For the last few weeks I have been fascinated by Tagines. What’s a tagine? It’s a Moroccan cooking vessel that sort of looks like a little tee-pee. It’s usually made out of clay and always has a cone shaped top. Here’s the one I bought from Amazon. It’s a 3.7 quart one made by Emile Henry in France.
So what do you do with it? As I saw on one of my new favorite cooking shows French Cooking at Home, you can easily make the most delicious chicken stew. My first attempt was what I like to call “Poor Man’s Tagine Chicken” which amounted to making a Tagine Chicken without a Tagine. And I have to admit, it was pretty good. I made the same recipe and just cooked it in a La Crusset enameled cast iron dutch oven.
So I had to purchase the real thing to see what it had to over. Here’s my new Tagine ready to go on its maiden voyage…
what you see here is some skinless chicken thighs and legs that I marinated overnight in Moroccan spices, garlic, onion, saffron, salt and pepper. I then put it in the tagine with some olives and preserved lemon thinly sliced and cooked it for about 90 minutes on low heat. I also purchased a heat diffuser to even lower the heat even more. Here’s the end results.
It served it with a simple salad of greens, caper berries (more on those to come), capers, and artichoke hearts. Feeling that everything had enough acid, I dressed with some olive oil and salt and pepper.
Here’s the chicken severed on some wild rice.
