Brooklyn to Britain: Moroccan dinner

We had one of Jen's coworkers over for dinner; the last time people from her office came over, I made a one-pot dish of pasta, which I was pretty excited about until right about when I carried it out to the table and realised that it was functionally indistinguishable from a casserole. Uhoh. Red sauce, with garlic and onion, green peas and a little anchovy paste over pasta... at least it tasted good.

Not that there's anything wrong with the much-maligned casserole, but it does lack a bit of oomph in the presentation. So, determined to come up with something a little more impressive this time, I decided to go for a moroccan-inspired dinner.

A little "horse devour", as the french say, of roasted and spiced nuts; wild game and chicken b'stillas, and a merguez-based tagine over couscous, with a side of quick preserved lemons, and lemon ice cream for dessert.

I've never made any of these before, besides roasting seeds and nuts, so this should be interesting, to say the least.

Nuts:

500g roasted, unsalted peanuts
50g butter
50g honey
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cumin
dash of celery salt
1/8th tsp black pepper
1/8th tsp smoked paprika
dash ancho chili powder

Preheat oven to 175C/350F
Melt the butter in a saucepan, stir in the honey.
Add peanuts, stir till they're well-coated
Transfer to baking sheet - for ease of cleanup, line the sheet with parchment paper
Sprinkle spices on top.
Bake for 5 mins, then stir. After that, stir them once a minute, until the butter-honey sauce thickens and the peanuts start to darken a bit. It's tricky to determine when they're done; just use your best judgement and remember that you can always put them back in.
Pour the nuts out onto a plate. They will be really hot, and that honey-butter mix will be incredibly efficient at transferring heat to your hand or tongue, so wait several minutes for them to cool a bit before tasting one.
Add more spices if needed - best to do this while the peanuts are still a bit warm and sticky.
Let cool fully; if they're stuck together, transfer to a bowl and stir to break them up

I had to do this in a couple batches because I only have one cookie sheet. I really recommend using parchment paper on the cookie sheet; it makes cleanup a lot easier.

Verdict: these came out really great. Really easy to put together; taste great and will keep for a while, assuming you don't eat them all.

Next, for the bistilla, or b'stilla, or bastila. It's basically a pigeon pie. Here's what I put in it:

2 chicken breasts
assorted bits wild fowl
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 chunk of fresh ginger, approx same size as two D6 (standard dice)
2 Tbsp fresh cilantro, chopped
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 Tbspl chopped parsley
3 cloves garlic
3 eggs
25g butter, clarified
100g blanched almond, chopped to the consistency of breadcrumbs
50 grams icing sugar
vegetable stock
1 package filo dough, thawed (10 sheets)
olive oil
salt and pepper

Put the chicken in a saucepan with the onion, ginger, cilantro, parsley, dash of cinnamon, and season with salt and pepper.
I poured in enough vegetable stock to barely cover the chicken. Then simmer gently, for 30-45 minutes or until the chicken is tender.
While that cooks, toast the almonds in a frying pan, until lightly browned. Stir frequently.
Chop the almonds up. I found out that if you don't have a food processor, this part is going to take a while. When they're the consistency of bread crumbs, stir in the icing sugar and the cinnamon. Set aside.
Transfer the chicken to a plate, let cool, and then chop into chunks.
Reduce the cooking juices.
Whip the eggs and butter with half the reduced cooking juices and cook, stirring constantly, until the eggs are scrambled. Set aside.

Now, bistilla is traditionally made in a round dish, cut into slices, and then eaten with the hands. I figured I could go with individual triangles of pie - kinda shaped like a samosa - and it would function as the appetizer rather than the main meal.

This only sounds complicated; believe me, after you figure out how the flag roll works, you'll be thinking of other filled-pastry concoctions you can whip up. With the premade filo dough, the only work is in creating the filling. And, if time is of the essence, you could make up the fillings the night before, then just fold these up while the oven preheats and be ready to go.

How to do the flag roll: place a rectangle of pastry in front of you. I would do two sheets at a time, stacked. This makes the exterior a little thicker and resistant to bursting. Imagine the pastry divided horizontally into three segments, like the German flag.

