Chicken Smothered with Tomato Jam

Delicious! The meat was tender, juicy and flavourful, glazed with a complex and intensely flavoured tomato sauce sweetened with honey. The sesame seed garnish was pretty but too subtle in flavour to have any impact.

The prep time of the chicken was minimal. First, the meat was marinated overnight in garlic, saffron water and spices. Next day, it was combined with grated onion and more herbs and spices. The chicken was then cooked in stages for 1 hour.

This was the first tagine recipe from this book where I had timing issues. It takes a long time for my tagine to heat up, so the first 20 minutes of cooking on low heat merely heated the vessel without having any effect on the contents. The cooking actually started during the next 20 minutes over med. heat. All of the liquid cooked off and the chicken was frying! Though the instructions say to continue cooking over medium heat after the tomatoes (I used canned San Marzano instead of fresh) and tomato magic (Page 41) are added, I lowered the heat and maintained the simmer for 20 min. I wish there were some description of what we are looking for: barely a simmer, vigourous boil.....20 min. on medium heat in different pots on different stoves yields vastly different results. Once done, the chicken was removed and the sauce reduced for 1 hour.

The dish required a little more attention and a lot more time than I expected - I do wish the recipes included notes on total prep and cooking times - so I prepared a simple couscous side using the instructions on pages 202-203, another 1 hour+ process.

My one complaint about the dish was that it was oily...I ended up skimming fat as the sauce reduced. Next time, I'll remove the chicken skin as it seemed to be the main culprit.