Chicken Tagine With Preserved Lemon and Olives

Preserved Lemons

Preserved lemons are lemons which have been pickled in salt and their juices. Also called pickled lemons, they add a salty, distinctive lemon flavor to Moroccan tagines, sauces, and salads.

Tagine

A tajine or tagine is a Maghrebi dish which is named after the earthenware pot in which it is cooked. It is also called maraq or marqa. The tagine dates back to the time of Harun al-Rashid, the fifth Abbasid Caliph. The earliest writings about the concept of cooking in a tajine appear in the famous One Thousand and One Nights, an Arabic-language story collection from the ninth century. Today, the cooking-pot and its traditional broth are primarily prepared in the Middle East and North Africa. In North Africa, it is called a tajine, while in the Middle East it is called a maraq (broth) or a qidra (cooking pot). There are different ways to prepare the tajine. In the original qidra style, saman (clarified butter) is used to lubricate the surface and a puree of chopped onion is added for flavour and aroma. For muqawlli-style cooking, the ingredients are placed in olive oil to enrich the flavours.