7 September - Moroccan chicken

I had a fantastically tasty salad for lunch today; new potatoes, fried chorizo, homegrown tomatoes and beans, some fresh cooked beetroot, a few strips of roasted pepper and a poached egg. The red chorizo-flavoured oil, mingled with the oozy egg yolk and the purple beetrooty juices all came together in a perfect, vivid puddle in the bottom of the dish to mash the potatoes into!

We had lemony Moroccan chicken for dinner with couscous and some cubes of roasted squash. Tasty, but again a bit rushed and it could've been cooked a bit longer.

30 June - Moroccan chicken and couscous

The parsley is growing by the day, so today's dinner started off as wanting to use some herbs. After a bit of browsing, I came across a recipe in a little cookbook from Bordeaux Quay, a local restaurant and cookery school. It's described as Moroccan chicken tagine, although I'm not sure it's really a tagine, more chicken with a Moroccan sauce. It didn't actually include any parsley, but I reckoned it would probably go quite well!

It's another dish that starts with a paste made of a list of ingredients whizzed up in a blender. The paste is called chermoula:

• 1 tbsp fresh coriander
• 1 lrg clove garlic
• 1/4 tsp ground cumin
• c. 1/3 chopped red chilli
• pinch of saffron
• 50ml extra virgin olive oil
• juice 1/2 lemon
• 1/4 tsp paprika
• pinch salt

1. You brown two chicken breasts in a little olive oil on both sides (just a couple of mins) and remove.
2. Fry a chopped onion gently in the same pan. The recipe asked for celery (yeuck!) and carrot, but I used a leftover golden courgette, diced, instead.
3. Chop the skin of 1/2 small preserved lemon (you really don't need more as it's quite a strong flavour) and add about half to the pan, together with 1 tbsp of the chermoula paste, 2 chopped tomatoes and 250ml chicken stock.
4. Return the chicken to the pan and leave to simmer for about 20 mins.
5. Finally, stir in a good handful of chopped coriander, parsley and mint, the rest of the chermoula and preserved lemon.

Served on top of a pile of couscous mixed with some more chopped herbs, it was really delicious - great flavours; fresh and zingy - definitely one to come back to.