CSA week 16 - Sephardic celery and artichoke stew

Last time I promised a recipe for something you'd never heard of before. All I had left from the CSA was a head of celery so it was a tough assignment, but I think I've got something here to suit. I found this recipe over at Sephardicrecipes.com where the poster says it was reconstructed by his father based on a dish his mother used to make in Morocco. I don't see it, or anything like it elsewhere on the web, in my north African cookbook or in the Sephardic cookbooks Google Books has scanned. If you have heard of it, do please tell me where.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 Tablespoons olive oil
0 - 1/2 pound stew meat [If you're going to use meat, lamb or goat would probably be most appropriate. Pork is right out. I don't have a local source of stew lamb or goat (although I'm sure it's not hard to come by in Miami if you don't insist on the source being between UM and my home. I used beef.]
3 large cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 bunch celery, chopped into 2-inch lengths
1 bay leaf
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup cold water
7 ounces (by weight) pitted Moroccan green olives, drained, rinsed and halved if large [I chose my grocery poorly and didn't find specifically Moroccan olives so I think I'm missing some spices that would have been included. I picked a tart olive without herbs in the brine to substitute.]
7 ounces (by weight) artichoke hearts, roughly chopped [My grocery had two choices and I picked the less vinegary one. The dish benefits from a bit of acid so you should pick the other one.]

1. Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat until shimmering. add the meat and cook until half browned. Salt judiciously with a mind towards how salty your olives are. Add the garlic, turn the heat down to medium, and cook until the garlic is fragrant and becoming translucent.

2. Add the bay leaf and spices. Cook briefly until spices are fragrant. Add celery and water. Salt again otherwise your celery will be extra bland, but be careful. Stir well, bring to a boil, cover, turn heat down to low and cook, stirring occasionally, 25 minutes until celery is just getting tender.

3. Add olives and artichoke hearts. Turn heat up a little and simmer uncovered for 20 minutes more until most of the water has evaporated.

Adjust seasoning and acid level. Garnish with parsley and/or cilantro, let cool a bit as hot olives are just weird, and serve over couscous.



The celery and artichoke end up quite soft so the slight chew of the olives and the meaty bite of the beef are important to add textural interest to the dish. Even after the cooking, the olives are pretty intense, dominating the dish, but the mild celery mellows them out and adds a slight sweetness. It's no great showcase for the celery, but the celery isn't just filler either. The artichoke hearts don't do much. There's some hint of their flavor in the mix, particularly as some of the leaves have come off and fallen apart, but it's mild and not far from the cooked celery. The spices counterpoint, laying earthiness under the tartness of the olives and tying the various elements together. The beef adds some bulk, but I don't think the flavor quite works. Go with the lamb or mutton if you can get it. A little gaminess would stand up better to the other flavors here. Other than that, I do like the dish. It's an unusual (to me) flavor combination, but not hard to get used to and quite pleasant.

Moroccan fried chicken

I usually prefer to use the original-language name in the title, and the cookbook, The World's Best Fried Chicken Recipes (if they say so themselves), calls this recipe "M'Hammer" which is a pretty cool name. But it's not a term that Google turns up much for and most of the recipes its attached to are for grilled, not fried, meats. Then again, Google only turns up one Moroccan fried chicken recipe and it doesn't have any Arabic name attached so who knows? Other than just about everyone living in Morocco that is.

All that aside (and since all that was just an excuse to use the term "M'Hammer" despite its doubtful applicability, aside is where it belongs), this recipe has a really interesting technique--a reversed fricassee--that I've never seen before and was curious to try.

