Chicken with vegetables and lemon tajine

I’ve been wanting a tajine for a few years now, so it was a no brainer to include a couple of options on our wedding gift wishlist. Unfortunately, the store where we had our list was out of them at the time, but our friend T. ordered one and gave us a jar of preserved lemons and some Tunisian spice mix to be going on with.

The problem with shipping tajines is that if they are not padded and packed correctly, they can break in transit, and that’s what happened to the first lot which arrived in the shop. Then some arrived, but they were not the ones from the Lombok Pottery Centre, which is what I’d listed and T. had ordered.

Last week, at the Wool Day market, I’d stopped at a stall which sold spices and oils and vinegars, and ended up with some Ras El Hanout, which is a traditional Moroccan spice mix. The next day I found out my tajine had arrived, so I took it home after work.

I had thought about cooking with it on Tuesday, which I had off, but it took most of the afternoon to season it by soaking until all the air bubbles were gone (about an hour in the sink each for the base and the lid), then letting it air dry, and finally seasoning it by rubbing olive oil all over the inside, and placing in a warm oven for a few hours. (Tajines shouldn’t be moved quickly from hot to cold or vice versa, so I put the tajine in a cold oven, which I then turned on and allowed it to heat slowly. When was done I turned off the oven and let it cool before removing the tajine). That didn’t leave much time for the type of cooking which needs a long, slow simmer, so I made a quick curry in the wok, and left it until my next day off.

In the meantime, I browsed through Morrocan style recipes, and thought about what I might like to cook. In the end I settled on a hybrid between chicken tajine with seven vegetables, chicken with olive and lemon, and chicken with ginger and garbanzo beans (all from Food Down Under) to create a dish with chicken, vegetables, chickpeas (aka garbanzo beans) and preserved lemon. Partly this was because I didn’t have the right ingredients to make any of those recipes, but did have some. But I have a pretty good track record when it comes to putting flavours together, so I wasn’t worried about exactly following a recipe, and even though it was my first cooking in a tajine, it wasn’t the first time I have made dishes which are meant for tajines.

This is what I came up with:

Wool Day mini-splurge

As all Canberra knitters know, last Sunday was the annual wool day at the Old Bus Depot Markets in Kingston. There are a couple of other yarn and fibre related days, but this one is the first of the year.

I got there fairly late in the day, because it was Sunday and for me that means sleeping in and taking it slowly, but I still managed to get a nice selection of yarn. I also got some Knit Picks wooden dpns and circs, which make me very happy.

So, without further ado. pictures of yarn.

The first thing I did was find the Fibreworks stall. I’ve got yarn from them for 3 years running, and it is always beautiful and they don’t sell online, so this is the best time for me to get it. This year I was all about the red hues, with two skeins of merino in autumnal reddish browns, and one skein of silk in brilliant reds.

Norwegian Cinnamon Buns – à la Nigella Lawson

“I’ve always thought that bad weather has it’s compensations, most of them culinary”

So says Nigella Lawson in her introduction to this recipe, and it’s true that as the weather gets colder, the desire for warm, freshly baked things grows stronger, at least, I always find it does. As does the my desire for comfort foods in general.

When I was very little, my parents had a friend called Jenny who used to babysit me occasionally. I don’t remember much about Jenny except that she had long hair which she wore in two plaits, and for a special treat she used to give me white bread with butter that was sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar which crunched between my teeth like tiny, sweet grains of sand. (As I said, was very little, certainly young enough to recall eating sand.) I don’t eat sugar and cinnamon sandwiches anymore, but I do love cinnamon pastries, buns, and doughnuts.

So when I decided to try baking with yeast for the first time since… well, lets just say that last time I baked with yeast, the whole process was being supervised by an adult (who probably took care of any tricky bits), it didn’t take long to settle on these cinnamon buns for my first attempt. Part of my reasoning was that, if, for some reason, the buns should fail to rise, I would probably find some way to eat a sticky, doughy, cinnamony accident, whereas regular bread or rolls would be tossed way. As it was, I didn’t have to worry, they rose beautifully and were exactly what I wanted.

Well, almost exactly. The recipe calls for a hot oven (450°F or 230°C), and Nigella says:

“Put in hot oven and cook for 20-25 minutes, by which time the buns will have risen and will be golden-brown in colour. Don’t worry if they catch in places…”

I left mine in for 25 minutes and they didn’t only catch on top, which is okay, but were completely burned on the bottom. However, dealt with this by breaking off the burnt bottoms, and eating the perfect soft, slightly sweet, and very cinnamon flavoured centres.

Commitment

Well, it’s been absolutely forever. But I have news…

In December we started talking about getting married, and eventually, after weighing up the options, we settled on getting a Civil Partnership instead, with a small Commitment Ceremony in the park near where we live.

Which took place last Saturday.

It was very lovely and I’m tremendously glad we did it, but I’m also rather relieved I can stop thinking and planning and waking up in the middle of the night feeling that I might’ve forgotten something. I might even find the time to knit and to post more recipes.

For more info, check out the blog I made to keep our guests informed

I’m collecting photos and putting them here on Flickr, they will be public for the time being.

A few more of my favourites are under the cut:

And so that was Christmas…

December sort of vanished in the midst of the Christmas retail experience, in which I sold many hundreds of Oxfam unwrapped cards to the caring people of Canberra and felt a strong desire to never see wrapping paper again.

Christmas day was quiet and lovely. We didn’t leave the house, and we nibbled our Christmas treats, and played with our new toys, and read our new books, and watched our new movies.

I’ve not picked up any knitting in at least a month, but I have done some baking and roasting and other culinary things.

But my biggest achievement for today is catching up on all the posts in my blog reader, which is actually empty for the first time since the beginning of December. Maybe next week I’ll even get around to commenting…