My favorite chicken tagine
Plus random dinners, sushi at Taka, and new East Fork pottery
Happy belated Purim and Holi to all who celebrate! And Happy St Patrick’s Day if you observe. We do. By the time you read this, we will have enjoyed our corned beef dinner, which will repeat later in the week and then reubens, one of my favorite sandwiches. I know, how can a self-proclaimed non-sandwich lover have so many favorite sandwiches? I’ll post those photos next week.
Mother Nature was showing off this week, giving us temps in the mid to high 70s with clear skies. I worked outside (work work, like on my laptop, not in the garden) in the afternoon exposing one arm to the sun and already one very farmers tanned arm. I swear I will kick off my sloth and actually garden this year.
To help balance all the red meat from my time in Phoenix, we leaned into fish and chicken. I largely feel in balance again, just in time for corned beef!
One easy dinner was scallops. Josh had sent me an Instagram reel (or is it a story?) showing someone who made scallops in the style of escargot, broiled in scallop shells. We didn’t have scallop shells, and I wanted the sear on the scallops, so I chose to do it in a pan instead.
I started off making compound butter, adding finely diced shallots and garlic and chopped parsley. This would have been far faster and probably more finely mixed if I used the baby food proc, but I did not feel like washing it. So it was all mashed by hand with a fork.
Then the scallops. I salt and peppered them, then seared them on high in a skillet. I was going to follow the reel and put the compound butter in raw for serving, but decided it might not melt and that would be sad all around. I didn’t get my sear, and I don’t know why, but in the moment, I was more concerned with not overcooking the scallops now that I added in the compound butter. I covered it briefly so it would melt and cook the shallots and garlic a bit. Everything turned out beautifully, and all was right in the world.
Each of us got four scallops and sauce. This was 3 tbsp of butter which I felt was enough to enjoy and not crazy. When we get escargot out, it is always so. much. butter. I didn’t want that. No butter left behind though. We enjoyed a TGM demi-baguette with it to swipe up the sauce. Fantastic.
Josh also picked up a whole, butterflied rainbow trout, which is surprisingly not available year round. We were getting rainbow trout every week in our farm box for a while a few years ago, until we finally had had enough but it was nice to bring back.
I don’t make a lot of sauces and so often subject Josh to naked proteins, but this time I offered to make a sauce. He wanted one of butter, lemon juice, parsley, and garlic. Easy enough. It was coming together just fine until I added in the parsley at the very end which sucked up allll the liquid. I even more butter to try to compensate but it didn’t help. Alas. More butter next time, I suppose. The flavored parsley was tasty. With or without it though, the rainbow trout was delicious and cooked well, if I do say so myself.
For the week’s lunches, I made Athenian chicken out of Serial Griller. It’s an easy rub on chicken. This time, it was chicken quarters that I split into leg and thigh. Of course, it goes really well with honey mustard sauce. Even though I halved the recipe, we still have a lot of it.
Lunches for the week were French lentils, a piece of that nice Greek chicken with honey mustard I brought in a little tub, plus roasted butternut squash, carrots, and eggplant and sauteed spinach.
The “big” dinner of the week was chicken tagine, which I make from Claudia Roden’s Arabesque. It comes together fairly easily, except I always forget that the chicken cooks about an hour total and even though I started early (before 6pm), we sat down to eat around 7. But worth it.
There is something to be said for actually following a recipe. This is a silly thing to say out loud, but I find myself saying it whenever I follow a recipe to a T, apparently for the first time ever. And so it was here. Ish.
The recipe calls for a whole chicken broken down into its parts. I went with two packages of chicken thighs, so eight total. This also means everything cooks for the same time. You should cook it in a pan large enough to fit all the chicken in a single layer, and I was all too happy to break out my big Le Creuset braiser.
Two onions, finely chopped, three garlic cloves, ground ginger, and saffron, then water. The chicken cooks for forty minutes, so I flipped it every 10 minutes, ensuring that it didn’t stay this sad white chicken color.
