. We do not have an oven yet so we just cooked it on the stove. Since I live in Malaysia, there are some ingredients that are hardly to be found locally. So in this post, I wanted to share on how we cooked our chicken tagine with a twist of local flavours.

First, let's see the raw ingredients needed for this recipe:

In most of Moroccan cuisines, they use saffron as one of its ingredient. Saffron is categorised as 'Moroccan Essentials' to color the food golden. Since it is hard to find saffron here, we used turmeric as its substitute.

Moroccans also have their own way to preserve lemon. I've said earlier that this was an impromptu recipe therefore we made the preserved lemon our own way. Prepare a medium-sized glass jar filled with quarterly cut lemon. Then pour salt water into the jar until the lemon are fully immersed with it. The lemon are supposed to be preserved at least three weeks for it to be called 'preserved lemon' but again, it was an impromptu recipe so we only 'preserved' it for two days haha.

Then, I marinated the chicken with Malaysian spices (Adabi brand) which are already available in the kitchen. I added Turkish shawarma spice (the bottom pack in the picture) so that a hint of Turkish spice can be tasted. You don't need to pour too much spices but just enough to evenly and lightly coat the chicken. 

Pour a generous amount of olive oil into the tagine pot. Saute the diced onion, cardamom, ginger, and a little of coriander. Add a teaspoon of turmeric powder, sprinkle some salt and sugar. When done sauteed, arrange the marinated chicken on top of the sauteed ingredients. Add in preserved lemon and green olives. Pour a cup or two of chicken stock depending on your preference and close the tagine pot with the lid. Let it cook on low heat until the chicken is tender. 

And voilà...

Moroccans serve their tagine with flat bread or couscous but I served it with white rice. How did it taste like? Well, it was delicious and delightful. I would say it tasted like Moroccan cuisine because of the lemon and the green olives as they are 'Moroccan essentials' despite some lack of ingredients.

That's it for today's post. I hope you will try and enjoy the recipe as much as my mom and I did <3.

Love,

Aida.