Paulchens FoodBlog?!

Monthly Mingle #9: Arabian Nights – Chicken tajine with honey, pears & cinnamon

3 April 2007 4 Comments

mm9 Another dish I tried for Meeta’s Arabian Nights
It’s a rather easy and quick dish but yet delicious. I love the taste of fruits with meat it’s sweet and savoury and unusual to an austrian tongue.

But hey – we are quite expertimental since we began to cook for each other at work and we always have fun to try new combinations for Blog Events or ’cause we are inspired by other food bloggers.
Or surprise each other with real down to earth traditional food coming from different parts of our country this is often quite interesting too.

Chicken tajine with honey, pears & cinnamon

2 onions
2 cloves of garlic
2cm fresh ginger
4 ripe pears
1 tb honey
100 gram chicken per person
1 ts curcuma (turmeric)
salt, pepper
2 tb olive oil
2 cinnamon sticks
100 ml chicken stock
1 handful coriander (cilantro) leaves

Rub the chicken with salt, pepper and cumin.
Roast in a medium heated pan with cinnamon until light cross. Remove from pan.

Roast onions,garlic and ginger in the pan,add honey.
Place chicken in the tajine cover with the onions and pears. Add chicken stock.

Close tajine and roast for about 25 minutes.

Before serving sprinkle with freshly picked coriander leaves.

Pita bread with sesame & cumin

300 gram spelt flour
300 ml lukewarm water1
1 Pkg dry yeast
1 ts salt
1 ts sugar
50 gr maize meal
2 tb olive oil
1 ts grounded cumin
2 tb sesame 2

Mix 60 gram flour with yeast, salt and sugar, add 300 ml lukewarm water and stir well until smooth. Let rise for ~30 minutes.

Add the other ingredients and knead until you get a smooth dough. Divide into two balls and let rest and rise for another 30 minutes.

Flaten the balls until about 2 cm thick. Place on an oiled baking sheet and dizzle som oil on top, sprinkle with sesame.
Bake for about 15-20 minutes at 180°C.

My thoughts:

It was very very delicious and we all liked it very much. *yummy*
Due to the coloring the added curcuma did it was a quite coloured dish too which brigthended up our lunch for the eyes as well as for the tongue.

I do not exactly know if this dish would fit Meeta’s rules as I don’t really know which country it would be associated with. My cookbook gives not hint :(
But I found out that a tajine is a North African dish and would therefore be associated with countries like Algeria, Morocco or Tunisia, none of them are on Meeta’s list, soo….

monthly mingle