Golden Moroccan Spiced Beet Pickles

I make Christmas Spiced Beet Pickles every year and always run out before the next beet season.  As soon as the first beets came out of the garden,  I preserve a new batch. This year, in addition to the more traditional red beets I grow every year,  I also had some golden beets, and thought I would experiment with the golden beets.  The designer in me liked the idea of star anise against the golden background of the beets.  I make a roasted vegetable dish with star anise and cinnamon and thought the combination might work well with beets also.  The first batch was a bit too acidic. Apple cider vinegar and raw sugar rounded the second batch out.

Golden Moroccan Spiced BeetPickles, with Christmas Spiced Red Beets behind

Ingredients for Golden Moroccan Spiced Beet Pickles

• 2 pounds of golden beets
• 2 cups of Demerara sugar
• 2 cups of apple cider vinegar
• 1/3 of a cup of water
• 2 cinimon sticks
• 4 star anise
• 12 pepper corns
• 4 small bay leaves
• 2 teaspoons of pickling salt
• 4 one pint preserving jars

Prepare beets, cutting off tops to within an inch of the beet, leave root attached. Put in stainless steel pot and bring to boil,  reduce to simmer and cook for 25 to 50 minutes, until cooked.  Mean while, sterilize bottles, and put  1/2 a teaspoon of pickling salt, 3 pepper corns, 1/2 a cinnamon stick, a bay leaf, and one star anise in each bottle.  

Remove beets from water and rinse under cool water.  Peel beets and cut into bite size pieces. Tightly pack bottles with beets, to within 1/2"of top of bottle. 

Combine water, sugar and vinegar, in stainless steel pan and bring to boil.  Fill bottles to within 1/4 inch of top with syrup and put lids on bottles. Process for 30 minutes.

Cool and store in dark place.  Best after two weeks.  

Note: for my red Christmas beets, substitute 4 cloves and 2 all spice berries in each jar for the star anise.  I also use white sugar and white vinegar, rather than the demerara sugar and cider vinegar. 

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 thighs, 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
• 3 bay leaves
• 1/2 cups of chicken stock
• 6 quarters of preserved lemon rind  (note below)
• 1/4 cup of pitted cracked green olives and 1/4cup of dried black olives
• I 400 gram can of crushed tomatoes
• 1 bunch of fresh cilantro

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.

Chop stems of cilantro and add to onion mixture, 

Put the onion mixture in bottom of tagine, pour tomatoes  over onions, and place chicken on top.  Add chicken stock,  and tuck in bay leaves. 

Place lid on tagine and place water in cap at top of tagline.  Place in cold oven and then turn oven on to 180 C 350 F and cook for 40 minutes.

Remove from oven and add lemon and olives. Cover and place back in the oven, then turn off oven and let cool until ready to serve, a minimum of 20 minutes.  Chop fresh cilantro and sprinkle on top before serving.   

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.