A delicious Moroccan-style tagine of chicken meatballs and vegetables. Serve it with fluffy couscous.
To make the chicken meatballs, blitz ¼ of your chicken mince in a food processor until quite sticky. Combine this with the rest of the chicken mince by hand – the sticky mince should hold everything together. Add a little grated garlic, some ground cumin and ground ginger and season with salt and pepper to taste. Wet your hands and make walnut-sized balls – 500g (17½ oz) will yield approximately 16 meatballs. Heat some olive oil in a frypan and cook the meatballs quickly, just to brown the outside a little. Finely dice the rind of 2 pieces of preserved lemon, slice 1 large onion, 1-2 carrots and a green or red pepper and top and tail some green beans. Pour a little olive oil into the bottom of a tagine or heavy pot with as lid. Now lay more than half of the onion, carrot and pepper into the bottom of the pot. Sprinkle with some preserved lemon, ground cumin, ground ginger, a few saffron strands and some salt. Lay the meatballs over the vegetables and place the green beans around the edges. Sprinkle once more with preserved lemon, cumin, ginger, saffron and salt and top with ½ a bunch of coriander (cilantro). Drizzle with olive oil and cook, covered, over medium heat for 15-20 minutes or until the meatballs and vegetables are cooked to your liking.
michelle picker cooks 