This recipe originates from Morocco; or at least that's what the Mediterranean the Beautiful Cookbook says. I've had Moroccan food before at a restaurant, and it involved eating everything (including the chicken) with my hands. This dish is intended to not replicate that experience but to use up a lot of preserved green olives that just happened to be on hand at the time.
The organic chicken from Trader Joe's was skimpy on giblets, so I wasn't able to take them or the chicken's missing liver to mash up into the sauce. The hardest part of the recipe was pitting the whole green olives using a cherry pitter. It's very hard work to do it by hand. Overall, this recipe process was very similar to making curry chicken.
The original recipe called for preserved lemon, and I only had fresh lemons on hand. Using a vegetable peeler, I removed the peel of a lemon and sliced the peel thinly then soaked the peel in lemon juice with a pinch of salt and sugar; because if I had two extra days, that's how the preserving could have started. Anyhow. The peel doesn't go into the pot until 30 minutes of cook time has transpired.
This dish was served with Israeli couscous that was cooked in duck broth and lightly spiced with ground cinnamon, ground ginger, ground cumin, and freshly ground black pepper.
Ingredients
1 whole organic chicken, cut into pieces
1 c white onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper
1/4 c olive oil
2 c water (I used mushroom dashi that was leftover from a previous meal)
2 c good quality green olives, pitted
juice of two lemons
peel of one lemon, thinly sliced
Directions
1. Take a whole raw chicken and carve it into individual pieces (wings, thighs, drumsticks, etc). I thought the chicken breasts would have added too much meat to the recipe; so those were reserved for another dish. If you are going to trim off the excess fat, don't throw it out, toss it into the pot with the chicken.
2. In a large heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat, add olive oil. Add spices and onion and stir until the oil is fragrant, a couple minutes. Add the chicken pieces (including giblets, if any) and turn the pieces over to coat with the spices and oil. Add water or a neutral broth to cover (approx 2 cups). Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes.
3. Add olives, lemon peel, and lemon juice. Cook for an additional 10-15 minutes. Transfer chicken and sauce to a platter. Serve hot.
