Recipe: North African Olive And Chicken Tagine

Enjoy Chef Sabyasachi Gorai's Olive And Chicken Tagine with whole wheat couscous. 

Tagine is an African stew made with meats and vegetables cooked in an earthware pot called a tagine with a conical lid, that lets the steam drip back into the dish so that it stays moist.  But to make at home, bake the chicken in the oven in a casserole dish or glass baking dish.

Discovering culinary secrets from every nook and cranny of the globe is Chef Saby's gift and his chef spatula ventures to the Sahara to bring back this stew.

Olive And Chicken Tagine

Serves: 4-5

Ingredients

• 65 gm pitted green olives
• 2 garlic pods
• 1 dehydrated lemon, bottles available for purchase online
• 1 onion
• 25 gm green dhania or coriander or cilantro
• 50 gm walnuts
• 2 tbsp grapeseed oil or alternately extra virgin olive oil
• 600 gm chicken breast fillets, cut into chunks
• 300 gm low salt chicken stock, made with ½ stock cube (please see the note below)
• Cooked whole wheat couscous, to serve

Method

• Preheat the oven to 200°C.
• In a blender, combine the olives, garlic, lemon, half the onion roughly chopped, most of the coriander including the stalks, 25 gm walnuts and 1 tbsp oil and grind to get a coarse paste.
• Heat the remaining oil in a large frying pan and fry the chicken. 
  Add the remaining onion, chopped, and saute for 5 minutes.
  Add the olive-garlic-coriander paste and cook for 2-3 minutes more.
  Stir in remaining whole walnuts and the stock.
  Bring to a boil.
• Take off heat and transfer to a casserole dish.
  Bake for 30 minutes.
  Serve with the cooked couscous sprinkled with the remaining chopped coriander.

Editor's Note: For the chicken stock, combine ½ chicken soup cube or ½ chicken broth/bouillon cube or ½ tsp chicken broth/bouillon powder with 1 cup boiling water.

Or make chicken broth from scratch by boiling 4-5 cups water with 1 whole chicken, 5-6 whole black peppercorns, 2 tspor less salt, 4 tbsp chopped parsley with stems, 2 laung or cloves, 5 pods garlic, 2 tej patta or bay leaves till vegetables are tender and the water is steeped with the flavour of the vegetables and spices. Strain and use.

Chef Sabyasachi Gorai is a consultant chef and mentor.

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