Moroccan Chicken with Apricot-and-Olive Relish

Food & Wine (August 2008)

When we first started this blog, we thought that one of the advantages to forcing ourselves to cook from our food magazines would be that we'd end up eating dishes and flavors we never otherwise would have tried.

To some extent, that's been true. (Turkish manti and Raw Corn and Cashew Chowder come to mind, and we really liked those!)

But we've largely found ourselves cooking foods that just, well, sound delicious. Maybe it's something we wouldn't have gotten around to cooking, but it's usually something that's solidly within our taste comfort-zone.

So we wanted to cook a dish that would challenge our palates -- something with bold new flavors we'd never combined before.

This chicken with apricots and olives more than qualified.

The recipe is fairly time-intensive, with the need to make a marinade and then marinate for two hours, cook the chicken in the oven and then finish it on the grill, and also make the relish on the stove top.  All the steps were easy enough, but still required a lot of very active cooking time.

In making this recipe, we made two substitutions.  First, we subbed regular honey in for eucalyptus honey.  We didn't have eucalyptus honey on hand -- does anyone? We're not sure it would have made much of a difference in the recipe. 

Secondly, though the recipe calls for using chicken thighs, we used bone-in chicken breasts, since we had some that needed to be used. This only meant that we needed to slightly extend the cooking time for our chicken. 

The final result? 

Sadly, just okay. 

The chicken was well-cooked and moist, carrying the flavor of the marinade and as well as the grill. 

The relish is tasty.  The olives and apricots play off each other well, and it's certainly a flavor combo that was new to us.  A final touch of cilantro brightens the relish.

Our problem, though, was that the relish never really married up with the chicken.  If we made this again, we might dump the relish into a blender and give it one good pulse to break up the larger bits of apricot and olive.  (We'd be wary, though, of fully blending it, as the color might turn out really wacky or some terribly unappetizing shade of brown.)

Ultimately it just tasted sort of like chicken and apricots and olives on a plate, you know?  The sum of the parts was exactly equal to...the sum of the parts.

We're glad we tried it, but won't be revisiting this recipe anytime soon.

What have you made recently that was outside of your culinary comfort zone?  Discovered a new dish that you were surprised to find that you loved?

Tell us about it!  We'd love to hear from you.

Moroccan Chicken with Apricot-and-Olive Relish
Food & Wine (August 2008)
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(this photo:  Food & Wine)

ACTIVE TIME: 30 MIN
TOTAL TIME: 3 HRS 15 MIN
SERVES: 4

This grilled chicken dish transforms the sweet-savory elements of a Moroccan tagine—apricots, olives, couscous—into a light, summery meal. The marinade and relish are both flavored with eucalyptus honey, which has a deep, herbal flavor that’s delicious with the smoky chicken. Plus, the honey caramelizes on the grill, which makes the chicken extra-crispy.

ingredients

    * 1/4 cup eucalyptus honey
    * 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon canola oil
    * 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
    * 2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
    * 1 garlic clove, minced
    * 1 teaspoon ground cumin
    * 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
    * 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
    * 1/2 teaspoon sweet pimentón de la Vera (smoked Spanish paprika)
    * 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
    * 1 teaspoon kosher salt
    * 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
    * 8 chicken thighs on the bone, with skin (2 3/4 pounds)
    * Boiling water
    * 1 cup dried apricots
    * 2 medium shallots, thinly sliced
    * 20 green olives, such as Cerignola or Picholine, pitted ( 1/2 cup)
    * 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro

directions

   1. In a bowl, whisk the honey with 1/4 cup of the canola oil and the lemon juice, grated ginger, garlic, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, pimentón, cayenne, salt and pepper. Arrange the chicken in a glass baking dish. Pour the marinade on top and turn to coat. Refrigerate for 2 hours, turning once.
   2. Preheat the oven to 400°. Drain the chicken and transfer to a rimmed baking sheet; reserve the marinade. Cover with foil and bake for about 35 minutes, until cooked through. Remove the foil and discard any juices from the baking sheet.
   3. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, pour boiling water over the apricots to cover and let stand until plump, 8 minutes; drain.
   4. In a skillet, heat the remaining 1 tablespoon of oil. Add the shallots and cook over moderate heat until softened, 6 minutes. Add the apricots, olives and the reserved marinade and bring to a simmer. Cook over moderately high heat until the marinade is thickened and glazes the apricots and olives, 2 minutes. Stir in the cilantro.
   5. Light a grill or preheat a grill pan. Grill the chicken over moderately high heat, turning once, until charred in spots and the skin is crisp, 6 minutes. Transfer to plates, top with the apricot-olive relish and serve.

Comments

[Keith]

I just found Pineapple Tomatillos. They are about the size of a grape and they have a sweet flavor similar to a mandarin orange. They would be incredible in salsa. They just went out of season, but I've put them on my food calendar for next year.

[Mrs. L]

Pretty much everything I've been making has been out of my "cooking" comfort zone, though I think flavor wise I haven't been very adventurous...I should change that!

I saw this recipe in Food and Wine and though I bookmarked it, it's not something I figured I would make anytime soon.

[CarlieInLA]

I love your blog! I subscribe to many of the same magazines, so I love to see how some of the recipes turn out in "real life". I was very interested in this recipe in F&W, so I am sad that it didn't wow, it looked very promising!

[Amrita]

I'm a big fan of Moroccan Chicken and your chicken looks scrumptious! This is going on my "try-out" list.

[Tiffany]

Well, it looks delicious. I'm sorry to hear it was only okay. The idea of combining apricots and olives is certainly interesting.
As for myself, I've made many things that didn't quite live up to my expectations. Most recently, and eggplant pasta (too bland, but that can be fixed), and when I bought my first le creuset pot I made lamb with a spicy sauce and raisins. It was just okay.
By the way, have I told you that I love your blog?!

[heather]

oh, i fell in love with moroccan food when i went to marrakesh last spring. it is so flavorful and delicious! i love the combination of apricots and olives here!

[pam]

I made this with substitues. Regular honey was the only thing I had. (I 'might' add a tablespoon very strong earl grey tea in the future) I used regular white onions, instead of shallots. Cutting the apricots into quarters helped the flavors blend. I also added 1/4 cup of asti (leftover.. that emptied the bottle and I didn't feel bad about wasting it) AND used chinese five spice powder in place of the fresh ginger and smoked paprika that I don't normally have at hand. IT WAS DELISH! One of my all time favorite dishes actually. Thanks so much for blogging this dish.

[Zach @ The Bitten Word]

@ pam -- your substitutions sound delicious! I think what you said about chopping the apricots more finely is really what it's all about. I think we would have really liked this dish if the flavors had blended just a bit more.

[Honeycrisp]

We took your advice about the relish and used our hand blender to break up the ingredients a bit so the flavors would meld before adding the cilantro (what relish isn't a bit chopped anyways?), and it was perfect! I also added a little water at the end to thin it out and make it a little saucier.

[Zach @ The Bitten Word]

@ Honeycrisp -- That sounds fabulous! I think that would make this dish really fantastic. Glad it worked out so well!