![\"Harissa\"](\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/20261031_124210-e1793812927363.jpg\")
<\/a>\nThis is NOT apricot jam.\u00a0 If you apply this to anything in apricot jam quantities, it will kill you. A lot.<\/p>\n
Absolutely delicious, but only a small dab or two at a time.<\/p>\n
Then at 4:35 it was time to fire up the spreadsheet.\u00a0 Just for fun, I’m going to deviate from our usual practice of describing one recipe at a time, and bounce back and forth in the writeup just like we did while cooking, since I have the schedule in front of me.<\/p>\n
Step 1? Well, it’s a meal on this blog, so what do you think?<\/p>\n
“Prep Onions.”<\/p>\n
…because of course it is.<\/p>\n
The point of a tagine is to trap condensation and allow cooking with relatively small amounts of liquid, so throwing a lid on this pot is a reasonable substitute.<\/p>\n 4:40 had two items – “Cook Onions” and “Mix dough.”\u00a0 Onions on the go, we mixed up dough consisting of wheat flour, water, rapid rise yeast and (the unique ingredient here) semolina flour.\u00a0 Visually, however, it’s just a relatively wet dough.<\/p>\n 4:50: “Brown Chicken” and “Rest dough.”\u00a0 Well, the latter is pretty easy.\u00a0 It’s kind of like when Google maps tells you, “in 500 meters, continue straight.”\u00a0 So back over to the chicken. In addition to the chicken pieces, at this point you add a whole pile o’ spices and garlic, and the kitchen immediately started to smell amazing.<\/p>\n 5:05: “Cook Chicken”, “Shape Dough,” AND “Soak couscous.”\u00a0 It may SEEM like a lot of these steps overlap, but assuming your mise en place is OK, the steps just don’t take very long.\u00a0 Case in point “Cook Chicken” is actually “dump in a cup of water, throw a bunch of cilantro on top, and then leave it alone for 50 minutes.”<\/p>\n Finally, “soak couscous” is what it sounds like.\u00a0 Put couscous in baking dish, put in water, done.<\/p>\n A word on this.\u00a0 Couscous is arguably the most important thing on this menu to Moroccan cuisine.\u00a0 It is frequently mentioned as the national dish.\u00a0 The most traditional way to prepare it would be to steam it three times, ideally using steam from the dish you are cooking.<\/p>\n We don’t have the hardware to do that, and we also needed this dish to be relatively simple, so as not to mess up the spreadsheet.\u00a0 So we’re using a hybrid technique where you soak the couscous first, then put it in the oven to steam.<\/p>\n Couscous soaking is not the most visually stunning image. (I think this was at the end of the soak, when all the water had been absorbed, but it looked basically the same, just underwater, at the start.)<\/p>\n We had a longish break here, while the bread rose, and the chicken cooked, so the couscous was actually next on our agenda, at 5:35, when it was covered in foil and placed in the oven to bake.<\/p>\n Twenty minutes later, we removed the chicken from the pot, and started reducing the sauce.\u00a0 Ten minutes after that, the couscous came out, and we whacked the heat up a bit to get ready for the bread, which had now risen quite a bit:<\/p>\n But not just ANY lemons, oh no – this was one of those aforementioned specialty ingredients!<\/p>\n So we chopped up a bunch of preserved lemon peel and tossed it into the now quite reduced sauce, along with a jar of kalamata olives.<\/p>\n We’re not always the biggest olive fans, but this is one of those contexts where they really worked.<\/p>\n Final step, 6:25.\u00a0 Ironically it is “Warm up chicken” and “Cool bread.”\u00a0 Bread comes out of oven, chicken goes back into sauce, and precisely at 6:30, dinner is served!<\/p>\n Morocco is an Islamic country, so no booze for this meal.\u00a0 Instead, some nice mint tea.\u00a0 The Society for Music Theory mug was funnier before the weird time signatures rubbed off.<\/p>\n And here’s the delicious final spread! (Including the harissa, which is itself a final spread if you aren’t careful with it.\u00a0 That stuff’s REALLY hot.)<\/p>\n And with that, we have only two “M” countries left! It’s been a while, hasn’t it?<\/p>\n Next up: Mozambique!<\/p>\n One production note: This blog does not use f***ing AI.\u00a0 Never has, never will.\u00a0 There may be typos, but they are OUR typos, dammit.<\/p>\n Recipes: Oh boy, I’ve been looking forward to this one.\u00a0 Many of the cuisines we attempt on this blog are a mystery to us, but we’ve HAD Moroccan food, and it is awesome. We had planned four dishes for this meal, … Continue reading <\/a>
\nOur first dish is a chicken tagine, one of many worldwide dishes, such as hot pot or karahi, that are named for the vessel in which they are cooked.\u00a0 We do not have a tagine, and while we are not averse to buying\u00a0ingredients<\/em> we will only use once, a large earthenware cooking pot is another story.\u00a0 So this is a Dutch oven.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nMeanwhile, on the bread front, “shape dough” means to split it into two inch thick rounds, and then leave it alone again to rise.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nInto the oven at 6:10, and at 6:15 we hit “Add lemons.”<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nThese are lemons that have been brined for a while to produce a silky, intensely lemony flavor.\u00a0 You might be surprised to learn that the\u00a0peel\u00a0<\/em>is what is typically used – more often than not, the pulp is discarded.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nMy heavens, will you look at that?\u00a0 Everything turned out\u00a0perfectly.\u00a0<\/em>The couscous was super fluffy and un-lumpy.\u00a0 The bread was soft and delicious. The harissa will kill you if you look at it funny.\u00a0 And the tagine was absolutely heavenly – intensely lemony flavourful, with a nice salty kick from the olives.\u00a0 Just an absolute banger of a meal.<\/p>\n
\nHarissa<\/a>
\nChicken, Preserved Lemon, and Olives Tagine<\/a>
\nMoroccan Bread (“Khobz”)<\/a>
\nCouscous<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"