Moroccan chicken with tomatoes and saffron-honey jam
When it comes to outsiders working with Middle Eastern and North African cuisines, Diana Henry is something of an original. Her sweet-and-spice recipes can be a bit wild but almost always work spectacularly well — yes, even the one that adds basil to ice cream. Her poetic style of writing is gorgeous. Plus: she’s from Ulster, which has to count as miracle of sorts given the frequently dire standard of food one finds there; Henry has said she turned to cooking to improve the local fare, and you can believe it.
This warm dish is garnered from the one that leads off her enchanting Crazy Water Pickled Lemons. I cooked it the other night for dinner. Henry herself has largely taken it from an old Moroccan recipe, and I suppose, even earlier that that, it used to be a Persian dish that came down to North Africa after the Arab invasion. Anyway, it’s delicious. Also, providing you already have the spices and saffron threads, it’s cheap to make:
8 small chicken thighs
salt and pepper
olive oil
1 large onion, roughly chopped
6 heads of garlic, peeled and chopped
2.5 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1.5 teaspoons ground ginger
800g tomatoes, roughly chopped (canned is fine)
280ml chicken stock
1/2 teaspoon saffron threads
4 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon orange flower water
25g flaked almonds, toasted
small bunch of coriander, chopped
Season the chicken with salt and pepper and brown them in 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Set the chicken aside and cook the onion in the same pan until soft. Add the garlic, ginger and cinnamon, stirring constantly. After a minute, add in the tomatoes, stir and turn the heat down. Cook, still stirring, for 5 minutes.
Boil the stock and dissolve the saffron in it. Pour this into the vegetable mix. Bring to a boil and then place the chicken into it. Try to submerge most of the chicken pieces below the liquid. Then cover and lower the flame to its lowest setting. Cook for 25-30 minutes.
Remove the chicken pieces, set them aside and keep warm. Turn the heat up again so that the braising liquid starts to boil. Reduce it till it is quite thick and “creamy”. Add the honey and keep reducing it until it becomes jammy. Taste the sauce and adjust the seasoning. Add the orange flower water. Put the chicken pieces back into the sauce, heating them through and slowly coating the chicken with it. When serving, toss the almonds and coriander over the chicken. Serve with cous-cous or, as I did, rice.