Weeknight Tagine

"This traditional Moorish dish appears in various guises throughout the Arab-influenced world. Poultry cooked with dates and honey is probably one of the most ancient culinary combinations and the finished dish is deliciously succulent." – Ghillie Basan, from easy tagine










Over many years, after cooking your thousandth weeknight meal, it's simply never easy to into the realm of "this is the best ever." There's all kinds of reasons for this, not the least is that your very own self-perceived culinary masterpiece might look (over even taste) the very opposite to the kid-and-spouse combination eaters. In other words, it is time itself that teaches you the most obvious of all points about cooking, but that is sometimes hard to swallow: tastes vary. I recently received a 'best ever' vote from both wife and child and I all it all to the tagine, my new – and very much hope permanent – kitchen sidekick. The tagine I am finding out is a very intuitive and forgiving pot. One-pot meals have always made sense to me for family cooking. Gather your ingredients, add the stuff that makes sense for the overall taste of the majority of your eaters, then toss them them, turn them to a ragout style comfort food, and folks will generally be receptive. Tagine cooking is a little like finally finding a mode of doing this, but with some style, some fun, interest, and with a new flavor profile. With a tagine of chicken leg quarters with dates and honey, I know before I start the process that my main goal is to get those leg quarters tender and suffused with its surrounding stew-like ingredients – butter, ginger, garlic, olive oil, a dash of cinnamon, honey, and pitted dates. So, let's face it, knowing how the tagine works, as a sort of circulation steam system, there's a couple of things I have to do not to screw it up. One, I want my chicken skins to carry an initial flavor that will stick and not just fade in the liquid. So I browned my legs in a pan before I plopped them into the ginger and oil, sprinkling with a rotisserie chicken seasoning holds up its flavor nicely over the stewing process. After placing the tagine hood over, I could very well imagine that fresh combination of ginger and cinnamon and garlic rising up through the chicken at the bottom and then circulating back down and cooking from the top. Once in a while, even thought I am not supposed, I lifted the hood to make sure that I was not low on liquid. I placed a handful of dates along the edges of the legs, stirring in the honey at the same time, adding sweetness and a sort of gelatin texture.  I happened to decide to toss in a few baby carrots and larger cut broccoli florets over the top to steam. On the side I briefly browned a handful of almonds and eventually tossed those over the tops of the legs and dished, making each portion got dates and veggies.  As I sat the chicken legs onto the plates, I was very

pleased that the chicken was clearly tender but not yet to the moment where the meat began to disconnect from the bone – sometimes slow cookers have a tendency to render meat like this and although many might claim that this is an ideal texture, I've alway felt that usually by this time, the meat has post some of its inherent taste and structure and tastes far more like the stew surrounding than meat itself. It took it out right on time. As we began to eat, it was very promising that as an entire dish it is did not overly exotic. Moroccan, stocked full of a wonderful assortment of nuanced ingredients, could look a bit complicated for younger eaters. Here, only dates might have looked out of the ordinary; the almonds there but fine and acceptable.  The tagine had worked its magic and indeed it had become deliciously succulent, just as Basan had mapped out in the recipe description. Some 'best evers' were tossed around. Even though I realized this was one-pot cooking, I became convinced that the tagine likely does have at least two advantages that more delicately handles the cooking process: the hood is higher and makes the heating less intense on the topside than a standard dutch ceramic, and two, there is a considerable call for sweetness in tangines which of course highlights the surrounding North African culture and its abundant ingredient: dates, figs, honeys, cinnamons, even gingers, once broken down, as a sweetness. Maybe it was possible was Moroccan cooking, although from far far away, held the promise of offering a taste profile quite close to the heart of a young dinner eater.