Chicken Tagine with preserved lemon and olives recipe from the Emile Henry website

Occasionally I am asked to review recipes. A reader asked me about this recipe posted on Emily Henry's website .

1 chicken 1.5 kg / 3.3 lb, cut into pieces
2 preserved lemons
100 g / 1.5 cup green olives
3 onions, chopped
1 teaspoon ginger (fresh or dried)
1 teaspoon saffron
1 bunch flat parsley
1 teaspoon coriander / cilandro [sic], chopped
Juice of 2 lemons
5 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
Salt, pepper

This is their list of ingredients. Throw the recipe out, it's no good. It will taste awful. The amount of olives, lemon, lemon juice,  and onions are excessive.  The dish will be much too salty and acidic. My mouth puckers just reading the recipe. The directions don't mention discarding the pulp and rinsing the rind. Imagine the sodium content of this dish!  The 1 teaspoon of chopped cilantro is amusing.

I would change the quantities this way for a whole chicken, eventhough I just told you to throw out the recipe. I'm doing this to illustrate how excessive the quantities are.

1 chicken 1.5 kg / 3.3 lb, cut into pieces
2 preserved lemons 1-2 quarter pieces
100 g / 1.5 cup green olives 1/4 - 2/3 cup rinsed
3 onions, chopped 1 medium onion
1 teaspoon ginger (fresh or dried) the quality of dried ginger varies considerably, 1 teaspoon of the bad stuff can ruin a dish.Even with very good quality ginger I would add only 1/4 teaspoon
1 teaspoon saffron 1 pinch
1 bunch flat parsley 3 sprigs
1 teaspoon coriander / cilandro [sic], chopped 1 tablespoon
Juice of 2 lemons None, or maybe 1 teaspoon
5 tablespoons olive oil 2 tablespoons
1 tablespoon butter
Salt, pepper

Besides the bizarre quantities, the flavor combinations are all wrong here. Too many bitter, pungent, briney, salty and acidic flavors without other flavors to balance them out. Perhaps the addition of 3 onions was an attempt to add some sweetness and we do have onion based sauces in North African cooking, but this not the way to make one.

Comments

[cookworm]

Thank you for this. I've come across many tagine recipes both in and outside of North African cookbooks, and some of the differences seem surprising. I'm wondering what you think is acceptable as far as expanding and conscientiously updating the traditional, versus disrupting the spirit of the dish altogether.