A Few of My Favourite Things !

We moved into our new place about two-and-a-half months ago and we’ve only JUST had our first ’sit-down’ dinner guests, Uncle S and Aunty M, over. We started with an entree that I remember having in Sydney a long time ago: bruschetta topped with chevre, fig jam and rocket.

For dinner, I wanted to try a recipe from The Momo Cookbook, which I bought some time ago. After pouring through all the recipes and pictures in the book and changing my mind a few hundred times, I decided to serve the Chicken Tagine with Olives and Pickled Lemons. To accompany this dish, there was couscous and a Date and Feta Salad that was featured in the September 2004 issue of Cuisine. I thought the chicken tagine would be quite sour due to the presence of pickled lemons and olives, but it turned out beautifully. The salad was also a great mixture of sweet and salty flavours, but I only realised after the meal that all 3 dishes had that sweet, salty flavour mix - oh well!

Chicken Tagine with Olives and Pickled Lemons

3 pieces of chicken maryland, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp ground white pepper, small container of split green olives, 1.5 pickled lemon skin, 1 finely chopped onion, 5 garlic cloves, 1 tsp ground ginger, 100 ml saffron liquid, 500 ml water, 3 tbs chopped coriander, 3 tbs choped flat-leafed parsley

1. Sprinkle chicken with half the salt and pepper

2. Blanch olives 3 times with boiling water, rinsing under running water after each time

3. Heat olive oil in pan and fry onions gently until translucent. Add garlic, ginger, saffron liquid, remaining salt and pepper and water.

4. Add chicken and turn to coat with spices. Bring to boil then leave to simmer for 1 hour, turning chicen over several times.

5. Add olives, rinsed peel of pickled lemon, coriander and parsley, then cook 15 min more.

6. If sauce is still too watery, remove chicken (keep warm) and boil to reduce sauce.

Date and Feta Salad

Toss together organic fancy lettuce, thinly sliced spanish onion, crumbly feta, pitted and halved fresh dates, and toasted turkish bread. Add dressing of juice of 1 lemon, zest of 1 lemon and olive oil.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 31st, 2005 at 8:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.