Harissa Chicken and Sweet Potato

I chose to cook this recipe because it was one of the few that jumped out at both DH and me when we first leafed through this book. But then when I actually read the recipe, I went 'oh boy, is this actually going to work?'. You see, I've made two dishes with chicken and harissa in the past; one was the brilliant Roast Chicken with Harissa from Moro, the other was the not-so-interesting Grilled Chicken with Harissa and Mint from The Kitchen Diaries. The main conclusion to be drawn from these two seems to be that you need to marinate the chicken in the harissa to make it work. So I decided not to marinate it, and to make the dish again tomorrow and marinate the chicken at least half a day. As it happens, I was so busy preparing the side dish for today (Sautéeed Spinach with Apple, Pine Nuts and Cream), that I marinated the chicken for about half an hour, and it was really good! Next time I would probably use more harissa (1.5-2 tbsp instead of 1), but half an hour is fine.

The other thing I worried about was that the proportions didn't seem to be right. 280g meat per person seemed a bit much. I reduced that by half and also used just half the amount of sweet potato (250g), and it worked out fine, given that I also had the spinach dish (you'll need extra greens anyway - I didn't serve the chicken on a bed of spinach, though, that seemed to be purely decorative). So, concluding, if you need two servings, cut the chicken and sweet potato in half and use extra harissa, if you need four servings, use 3-4 times the amount of harissa.

Minor things to remember: I only added the fresh coriander once everything was nearly cooked through - it would burn if you would add it in the beginning. For two, one pan was just enough, though after a while I separated the chicken from the sweet potatoes to make them easier to turn. For four servings, I would use separate pan for sweet potatoes and chicken. And last, the sweet potato need to be cut very thin - about 2mm is just right.

Overall conclusion, if you allow just a little time to marinate and change the proportions of the ingredients, this makes a really great dish.