Only_Oli (The O_Zone)

With winter almost on our doors and the visit of friends for the weekend, it felt necessary to have a nice dinner dish. The key requirements were : it would be simple to prepare for 9 people, it would need to be able to “wait” for us to be ready to eat, it would be warm and filling as required by the recent turn of weather.

I decided to go for a big chicken tagine. A Moroccan slow cook dish. I hesitated between chicken, lamb or fish but decided that I would probably do a monkfish one in the future.

Everybody enjoyed it, from the 10 years old to the 47 years old. It is a great way to get some vegetables “into” my kids.

Ingredients:

• Chicken (a breast per person)
• Carrots (as you want)
• Courgettes (1 for every 2 people)
• A few small cherry tomatoes
• A couple of Garlic cloves / A couple of Red Onions
• Prunes / Green Olives / Black Olives
• Spices (very important !) : Cumin, Salt, Black Pepper, Piments de l’espelette (or dried chilis),  Paprika, Turmeric (if you want).
• Olive oil, Butter, Chicken Stock
• Honey !!
• Sliced Almonds
• Couscous to go with it.

How to Prepare :

First put a bit of olive oil and butter in a Le Creuset Dutch Oven or Casserole on a high heat. Cut the chicken in cubes of 4/5cm side. Pour the spices into the foaming butter and sear the  chicken.

Take the chicken out of the pot and transfer to a Pyrex dish. Poor the sliced carrots and red  onions and garlic into the casserole and stir. Let the onions melt but not burn. This step should be lifting all of the “suc” off the pot. Be careful not to burn the garlic.

Reduce the heat to “simmer”. Put the chicken and any juice from the chicken back into the casserole and mix a little bit to ensure chicken is evenly distributed with the vegetables. Add the olives, prunes, small tomatoes,and a good squirt of honey across the top.

Dilute the chicken stock in about half a litre of water (more if necessary). Poor the stock into the caserole. You want the liquid simply to reach the top of the vegetables. You are not making a soup, simply making sure it will have plenty of sauce to pour on the couscous later….

Put the casserole (with the lid on) into the oven on 160 degres Celsius. Slow cook for 90 minutes or 2 hours. You should check a few times and maybe stir a bit to get a nice colour on everything.

Once cooked, it can wait for you to be ready ! Serve with the couscous on hot plates and a little bit of Harissa. I like to add a few sliced almonds on top of the dish just before serving. For this I simply put the sliced almonds in a pan on a high heat for a few minutes. Watch out, as it is very easy to burn the almonds, it starts slowly then goes brown very fast…you are warned….

I also like to make a side of vegetables, I simply use carrots and courgettes and chickpeas. use the sames spices. Start with butter and spices in a sauce pan, add the carrots and courgettes stir a bit, add chicken stock, add chickpeas, cook for 20 minutes or until the carrots are tender but not too soft.

Enjoy !

Just back from Holiday and our friends in the south of France introduced us to “Caramel au beurre Salé !”. It is a recipe from Brittany. It is now an addiction for the entire family. I had to try to make some today.

Enjoy !

Ingredients:
For the base, the same as the tarte au sucre or tart rhubarb
For the Flan,
500ml de lait
2 large table spoons of corn starch
100g of fine granulated sugar
1 Vanilla sugar packet
2 eggs

How to make:
Dilute the corn starch in the cold milk
with the sugars, bring to a boil so that it thickens.
Take off the heat and put into a separate bowl to cool a bit.
The mixture should be slightly soft and coat a spoon.
Separate the eggs, put the whites aside and poor the yoke in the flan mixture.
Mix well with a whisk so that it is a bit foamy.
Whip the whites of the eggs to a strong peak.
Once the mixture has cool down enough, mix the whites into the mixture.
Pour the whole lot on the tart base and put into oven at 180 degree for 30-35 minutes.