A happy weekend of cooking and eating in Denver.
The mountains, the open space, the wide open sky, Wild Oats and lots and lots of food. I spent a long weekend visiting the sister and her husband and since we all love to cook, we opted to stay in rather than spending the money at pricey restaurants. For their wedding, they received a Tagine. And I've been dieing to use it. We found a recipe on Epicurious for Chicken and Chickpea Tagine. The hardest part about the whole dish was finding the spices. The recipe called for Harissa and Ras al-Hanut. I'd heard of Harissa; a spicy Moroccon sauce. But we just couldn't find it. Not at the Indian grocery, and not at my favorite grocery store, Wild Oats. Same with the Ras al-Hanut. So, we made them. Google is a beautiful thing, and thanks to my personal food expert, Chris, he read us the recipes over the phone so we could put them together.
The rest of the recipe went together easily. We browned the chicken in the base of the tagine,removed it and added the tomatoes, chickpeas and spices, returned to chicken to the pan and threw it in the oven for 40 minutes. When it was done, we served it with basmati rice, and the harrissa/creme fraiche mixture. The flavors were intense and complicated. We could taste the cinnamon, the caraway and the saffron. The chicken was tender. I'll be making this again. Now, I just need a tagine.
And a side of curried cauliflower. Yum.
That was the first night.
No comments:
Post a Comment