My experimentation with Moroccan cooking began when my brother Jordan gave me a tagine for Christmas a few years ago.  I tried the few recipes that came with the tagine and was hooked and so began my search for recipes that I could cook in this fabulous new vessel.    I started with lamb tagines, and then vegetable tagines and only recently, after my friend Ruth made me a fabulous dinner of chicken with preserved lemons and olives when I visited her in Nice this past Christmas, did I start to experiment with this most traditional of Mediterranean dishes.  

I made this dish recently for a pre-wedding event I hosted, in a tagine and have also used a slow cooker on week nights when entertaining.  Ruth made her dish in a large enamelled French cast iron pot with a tight lid.  

Moroccan Chicken with Preserved Lemons and Olives

serves 6                                                                               Preheat oven to 350F

• 6 chicken legs, excess fat removed
• kosher salt
• 3 tablespoons of olive oil
• 5 cups of yellow onions, coarsely sliced
• 2 tablespoons of dried coriander
• 2 teaspoons of ground pepper
• 2 teaspoons of finely chopped ginger
• 1 teaspoon of saffron threads
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground turmeric
• 5 bay leaves
• 1/2 cups of chicken stock
• 6 quarters of preserved lemon rind  (note below)
• 1/4 cup o f pitted cracked green olives and 1/4cup of dried black olives
• 1/4 cup of dried currants
• 2 tablespoons of honey

Salt chicken legs and brown in 1/2 the olive oil.  Set aside. Drain off excess chicken fat and add the remaining olive oil.  Add onions to pan and sauté until a golden colour, add a pinch of salt and the spices and stir for about a minute.

Put the onion mixture in bottom of tagine  and place chicken on top.  Add chicken stock, 

Add lemon, olives currents and bay leaves. Drizzle honey over top. Cover and cook for 2hours in the tagine or 5 hours on low in the slow cooker. 

Serve with couscous

Preserved Lemons

I have had difficulty finding preserved lemons in all but the most expensive specialty stores, and consequently began preserving lemons myself.  Something that sounds exotic and unapproachable is remarkably easy to prepare with ingredients that are available at every grocery store.   I began by using predominately salt, until Ruth showed me the lemons from a friends garden she had preserved last fall using mostly olive oil.   When I returned home, I immediately started exploring options for preserving lemons and now have settled on a method that combines salt, lemon juice and sometimes spices, topped up with olive oil.  

I put about a half inch of kosher salt in the bottom of a sterilized large mouthed one quart bottle.  After cutting the lemons almost through from top to bottom in quarters, while still leaving attached at bottom, pack each lemon with salt and put in bottle.  Push the lemons down adding thin layers of salt between the lemons.  When the bottle is full, force a more few lemon quarters into the bottle.  Then add fresh squeezed lemon juice to fill all the voids in the bottle.  Top up with lemon juice once the juice has settled.   Put the lid on the jar and turn the bottle upside down a few times, then loosen the lid a bit and leave to ferment.  Every day for a week, turn the bottle over a few times.  Don't forget to tighten the lid before turning and loosen again to allow the gases from fermentation to escape.  If necessary top up with lemon juice to keep the bottle full.  The bottle may ooze a bit for the first week or two as the lemons ferment.  The lemons will be ready in a month. Top up with olive oil, to seal the bottle, to prevent the top layer of lemons from oxidizing.  If you are keeping the lemons more than a few months, storing in a dark place will preserve the colour.  The preserved lemons keep upwards of a year.

I often put a cinnamon stick, some cloves, pepper corns and a few star anise in the bottle with the lemons at the beginning of the process.  My other favourite combination is bay leaves, rosemary and thyme.