Moroccany Lemony Chicken

Malaysia, like the rest of the world, is sadly battling the deadly coronavirus outbreak. We’ve been under a partial shutdown in the hopes of breaking the chain of infection and curbing the spread. We must say, as great as it is being able to work from home, the idea of never being able to go out, see Darsh’s mom, go hiking, grab a coffee or a meal, really does take its toll. Especially as working in the news industry, we’ve been quite overwhelmed with covering news of the crisis day in and out. What about you guys?

Still, shoutout to the overworked medical frontliners who are braving the risks just to help the ill, other medical staff holding the fort so key medical services can keep running, the police and security officers working to enforce the law and keep us safe, welfare officers and NGOs working to feed and look after the poor and marginalised, the public servants who keep the world churning, the supermarket workers, security guards, postal service workers and more who keep us all one step closer to sanity and away from utter chaos.

And a silver lining if we must find one, is that the imposed home quarantine has really given us time for each other and to, well, cook. It’s been a mad almost year since we moved back to Malaysia and we’ve been guilty of neglecting this beautiful website #hangsheadinshame. But we figured that many people could use some quarantine cooking inspiration, to get out of those stuck-at-home blues. Maybe also a little distraction from the news? In any case, we hope our Moroccan-inspired lemon chicken dish would go a little way to add some colour and cheer into your day.

PS: If anything is to be learnt from all this, is that mankind is more interconnected to each other than we’d like to admit. And while we must all practice appropriate social distancing measures, the only way the virus will win is if we turn against each other, instead of remaining together in our hearts.

Covid-19 cares not about age or race, or nationality, gender or skin colour. So ditch the blame game and xenophobia, the each man-for-himself mentality. Humanity will get through this, but we can only do so together. 

Ingredients

• 1kg chicken pieces
• Pinch of saffron, very lightly dry roasted
• 2 large onions, thickly sliced
• 2 large dried dates, deseeded and sliced lengthwise
• 3-4 dried apricots, sliced lengthwise
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 8 - 10 pitted green olives
• 8 - 10 pitted black olives
• 1 tbsp capers, rinsed
• 1 lemon, sliced
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 1-2 cups water (depending on amount of gravy desired)
• Chopped coriander
• 1/2 tsp salt
• For chicken marinade
• 5 cloves garlic, rough chopped
• Thumb size ginger, rough chopped
• 2 large dried dates, deseeded and rough chopped
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 1 tbsp Ras El Hanout
• 1 tbsp za'atar
• 1 tsp fennel
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper powder
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp course ground black pepper
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• *You can replace the Ras El Hanout + za'atar with 1 tbsp cumin powder + 1 tbsp sumac
• *We used a tagine to cook this dish, but a large cast iron pot/Dutch oven works too