Ingredients:
1 small chicken, under three pounds if you can find one
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
copious chicken broth (at least four cups if you're using canned. You can get by with less if you're using homemade that you condensed down for storage like I did.)
salt and pepper (preferably white)
1/4 teaspoon crumbled saffron threads
3 large sprigs parsley or cilantro
zest of 2 preserved lemons, chopped (did you know to use only the zest? I didn't until now.)
juice of 1 lemon
2 Tablespoons cilantro or parsley, chopped (I like to use both for north African recipes so I used sprigs of parsley and finished with chopped cilantro.)
4 Tablespoons butter
1 cup olive oil

0. Clean the chicken and pat dry. Season generously with salt and pepper.

1. Pick out a stew pot or dutch oven that will comfortably fit the chicken, but isn't much bigger than necessary for that. Layer the bottom of the pot with half of the sliced onion. Put the chicken on top, either side up. Add broth and/or salted water until the chicken is covered at least three quarters of the way up. The broth will get cooked down later so you can dilute it a bit now, but not so much that it tastes thin and weak. (It's up to you, but I think it's OK to taste the broth even with a raw chicken sitting in there. There's no way you found an industrial chicken under 3 pounds so had to have bought a boutique organic pastured bird that's unlikely to carry anything nasty. And even if it does, the nastiness hasn't had time to seep out into the broth. And even if it has, is one sip going to kill you?) Top the chicken with the rest of the onion and add saffron, parsley sprigs and preserved lemon to the pot.

2. Turn the heat to medium-high and bring the broth to a boil. This will be frustratingly slow, but don't rush it. If you turn the heat up, it'll wait until you get bored and wander out of the kitchen and then go into a full rolling boil all over the stove top. Instead, as soon as it starts to boil, loosely cover the pot, reduce the heat to low and slowly simmer until the chicken is very tender, about 45 minutes.

3. Move the chicken carefully to a draining rack over a platter or tray to catch the drippings. Remove the parsley sprigs (and, if you forgot the saffron earlier like I did, add it now). Move the broth off of your primary burner (and possibly into a smaller pot) and bring to a higher boil to start it cooking down. Adjust heat so that you end up with a reduced, thick sauce in about 20 minutes. Consider mashing up the onions a bit if they haven't fallen apart on their own. Add the drippings to the sauce and pat the chicken dry.

4. Place a medium cast iron or heavy-based non-stick pan or dutch oven on your primary burner. Add the butter and olive oil and turn heat to high to melt the butter and raise the temperature to near smoking. Carefully add the chicken to the oil and fry for a few minutes on each side until it is golden brown and delicious. Try to break the skin as little as possible or the oil will get in and dry the meat out. The skin's pretty delicate by now so I wasn't entirely successful. Once it's browned on all four (six?) sides, remove chicken from pan and drain again. Check the sauce for consistency and, if you're happy with it, turn off the heat and stir in the lemon juice and chopped cilantro. Cool the chicken for five minutes, carve into serving pieces and serve with (but not covered by) the sauce on a bed of couscous with maybe a vegetable of some sort.


In retrospect, I don't know if "fried chicken" is the right term for this dish. If I came at it without knowing that label beforehand, I think I might called it crisped stewed chicken. The frying is just a finishing touch. A pretty good finishing touch, sure, but not essential to the dish. I do like the idea; if I were to go back and do the chicken in curdled milk recipe again I'd fry the chicken afterward instead of before cooking it in the milk. On the other hand, that chicken picked up a lot more flavor from the cooking medium than this one did. Granted there was a lot more there to be picked up, but the cooking may have opened up the meat to outside influences. Certainly this chicken picked up a lot of flavor from the sauce during a night of soaking in the refrigerator.

As for that sauce, the onion, preserved lemon, parsley and cilantro is a normal combination of Moroccan flavors (at least for the American kitchen approximation)--boldly tart, savory and herbal. If you like that sort of thing then that's the sort of thing you like. I'm pretty happy with it myself. I'm just a little disappointed that the chicken was bland in comparison. I really don't like it when the meat in a dish becomes just something to put the sauce on. That chicken gave its life for my dinner; it seems the least I can do is to try to bring out its best.

CSA week 15 - leblebi-esque escarole and chikpea soup

I was looking at the escarole and cannellini bean recipe in this week's newsletter and thinking that the chickpeas I had handy would substitute well for the beans I didn't. A quick search turned up this recipe for an escarole and chickpea stew that seemed promising. The author said it was based on leblebi, a traditional Moroccan breakfast soup. Well, it turns out there are a few different dishes that go by that name but when I came across this recipe I was hooked.

