Chicken with preserved lemons and couscous

[Len in Bucharest, Romania]

Chicken with preserved lemons and couscous (original link with photos)

Ever since I returned from a few days trip to Morocco I have tried to reproduce a dish which I liked a lot there: chicken with preserved lemons. I had several unsuccessful tries with fresh lemons but the result was too sour. So in order to prepare this dish I required preserved lemons.

Mandatory step: preserved lemons

* take a lemon, cut it almost in half, but leave the 2 parts joint. Do the same think on a perpendicular direction. This will leave you a lemon cut in 4 pieces but still tied together by the lemon skin.
* add as much salt as possible
* put in a glass jar which has a way to seal the content (like a metal cap)
* prepare other lemons in the same way and put them in the glass jar (as much lemons as it can fit). I managed to fit 6 lemons in a 1l glass jar.
* add lemon juice (from other lemons) until all the lemons in the jar are emerged
* add some extra salt
* fit the cap and seal the jar
* each 1-2 days for about a weak add more salt (this is one step I forgot)
* leave in a dry, cool and dark place for 4-6 weeks.


Ingredients

* 4-5 quarters of preserved lemons (this means 1 1/4 lemons) cut in smaller pieces

Preserved lemons

* one chopped onion
* 1 tablespoon ginger and 1 tablespoon curcuma (this will add to the nice yellow color of the resulting sauce)
* skinned chicken (I added 2 legs and 2 breasts without bones) cut in pieces (not very small)
* olive oil
* 10 olives (I could only find black olives)
* do not add salt, it will come from the lemons!


Preparation

* Brown the chicken in olive oil until it's white
* Remove the chicken and sauce
* Brown the onion in a tablespoon of olive oil
* Add the ginger and the curcuma and some pepper and stir for 1 minute (be careful not to burn the curcuma)
* Add the chicken, 1 cup (250 ml) of water, the lemons and one tablespoon of the lemons sauce
* Leave it on a low flame for 20 minutes

Chicken with preserved lemons

* Serve with couscous

Chicken with preserved lemons and couscous

* Enjoy

Len

[Elmotoo]

Len, welcome! I found a few recipes for chicken with preserved lemons but they are different from yours. There are also many recipes for preserved lemons. What I would suggest, since you found such a wonderful recipe, is to post it!
Thank you for sharing! And maybe you'd like to play NA*ME Tag? Once your Chicken with Preserved Lemons is posted, you can put it into a cookbook named 'NA*ME Tag' & come on over, tag a recipe of whoever (whomever??) is IT & then YOU will be IT & somebody can tag YOUR recipe!

Beth