Moroccan Chicken Pie

I love, love, LOVE the flavors of this dish--similar to the Chicken Tagine I made a while back. In fact, I made it even more like that dish by adding the olives and preserved lemon. This is out of one of the books I bought at the thrift store, and I was happy that I could find a savory pie dish that wasn't the same old thing.

Ingredients:

• 
  • 2 tbs butter
  • 3 lbs chicken breasts and thighs
  • 1 lrg onion chopped fine
  • 2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1 tsp ground ginger
  • 2 tsp ground cumin
  • 1/4 to 1/2 tsp cayenne or to taste
  • 1 tsp ras al hanaut
  • pinch saffon soaked in 2 tbs warm water
  • 1/2 c chicken stock
  • 1 c egg substitute
  • 1/2 c cilantro
  • 1/4 c chopped parsley
  • 1/3 c chopped olives
  • 1/2 chopped preserved lemon
  • 16 sheets filo pastry

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Melt the butter in a dutch oven, add chicken, onion, spices, and the stock. Add salt and pepper and cook until chicken is cooked through. Add the eggs and cook, stirring constantly until the mixture is quite dry. Stir in cilantro, parsley, olives, and preserved lemon.
2. Place first filo sheet on parchment sheet, and spray with cooking spray. Place another and another in a pinwheel pattern, spraying in between, until you've used half the sheets. Then add the mixture (it should be pretty dry, otherwise the liquid will ruin the dough) Fold the dough up around it, and top with more sheets spraying in between, tucking the edges under until you have a round pie. Spray the top with cooking oil.
3. Bake in pre-heated 350 oven for 40-45 minutes or until cooked through and brown. I cooked it on a pizza stone, moving it on a parchment sling.
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Baked Kibbeh and Carmelized Onions

I went to graduate school in Ohio, and at that time did a lot more eating out than I do now. Mediterranean food was one of my favorites--pita, felafel, hummus, and kibbeh. So when I saw a recipe for a baked kibbeh that was pretty easy, I wanted to give it a try. The kibbeh I used to eat was a fried beef fritter, cinnamon scented and flavorful. This recipe is baked and uses lamb--though I added some beef as the ground lamb was over 8 dollars a pound. I also changed the recipe by making the caramelized onions in the slow cooker--which actually worked and only ended up with one night overwhelming onion scented apartment.

Ingredients:

2/3 c cracked bulgar wheat
1/2 lbs lamb
1/4 lbs beef
1 large onion
 tsp cinnamon
alspice
salt and pepper

Topping:
Lots of onions
1/4 c pinenuts
1/2 tsp cinnamon
allspice
salt and pepper

So this recipe has two parts, and I made them on two different days, bringing them together on a third day. Though it really isn't a complicated recipe, I just spread it out. One the first day I made the kibbeh base, the second I caramelized the onions, and the third I brought it all together.

First the bulgur needs to be rinsed and drained, and set aside to dry. The onion is peeled and then pureed, and added to the meat, salt, pepper, cinnamon, and a bit of allspice. I used my immersion blender to blend it all to a paste. Even though I used ground beef and ground lamb, this took some doing to break down the gristle. Once that was a paste, the bulgur is added and blended again.

This mixture is pressed into a baking dish--a large tart pan would work, or a 9x13 inch dish, which is what I used. Then it is scored. At this point I covered the pan and froze it until I was ready to cook.


So as I was contemplating making this dish, I was researching caramelized onions for tips and tricks, since I've never done it before. Somewhere on line I read that you could do it in a crock pot, and that it would be hands off and produce lovely caramelized onions with much less work. Well, of course I had to give it a try and since my crock pot is enormous I had to get a bunch of onions!

Monday night, around 10 pm when I was off of work, I chopped 5 lbs or so of onions and filled my crock pot to the brim. I pre-sprayed the pot with cooking spray before hand, but didn't add anything else. I cooked them on low all night long--and my apartment smelled SO strongly of onions I had to shut the bedroom door. In the morning I drained a bunch of the liquid and then I turned them down to warm when I went to work for another 9 hours. When I got home I cranked it to hot with the lid off to get any remaining liquid.

I didn't use all of the onions in this topping, though there is no shortage of things one can do with a lovely pot of caramelized onions! For the topping I toasted the pinenuts in a hot pan and then added a bunch of the onions, the cinnamon, salt and pepper, and a bit of allspice.


The kibbeh base goes in a 375 degree oven until it turns brown on top and is cooked through--depending on how thick it is in the pan will change how long it needs to cook. I overcooked mine, because I didn't check it quickly enough, so be careful. The kibbeh base is topped with the onion pinenut mixture. I served it with zucchini fritters and leftover spinach salad.

The Verdict: Fragrant and delicious--it isn't the same as what I had in Columbus, but it was still the same flavors. The cinnamon in the meat really worked, especially with the onions. If I did it again,I'd use more of the onions for the topping and increase the amount of topping.

Moroccan Fruit Salad

According to Claudia Roden's Arabesque, a typical dessert to go after a hearty Moroccan meal is a light orange salad. I would love to say that I followed her recipe exactly to get the full experience, but the recipe in the book is so simple that my lack of orange flower extract left me with just sliced orange. So I experimented and added some things that I think stay true to the original concept and flavor profiles. This is a great winter dessert for when the stores are overflowing with all kinds of citrus!

Ingredients:

2-3 oranges
2-3 tangelos
4-5 clementines
1 pomegranente
lemon zest
almond extract
cinnamon
allspice






This is a super simple dish--but has an interesting flavor profile that transports you across the world! Peal and chop the citrus, taking off as much of the pith as possible. If you want to be fancy, you can cut it out in segments, getting all the pith out. For the larger fruit I cut off the peal and then sliced and tore the pieces apart. As I slice them I put them in a bowl, trying to collect the juice as well. Next get the pomegranate seeds out of the fruit--there are probably better techniques, but I just cut it in half and used my hands to get the seeds out. They get tossed in with the citrus as well.

I drained some of the juice into a small bowl and added a dash of cinnamon, a small grate of an allspice berry, a drop of almond extract, and a quick zest of lemon. You can also whisk in some powdered sugar if your citrus isn't sweet. That is tossed over the citrus and the salad is chilled.

The Verdict: The warm seasonings with the cool citrus, and the crunch of pomegranate really elevate this fruit salad. Plus healthier than the almond cookies I'd thought to make. Use whatever citrus you can find in the store, different kinds mixed together make a nice contrast!