Moroccan Lemon Chicken with Cayenne & Onion Sauce
Introduction: I tweaked a recipe from the ABC mag Delicious by Belinda Jeffrey, to come up with this very Middle Eastern marinade of chicked thighs baked on a bed of spiced onion rings and then inverted to serve. It's one of the most delicious Middle Eastern dishes I've made to date. It was so good that Alex slept over so she could have leftovers the next day.
Quantities - 8: We were 6 diners but of course I made two extra serves just in case. Basically it's one chicken thigh fillet per person. You adjust all the quantities proportionally for different numbers of diners.
Ingredients for the blender (put all of these in a blender and blend well on high speed)
100ml extra virgin olive oil
200ml water
1 level tspn salt plus generous grind of fresh black pepper
2 tbsp grated ginger
2 tbsp ground cumin
2 tbsp ground coriander
1 1/2 tspn Thai curry paste
1 tspn smoky paprika
4 cloves ground to a powder (or 1 tspn ground cloves)
1 level tspn cayenne pepper
3/4 handful semi-dried or sun dried tomatoes
2 tspn ras el hanout
four garlic cloves chopped
Other ingredients
Two large onions, cut in halves and then finely sliced
4 bay leaves
2 lemons
8 free range chicken thigh fillets (skin off)
Method
Preheat fan forced oven to 190C
Grate the zest of one lemon. Peel the pith from that lemon and slice the body into thin rings.
Mix well together in a tupperware container the grated lemon zest, finely sliced lemon rings, bay leaves, finely sliced onion and blended marinade mix. Add chicken pieces and immerse well. Leave to marinate for 4+ hours turning and reimmersing occasionally, or better still leave overnight.
Place baking paper in the bottom of an ovenproof serving dish that can double as the bakeware. Discard the bay leaves. Put the onion, lemon and marinade mix in first as a layer. Put the chicken thigh fillets on top as parcels (not spread out) -- in fact, choose the baking/serving dish so that its area snugly holds the thigh fillets in one compact layer atop the onion/marinade layer.
Peel the second lemon, removing the pith carefully, and thinly slice the body into fine rings. Lay these rings atop the chicken thigh fillets in the baking tray. Bake for 45 minutes in the fan forced oven.
Remove tray from the oven and discard the lemon rings atop the chicken fillets. Remove the chicken fillets to a warmed plate, cover with alfoil and allow to "rest". Turn the oven up to 200C. Put the baking dish containing the onion layer back in the oven for 10-15 minutes to turn the onion golden/brown.
Remove the onions to a bowl, leaving the fluid in the baking/serving dish. Discard the baking paper. Return the chicken fillets to the fluid as individual parcels. Place the onion in evenly divided quantities on top of the chicken parcels. You should now have independent parcels of chicken topped with golden onion mix resting in the delicious fluid in the serving dish.
We served this as part of a banquet that included specially bejewelled and nutted citrus cous cous, 5 hour slow cooked tandoori lamb, spiced cabbage salad, and Jordanian tomato and yoghurt salads.
02 Jan 2010 with Alex, Wyn, Robert & Rose (& us) until 2.30 am