Meanwhile, I prepped the rest of the ingredients. Parsley, chopped finely. Castelveltrano olives, which are the superior olive in my opinion, and I went a little over, but it was the right thing. These are Mezzetta in a jar which you can find at Kroger. I like them halved for this recipe. And preserved lemons! I love love love preserved lemons. The recipe calls for one whole lemon but I did 1 1/2 and left it in long strips so they wouldn’t get lost. I also had some leftover lemon chunks from a past Ottolenghi recipe and added it to my bowl which gave it that extra oomph, I think because they weren’t heated. This also gave me the opportunity to consolidate preserved lemon jars, so now I have just two on the condiment shelf.
All these things are added to the braiser and then it simmers another 10 or so minutes to bring it all together. Maybe it’s 20. In the past, I would find that the sauce was too thin and debate taking the chicken out to simmer the sauce down, but it never really got to that unctuous level. And so what was I saying about actually following the recipe? The texture was perfect.
I ate my tagine with lentils, because half a bag of Rancho Gordo lentils goes a long way. Josh had his with couscous. And yes, this is the right amount of preserved lemon, or at least it was when I added in those extra bits. This is really a stellar dinner and it always makes my tummy happy.
I feel like I’ve been going out to eat a lot: work lunches, Phoenix trip. And it makes me want to go out to eat more. I’ve been craving Taqueria Del Sol, mmm, fish taco. Or biryani. But I can always eat sushi, and it satisfies.
Dinner at Taka is not really cheating and he knows that I try to avoid too much rice. But you know I can’t give up the hand rolls. It was so nice out that we sat outside, enjoying the warmth without any bugs. Here are a few standouts from our meal:
I love it when Taka includes this cooked fish collar. It is always so soft and just cooked through, so it’s super silky.
I didn’t need them, but I wanted them. Two handrolls of Taka-san’s choice.
Do you have dinnerware that you are tired of? I do. They are mostly white Sur La Table bowls that I bought a few years ago. But they don’t fit well in the dishwasher and frankly, they aren’t so easy to eat from either. So after months of looking and not buying, we finally pulled the trigger and bought some East Fork pottery. This is the coupe, which I plan to use for pastas and other dinners that are saucy, then the breakfast bowl, which is actually a bit too big for my oatmeal but maybe the right size for a snack or some kind, and then the bitty bowl, which I think will serve well for afternoon snacks. We wanted to mix and match colors, but opted to buy the sets, which save you a bit, and that means the colors are all the same. If we order more, we’ll buy in another color to add balance.
In the meantime, I’ve found these new bowls a home in the cabinet, and they’ll enter general use this week. Now to actually donate all the other bowls. That’s half the battle.
What I’m reading, watching, and listening to:
Atlanta spring restaurant openings. Wondering what Steak & Grace will bring to Dunwoody. We always see (and hear the seagulls of) Big B’s Fish Joint, but since it’s next door to Taka, have never been. (Eater)
A new Outfield Market is opening at Truist Park which includes NFA Burger, also opening its first brick and mortar in Avalon. Here’s the lineup. (Eater, Garden & Gun)
Did you stock up yet? Yuck, a 200% tariff on European wines?! (NYT)
Kenji and Deb talked about crispy chicken cutlets and so, of course, now I want fried food. Maybe this is why I have been wanting to go out to eat. For unknown reasons, they haven’t posted it yet on their site.
Samin Nosrat talks about, among other things, her new book, coming out this fall! (Longer Tables podcast)
I really enjoyed this interview with Brandi Carlile. Fun! (Table Manners podcast)
We’ve recently started eating oatmeal for breakfast so of course I had to listen to this episode about good vs bad oats! Tldr: the longer it takes to cook ‘em, the better they are for you. (Zoe)
I did not really understand the impact of USAID and this summary is great and then the impact of farmers. (Be a Better Traveler, La Briffe)
Science is so cool. New implants that might help patients regrow heart valves! (Georgia Tech Research)
A very well written article on the impacts of defunding WIC and SNAP. (Bittman Project)
I always look at gift baskets. For you? For me? Hard to say. I am pretty intrigued about the dried fruit basket that gets so much love… (Serious Eats)
I record Elsbeth, the quirky spin off from The Good Wife, and I love that the current season has A-list actors as the villains, like Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane, and Alan Ruck.