Print it
Original french name: Tajine de poulet aux pruneaux
Place of origin: Toulousain, Quercy, Aveyron & Auvergne
French culinary is famous for broad range of chicken dishes. Some of them can be served daily for a usual dinner. However, there are a number of chicken meals that are made for really special occasions. The way chicken dishes are cooked in France looks very sophisticated but actually it is not.
I would like to make this Tajine de poulet recipe tonight for a family dinner. French Tajine is a dish that includes braising chicken with prunes, honey and almonds. For this dish you need to prepare three separate dishes: braising chicken, prune sauce and almonds.
While chicken is being cooking for 60 minutes in a casserole, you can make sauce and salmons as well. As a result when chicken is ready, you can serve the final dish pouring the prune sauce over and sprinkling the chicken with almonds and sesame seeds.
Tajine is a beautifully presented dish with a very delicious honey and almonds taste. Enjoy it!
Ingredients for chicken (serves 4-6)
Preparing time - 5 min
Coking time - 1h 15min
1 free range chicken around 1,2 kg in weight
2 tablespoon olive oil
500 g tomatoes, skinned and seeded
2 onions, finely chopped
2 lemons
75 g honey
2 tablespoon coriander, finely chopped
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch of saffron threads
salt and freshly milled black pepper
Ingredients for sauce with glazed prunes and almonds
200g prunes, stoned
3-4 tablespoon custard sugar
50-75g almonds
1 tablespoon groundnut oil
1 tablespoon sesame seed
Method
Wash and dry chicken. Divide the chicken into eight pieces. In a braising saucepan heat lightly olive oil. Brown the chicken pieces on all sides. Quarter the skinned and seeded tomatoes, finely chopped them. Then add to the chicken chopped onions, chopped tomatoes, sugar, cinnamon, saffron, salt and pepper. Squeeze the lemons and pour the juice over the chicken pieces. Add the lemon rind and honey. Cover the casserole and leave to simmer gently over a low heat for about 1 hour. Afterwards mix in the chopped coriander, taste and leave to cook for a further 10minutes.
While the chicken pieces are cooking it is time making a prune sauce and almonds. Put the prunes and sugar in a pan of cold water and boil them until the sugar has almost caramelized for about 15 minutes.
Soak the almonds in boiling water for 15-30 sec. Then refresh them in the ice cold water and carefully remove the skin. Toast the skinned almonds in the groundnut oil in a skillet until golden brown stirring continuously.
Place the chicken pieces on the plate and arrange the prunes around them. Then sprinkle with almonds and sesame seeds. Serve immediately.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed Print it
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I love the Middle-Eastern-influenced French dishes!!! This looks fantastic, I was checking out your new site (congrats, loos great!) and this caught my eye right away! I’m such a lover of dried fruit. Seriously, I rutinely give myself severe stomach pains from abusing dried fruit… but they’re worth every cramp!
I’ll try it next week and let you know how it turns out
Hi Marta– Thanks so much for your comment and I glad you enjoyed my blog.