Begin in the center. Sprinkle a line of the cinnamon/sugar/almond mix from the left side, almost all the way to the right hand side, down the middle of the sheet of dough. You should have a sheet of dough divided in two by your almond mixture. It should be wider than it is deep; I did about a 3" area of almond cinnamon sugar, spread as thinly as possible.

Fold the top 1/3rd of the dough, covering the center section with the upper section. If we're using the German flag as the model, cover the red stripe with the black stripe. Drizzle a little olive oil down the pastry, and gently rub it in with your hand or a pastry brush.

Place a spoonful of the egg mixture about 1 inch in from the left hand side, on top of the pastry that is covering the almonds.

Now, fold the bottom third up to cover the middle - from the flag model, gold comes up to cover the other two. Oil the pastry as before. Place a spoonful of the chicken mixture on the left-hand side. Now, take the upper left corner of the pastry, and fold it down to the bottom, forming a rough triangle. Then fold back across, following the rectangle. Your triangle should rotate with each fold; gently pull against the dough to keep the folds tight and the filling inside. It's like making a paper (american) football.

Lay the triangles with the flap downward on a cookie sheet, brush with oil

Bake at 175C for 25-30 minutes, or until the pastry is golden and crisp.
Serve dusted with icing sugar and cinnamon.

Quick-preserved lemons - this is from a recipe by Mark Bittman. I zested and juiced two lemons, setting aside the zest and juice for the ice cream. The remaining bits of lemon, plus one other whole lemon, were chopped into small dice. Add two tablespoons sugar and one tablespoon salt, stir well and pack into a jar. Let sit for three or four hours at room temperature. Add to dishes for a bit of extra zest, or serve on the side like a pickle.

Now for the ice cream:

600 ml double cream
160 g icing sugar
2 oz orange liqueur (this was some homemade stuff from orange peel macerated in vodka, not Gran Marnier - if using something else, maybe do half vodka and half Gran Marnier
zest and juice from two lemons

Weigh out the icing sugar into a bowl, add the orange liqueur and lemon juice, then slowly pour in the cream, whisking vigorously. Beat the cream for a bit until nicely frothy, then pop in the freezer. The alcohol raises the freezing point of the cream, keeping it from freezing totally solid.

At this point my notes kind of break down; the tagine consisted of an onion, diced and fried in butter, to which I added merguez sausage. Once the sausage browned, I broke it up, added veggie stock and white wine, carrots, and a leek. this simmered on the stove for about 45 minutes, then I added salt, black pepper, ancho chili powder, ras al hanout, a dash of cumin and two tablespoons of honey, a fistful of chopped apricots + raisins. proportions and quantities all by eyeball, sorry. Kind of hard to go wrong here though; just keep in mind that you want to balance the sweet and the spicy flavors. I cooked it without a lid, as I wanted the sauce to cook down and be nice and thick.

Anyway, while this was cooking I put on 2 3/4 cups of water to boil. When that had come to a rolling boil, I turned the heat off and poured in 1 1/2 cups of couscous. Added a splash of orange-infused olive oil, a dash of sea salt, and covered the pot. This was fluffed with a fork right before serving.

When the tagine had reduced to my liking, I judged it done. This is totally not a traditional method; like the casserole, the tagine-as-food takes its name from the receptacle it's cooked in. Stoneware shaped like a shallow bowl with a funnel-shaped lid, in which the ingredients cook for a long time over low heat. Due to various planning issues, I didn't have that much time, nor did I have an actual tagine. But that's okay. The long cooking time is good for cuts of meat that require extensive braising to break down, but if you're just using sausage, like I did, shorter amounts of time are okay.

I guess that's about it. Dinner was pretty good, if I do say so myself. The tagine came out a bit sweet; not as noticeable at dinner, but when having leftovers I realized it could have done with a bit more pepper to heat things up. I'm reluctant to spice too aggressively for guests, without knowing how much spice they like - I know if I'm cooking for Rich, there's pretty much no limit (El Jefe wings, anyone?) whereas Stewart doesn't even like the chilis to get too close to the pan.