Diana Henry shares her recipe for Moroccan chicken with tomatoes and saffron-honey jam from her debut cookbook Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons. She notes: recipes should be guides rather than instructions set in stone, but in this case do what the recipe says: reduce the sauce until it is really jammy.
You can pick up the new 2024 edition of Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons here.
Serves 4
Ingredients
- 1.7kg (3lb 11oz) whole chicken, jointed into 8 pieces
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 large onion, roughly chopped
- 3 garlic cloves, crushed
- 2½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1½ teaspoons ground ginger
- 800g (1¾lb) tomatoes, roughly chopped
- 275ml (9½fl oz) chicken stock, or water
- ½ teaspoon saffron threads
- 3–5 tablespoons runny honey
- 1 teaspoon orange flower water
- 25g (1oz) flaked almonds, toasted
- small bunch of coriander, roughly chopped
- sea salt flakes and freshly ground
- black pepper
Method
Season the chicken pieces and quickly brown them all over in a warmed pan in the olive oil.
Set the chicken aside and cook the onion in the same pan until soft and just colouring. Add the garlic, cinnamon and ginger and cook, stirring, for about 1 minute. Tip in the tomatoes, mix everything together well, reduce the heat and cook for another 5 minutes or so, stirring from time to time.
Boil the stock or water and dissolve the saffron in it. Pour this over the vegetables and bring the whole thing to the boil. Set the chicken pieces on top, together with any juices that have come out of them, and spoon the liquid over them. Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer, cover and cook until the chicken is tender; it should take about 30 minutes, but check after 25.
Remove the chicken pieces, set them aside, cover and keep warm. Now bring the juices to the boil and simmer until well reduced to a kind of ‘cream’: it shouldn’t be at all sloppy. Add honey to taste and continue to cook until well-reduced and jam-like. Check the seasoning and add the orange flower water. Return the chicken and warm it through in the sauce.
Serve scattered with the toasted almonds and chopped coriander, with couscous or flatbreads on the side.
For more gloriously sumptuous recipes from the Middle East, Mediterranean and North Africa, pick up the new 2024 edition of Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons here.