Chicken and date tagine
The best chicken tagine recipe we've ever made. The dates and squash, both in season now give this dish a lovely savoury-sweet flavour. If you've never made your own spice blend then this is the recipe for you, it's easy to whizz up and then it's done, and it makes all the difference to this sharing dish.
- 8 chicken thighsskin on
- 1 small butternut squashpeeled and cut into chunks
- 1 red onioncut into wedges
- fresh chicken stockcube or concentrate made up to 300ml
- 400g tin cherry tomatoes
- 1 stick cinnamon
- 8 medjool dateshalved
- from a large bunch coriander leaves
SPICE PASTE
- 1 small red onionroughly chopped
- 2 cloves garlicroughly chopped
- thumb-sized piece root gingerroughly chopped
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 2 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp mild chilli powder
- from a large bunch coriander roots
- 1 lemonzested and juiced
- olive oil
Nutrition: per serving
- kcal952
- fat57.4g
- carbs47.2g
- fibre5.5g
- protein63.3g
- salt1.34g
Method
step 1
Heat the oven to 190C/fan 170C/gas 5. Put all the spice paste ingredients in a small food processor with 2 tbsp olive oil and whizz to a paste.
step 2
Brown the chicken thighs all over in a tagine or large, wide pan. Scoop out then add the spice paste and cook for a few minutes until fragrant. Add the squash, onion, stock, tomatoes and cinnamon and stir. Sit the chicken on top (push down a bit into the sauce). Cook uncovered in the oven for 1 hour – the chicken should be browned and cooked and the sauce reduced. Add the dates for the last 20 minutes of cooking. Scatter with coriander and serve with buttered couscous.