Moroccan Chicken with Lemon and Olives

Updated, from the recipe archive. Originally posted 2006.

A few years ago, I purchased a tagine, an earthenware cooking and serving pot common in North Africa, with which to experiment. Have you ever tried cooking with a tagine? Or another type of clay pot? There's something special about cooking with clay. The heating is more even than what you would get in a regular skillet, and the liquid that gets released from the food while it cooks bastes the food keeping it moist. A tagine used on a stove-top gives you that wonderful slow, even cooking that you would normally get from an oven-braise. The conical top returns moisture to the food below, and when the dish is done, you can serve it right in the pot.

My first foray into cooking with the tagine was with this Moroccan chicken dish which turned out beautifully - succulent, tender, and full of flavor. I pulled the recipe together from various sources including the New York Times, The New Basics Cookbook, and recipes by Le Souk Ceramique, the maker of my tagine. Preserved lemon is traditionally called for in this dish (very easy to make, by the way, all you need are lemons, salt, and time), and in my opinion, worth making just for this dish. But if you don't have any, you can easily use thin slices of regular lemon. Also, you don't absolutely need to use a tagine to make this dish; just use a large, shallow, thick-bottomed, covered skillet.

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