Chicken tajine with honey and pears

This is a new friend of mine! I bought it today :) I have been fascinated by tajines for a while now and actually planned buying one with discount during the Dny Marianne. But then I saw this offer above and decided to buy the green tajine now. It can be used to cook on a stove and in the oven, very unusual for glazed clay pot! I think it may well become one of my favourite pieces of cookware.
This is the first dish I tried cooking in my new and shiny tajine and it worked out beautifully!

The original recipe comes from one of my favourite food blogs. I amended the recipe a bit though. This represents Morrocan food is to me - fragrant, rich, delicate, sweet and savoury at the same time, colourful. Delicious!

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken chopped into pieces

1 medium onion, very finely chopped

1 smallish bunch of coriander

2 medium sized sticks of cinammon

1 tablespoon of grated ginger

300ml of saffron water (details later)

4 firm pears

50gr of butter

5 tablespoons of honey

salt, white pepper

olive oil

Heat up some olive oil in you tajine and throw in the chopped onion, fry it on medium flame until soft and translucent. Turn up the heat and add the chicken, let brown for several minutes. Pour 300ml of warm (NOT hot) water into a glass and add a small pinch (5-8 strands) of saffron or a teaspoon of ground saffron. Mix well. As the result you should have a bright orange liquid tasting strongly of saffron. Pour this liquid onto the tajine along with the cinnamon and ginger, add the coriander (tied together by a thread so it does not fall apart), salt and pepper. Cover and let simmer on medium to low heat for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes place the tajine into the oven, which has been heated to 170C-190C. Leave for 45 minutes.

Meanwhile peel the pears, remove stalks and cut into quarters. In a non stick pan heat up the butter, add the pears and the honey. Let the pears caramelise on high heat until a brown caramel forms. You can see it and also smell it - it's brown, sticky and smells like candy.

After the tajine has been in the oven for 45 minutes add the pears together with the caramel. Let cook for another 15 minutes.

Serve with a neutral sidedish that is suitable for soaking up the delicious sauce, something like plain couscous or rice.

Something like fajitas...

I'm not an expert on tex-mex cuisine. I've never been to the USA nor Mexico, so I am not claiming that this is THE original recipe, this is just the way I do it. I find that Prague restaurants serving fajitas tend to skimp on meat a lot and basically serve sauteed onions and bell peppers with a few strips of meat. That's why I stopped eating fajitas in restaurants and now we sometimes make make them at home. This dish is a real crowd pleaser, you serve the separate ingredients and your guests assemble their fajitas themselves. If you decide to cook the more traditional beef fajitas use good quality meat!

Igredients for 2 people:

1 -Meat

500 gr chicken breast

1 teaspoon of ground cumin, paprika, oregano, brown sugar

1 teaspoon hot chile sauce (I use green habanero sauce)

2 teaspoons of avocado oil (or olive oil)

juice of 1 lime

1 crushed garlic clove

1/2 of a yellow and red pepper

salt pepper

*1 small sliced onion

2 - Tomato salsa

2 ripe tomatoes

6-8 slices of pickled jalapenos (I've never seen fresh jalapenos in Prague)

juice of 1/2 lime

1/half of a crushed garlic clove

salt, pepper

* 2 tablepspoons of finely chopped onion

3 - Guacamole

1 very ripe big avocado

juice of 1/2 lime

salt pepper

1 tablespoon of the tomato salsa

fresh coriander, chopped

* 1 tablespoon of finely chopped onion

4 - For serving

6 medium sized tortillas - preferably corn tortillas

Grated cheese

Sour cream

*I don't eat raw onions! That's why I rarely use them, but fajitas actually should contain onions.

Preparation:

Cut the meat and peppers into strips, mix with other ingredients from the Meat part and let stand in the fridge for 6 hours at least, I leave to marinate overnight.

Prior to cooking prepare the salsas. For the tomato salsa finely chop the tomatoes or use a processor to do it. Finely chop the pickled jalapenos and add to the tomatoes, add other ingredients and mix well. For the guacamole cut the avocados in half and remove pit. Mash the insides of the avocado in a bowl, if the avocado is ripe enough than it will be easy to do. Add the lime juice, salt, pepper and some of the tomato salsa. Mix well.

Heat a large skillet with some oil. Stirfry the chicken with the peppers.

Put salsas, cheese and sourcream into separate bowls. Serve the meat with the tortillas, salsas and condiments. Enjoy!

Roast chicken - the way I do it

Everybody loves roast chicken and there are hundreds and hundreds of recipes. For us, a whole roasted chicken is the perfect comfort food. It's easy as a piece of cake.

Ingredients:

1 chicken - I prefer to buy the yellow ones, but this time there were none

1/2 small lemon - I always buy the organic ones

5 big cloves of garlic + 1 whole bulb

herbs - thyme, rosemary

olive oil

potatoes -about 1 kg

Preparation:

Wash the chicken, sprinkle it generously with salt and pepper. Cut the carefully washed lemon into quarters and put inside the chicken along with 2 cloves of garlic and a few stems of rosemary or thyme, or both. Place the chicken into a baking dish and pour some olive oil over it. Let stand in the fridge for 6 hours at least. When ready to cook peel the potatoes, or don't peel them if they are new potatoes. Cut them into pieces and place into the baking dish along with the chicken. Add salt and pepper to taste, add 5-6 stems of herbs and 3 cloves of garlic cut into pieces. Cut the whole garlic bulb in half and place into baking dish. Sprinkle with olive oil and cover with alfoil. Cook covered at 180C for 45 minutes, uncover and cook for another 45 minutes until a crust forms. Occasionally smear the chicken with the juice that forms at the bottom. Serve and enjoy!

Chicken drummets with lemon, honey and rosemary

I try not to cook heavy meals when there's such a heat outside but husband needs his proteins every evening, so my choice is most often chicken or fish. This recipe is dead easy plus you can marinate the chicken overnight and just shove it into the oven one hour prior to dinner.

Ingredients:

1 kg of chicken pieces - no breasts please

Marinade:

juice of a very big 1/2 lemon - about 5-6 table spoons

3 teaspoons of honey

1 big stem of rosemary - or 1,5 teaspoons of dried rosemary

dried oregano - optional

2 or more cloves of garlic - cut into pieces

3 tablespoons of olive oil

salt

pepper

Instructions:

Mix all marinade ingredients with the chicken, make sure the marinade is evenly distrubuted. You can do it all in the baking dish to avoid washing up. Arrange the chicken in one layer and leave to marinate for a couple of hours at least, but the longer the better. Preheat oven to 200C. Roast chicken for 45 minutes covered with alfoil, uncover and roast for another 15 minutes. My chicken drummets were not too big, but if you have bigger pieces increase cooking time to 1h 15min. You can also bake potatoes along with the chicken in the same dish.

I served the chicken with string beans I bought at the Holesovicka trznice today. I simply sauteed them with a chopped fresh tomato and some chopped dill.