Moroccan Chicken Tajine with Home-Made Preserved Lemon (aka “Hurray! My lemons didn’t turn blue!)

It’s been forever since I hacked up a chicken. Felt like it was about time to get back to that. It also felt like it was about time to see if my preserved lemons had turned out alright. I was nervous because they weren’t 100% covered in lemon juice and I don’t know how quickly these things go moldy. I’d waited the one-month period called-for in the original recipe and now it was time to bite the bullet and open the glass jar that had been sitting in my fridge.

So I bought a preservative- and antibiotic-free bird, stripped off the skin, and chopped it into 8 pieces. I kept the bones-in, which makes browning the meat (essential for juicy meat) a real pain, but also makes the dish so much more delicious in the end. The recipe is from Bonnie Stern’s HeartSmart: The Best of HeartSmart Cooking, which is full of very tested and true, healthy and delicious recipes such as this one. I also rarely buy olives, and even though she calls for way too many in this recipe roasting olives seems so sinful and gourmet – a real treat. I’ve reduced the quantities by half below, but you can go back to the original 1 cup of each kind of olive if you really love olives.

My preserved lemons

Ingredients:

1 3 pound chicken, hacked into 8-10 pieces, skin removed (you’ll get better at this the more you do it. It’s kind of creepy how skin kind of peels off so easily…but chicken is delicious and I will never be a vegetarian. Really, chopping up the chicken in your house is much saner than what happens to them on factory farms and in slaughter houses. So buy an organic, free-ranging bird if you have the means)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

1 tsp paprika

1/4 tsp saffron threads, crushed (I’d never crushed them before. So cool! And the easiest work I’ve ever done with a mortar and pestle)

1/4 tsp cayenne

1 tbsp olive oil

2 large onions, sliced (err on the side of too much as the fried onions pick up all the salty, oily, fatty, flavour of the sauce and are really the best part. It’s basically onion confit by the end)

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1/4 tsp hot red pepper flakes

1 cup pitted green olives (don’t use canned please!! It doesn’t say if they’re whole or not, but I assume they’re supposed to be. I also assume Bonnie Stern didn’t specify because it’s hard to find whole ones sometimes and you could get away with sliced ones in a chicken tajine emergency)

1 cup pitted black olives (again, no cans if you can avoid it! If you can’t, be careful with adding a lot of salt in this recipe or the whole thing will taste very brine-y and canned)

1 preserved lemon, pulp removed, skin thinly sliced (or 1 tbsp grated lemon peel)

1/3 cup fresh parsley, chopped and divided (doesn’t need to be really finely chopped – just loosely. Try rolling the washed herbs up and slicing through)

1/3 cup fresh cilantro, chopped and divided

1 regular lemon, thinly sliced (optional, for garnish)

Directions:

The fun part: wash the bird and chop it up however you can/want/doesn’t take you an hour (separate it at the joints and cut it into legs, breasts and “others”). You want the pieces to be about the same sizes so they cook sort of evenly. Combine everything from the salt to the cayenne in a small bowl and rub it into the chicken. Wash your hands very well (because of both the cayenne and the raw chicken) and put the happy chicken pieces (red means happy, right?) in the fridge to marinate for at least a few hours. My recommendation is to do this part in the morning and then in the afternoon do the rest, but we don’t all have this luxury.

A few hours before you want to eat take the chicken out of the fridge and heat the oil in a few large skillets or pots (use extra oil if you need it). You need to brown the chicken but there are so many pieces that it will have to be done in batches unless you get a few pots going at once. You’ll save about 20 minutes by doing it this way.

When the oil is hot (medium-high heat only), add the chicken in a single layer in each pot or skillet (NOTE! The skillets need to go in the oven later in the recipe! So you’ll need to cover the handle with aluminum foil I think. If they’re not oven-safe, you’ll just need to put a big casserole or baking dish in the oven when you preheat it later in the recipe. Then transfer the chicken from the skillets to the casserole or baking dish to roast it).

Cook the chicken for about 5 minutes (or longer) until it browns on one side. While it’s cooking, chop the onions into rings, chop the garlic finely, and have them ready to go for the next step.

Then flip the chicken pieces over and brown the other side for another 5 minutes. (Get the olives out, drain them, and chop the preserved lemon or grate the peel of a fresh one.)

Preserved lemons out of the jar – Not blue!

Remove the chicken to a plate and add the onions to the pans (divide the onions equally between the pans, because you’re going to have to add the chicken back to the pans in a second and you’re going to need both so the chicken is in a single layer only), stirring and cooking for about 10 minutes. You really need the onions to soften, so test one to make sure it’s cooked enough (soft and brown) before continuing on with the next step. Finish chopping the preserved lemon or grating the fresh one, and chop the parsley and cilantro so it’s ready for the next step.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (also preheat the baking dish or casserole at the same time if your skillets are not oven-safe. Thank you creuset and friend with creuset!).

Add the garlic and the hot pepper flakes to the pots and stir briefly.

Add the chicken back to the skillets in a single layer in each and top them with some of the onions. Sprinkle with the drained (but whole, probably) olives, preserved lemon, and half of the parsley and cilantro.

Place the skillets in the preheated oven (or transfer the chicken to a baking dish that has been preheating. Be careful! It’s hot!) and roast for 30 to 40 minutes. Cut into a thick part of the chicken and make sure it’s cooked through. Or use a meat thermometre.

Sprinkle the chicken with the rest of the parsley and cilantro and serve with some slices of fresh lemon if you wish. I served it with a sprout salad which was amazing as the olives in the chicken dish acted as its own vinaigrette for the greens.

My lemons didn’t go moldy!!! Woo!! And I get it! I understand why preserved lemons are so cool! The flavour is kind of mellow but it doesn’t get cooked out of the dish so easily. It’s as though I was using a different kind of lemon. A perfect balance of slightly sour with salty sweet…and the olives…and the onions…oh god the onions. This was SUCH a good recipe. A real show-stopper. Perfect for a dinner party or a special occasion. It takes some work, but wow it’s worth it…