It hasn't really come out in the dishes I've talked about on the blog but I'm a huge fan of garnishes. My favorite presentation is a simple dish surrounded by a dozen bowls so everyone can personalize their serving. So this list of leblebi garnishes:
Lemon wedges
Coarse sea salt
Harissa
Chopped fresh tomatoes
Chopped green and red bell peppers
2 hardboiled eggs, chopped
Rinsed capers
Sliced pickled turnips
Flaked canned tuna fish (oil- or water-packed)
Freshly ground cumin
Finely chopped fresh parsley
Finely chopped cilantro
Sliced preserved lemons
Croutons or sliced stale bread
Thinly sliced scallions, both white and green parts
Olive oil

called out to me.

There's nothing to the soup itself: four cups of chicken soup (I used half my stock and half from a can), one can of chickpeas, one head of escarole. Simmer until tender (around five minutes I found). It's everything else that makes the dish.

The most important garnishes are the stale bread underneath and the loosely poached egg and harissa on top. Harissa, if you didn't read my previous post on it, is a North African chili oil. The particular bottle I've got has the other ubiquitous North African condiment, preserved lemons, mixed in. I also added tomatoes, green pepper, capers, scallion, cilantro and parsley, black olives (which weren't on this particular list but they're also typical for North Africa), sea salt and olive oil. I probably wasn't suppose to use all of that at once, but I liked having a different combination of flavors and textures in every spoonful. Five minutes cooking didn't give time for the soup's flavors to blend. The escarole and chickpeas retain their character in the crowd. This is simple (sort of) hearty comfort food. You can tell that even if the flavors are unfamiliar. My only advice is to go easy on the harissa and preserved lemons or they'll walk all over the other flavors.

One final thing just so Googlers with different terminology can still find this recipe: garbanzo, garbanzo, garbanzo, garbanzo. There, that should do it.

CSA week eight - Moroccan-flavor stuffed pepper

Note please that that's not Moroccan-style; I don't think there's a north African tradition of stuffing peppers. This is one of those let's-try-to-do-something-interesting-with-what-I've-got-in-the-refrigerator type of recipes. What I happened to have is leftover charcoal grilled chicken and onions from a Colombian barbecue restaurant and a bottle of harissa, the Moroccan hot pepper and preserved lemon spice mix. You could grill real shish kabob I suppose but if you're going to do that just cut up the pepper, add it to the skewer and forget this silly recipe. If you're in need of appropriate leftovers I recommend Al Carbon at Coral Way and 23rd. There's a middle eastern market a few blocks east too where you might find some harissa. The particular bottle I've got actually came from a TJ Maxx in Wilmington, Delaware (Thanks Mom!). You can find some real oddities hidden in their food section.

For the most part, the recipe is as straightforward as any stuffed-anything recipe. Get all of the ingredients that need to be cooked cooked, chop everything up small, mix them in with a starch (in this case couscous) and pack it into the vegetable to be stuffed. Of the chopped items in this particular case, I kind of regret the olives. Black olives are a traditional match in Moroccan cuisine with hot peppers and preserved lemon, but I don't think I had the right sort.

The one interesting thing here is a trick I came across while looking up what to do with the harissa. In some recipes, instead of just dumping it into the dish, it's mixed into a beaten egg which is cooked into an omelet which keeps the sauce nicely sequestered. Modern molecular gastronomy does something similar using various chemicals to trap sauces in sheets or caviar-esque balls. Today I had the heat a little too high, screwed up the omelet, and ended up making goopy mess I was hoping to avoid after mixing it into the couscous but I've done it successfully in the past and it was pretty neat. If eggs didn't go with the dish you're making (as they do here), you could use just an egg white and control the sauce without adding any extraneous flavor. It's an idea to keep in reserve anyway.

So, I mixed everything into the couscous, packed it into the pepper, sprayed it with olive oil, sprinkled on some salt, and baked it at 350 for 25 minutes. If I had a gas grill I might have charred the pepper for some extra flavor, but this is Miami so I'm more likely to have a charcoal barbecue handy.

The end result looks about the same as it did when it went into the oven but the pepper is nicely tender but not collapsing (one benefit of not dousing it in sauce and then over-cooking as many Italian stuffed pepper recipes call for). Other than the olives, I think everything worked well together. Still and all, I'll probably just chop the pepper up and char it in a pan next time.