Chicken Tagine with Preserved Lemon and Olives

Method

This is the tagine most people meet first, and it teaches the core technique of the cuisine: a dry braise where a small amount of liquid becomes completely absorbed and integrated, not a stew where you build a stock and reduce a sauce. Season the chicken thighs and brown them, skin-side down, in the olive oil in a heavy casserole or tagine over a medium heat until the skin is deep gold. This step is about colour and flavour, not cooking through — lift the pieces out and set them aside once browned.

Lower the heat and add the finely sliced onions to the fat, cooking them gently until soft and translucent, then stir in the crushed garlic. Now add the spices — ground ginger, turmeric, and cumin — and cook them in the fat for a minute so they bloom. Crumble the saffron between your fingers into a little warm stock to draw out its colour and perfume before adding it. Unlike Indian or Ethiopian cooking, moroccan-cuisine|Moroccan spicing layers these in individually rather than toasting them into a single blend, and the result should smell warm and aromatic rather than fiery.

Return the chicken to the pot, nestling the pieces into the onions. Pour in the saffron stock — the liquid should barely come up the sides of the meat, not cover it. Now add the preserved lemon: scrape out and discard the soft pulp, then finely chop the salty, fragrant rind and scatter it in. This is added during the cooking, not at the end, so its floral sourness has time to work into the sauce. Bring to a gentle simmer, cover, and cook very slowly for forty-five minutes to an hour, until the chicken is tender and almost falling from the bone.

For the last ten minutes, stir in the green olives to warm through, and take the lid off if the sauce needs to reduce — it should end up glossy and concentrated, clinging to the chicken rather than sitting thin and watery beneath it. If it is soupy, the dish has not finished; let it cook down. Check the seasoning carefully, remembering the preserved lemon and olives are already salty. Finish with a generous scattering of chopped fresh coriander and serve with couscous or bread to soak up the sauce.