Chewlog

Chicken with Preserved Lemons

April 22, 2007 chicken & game, mains

Wow. What an experience. I Hadn’t cooked anything with preserved lemons before – but they are certainly a precious discovery and something that I’m really excited about having added to my repertoire. They freaked me out to start with, but I’d spent up big on the Maggie Beer ones so I knew I was sort of safe with that.

Kate (my dinner guest) said she had thought of making preserved lemons before and it was just like ANOTHER thing that she says that I was already thinking. :] She’s a sista.

Serves: 4
Prep: 10 min
Cook time: 60 min all up

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons of olive oil
6 chicken lovely legs
2 cloves of garlic finely chopped
1 tablespoon of ginger finely chopped
1 small onion finely sliced
A pinch of saffron (soaked in hot water for 10 min)
1 ½ cups of water
Butter
5 green olives torn in half
Skin of one preserved lemon
Honey

Thanks to Kate’s brilliant thinking… honey lightly drizzled over the chicken complimented this perfectly.

1. In a large pot, brown off the chicken.
2. Add ginger, onion, garlic and the saffron and cook for a few minutes to soften
3. Add the water and bring to the boil remembering to occasionally turn the chicken. Add more water if required to prevent it from absorbing completely. It isn’t until the end of the cooking process that we want it to have really thickened to be careful not to add to much as well.
4. Once the chicken is cooked, remove from the pot and place on a baking tray. Rub lightly with butter and place in the oven for 15 minutes to brown at a high temperature. Turn the heat down on the pot, but continue to lightly simmer
5. Once brown, return the chicken to the pot along with a the olives and preserved lemon. Cook for another 10 minutes before serving with a drizzle of honey on top.

About the lemon
It’s a bit scary at first – but the thing you need to know is that this is intense salty lemon flavor and that it dissolves into the meal. So it’s great for casserole dishes and is often used in Moroccan tangines. The Maggie Beer brand comes already cut into quarters and it is the peel that is the special part. The actual lemon pulp/ pith is discarded and you need to rinse it really well to remove the excess salt.

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