Slimming World-style Chicken Tagine

A tagine is a north African dish - usually found in Morocco or Tunisia - that takes its name from the special pot in which it is cooked. The tagine pot is usually made of clay and often painted bright colours and comes into parts; a dish on the bottom and a cone shape that goes on top as a lid. I don't have an actual tagine pot, but often recipes for tagines can be cooked in a casserole dish - so I think you can still call a Moroccan-style stew a tagine even if it isn't cooked in the pot. Or would anyone disagree?

This is my take on a chicken tagine, minus the ingredients I don't like, and adapted to fit in with the Slimming World plan.

I made this to serve just one but it's easy to scale up. You need:

1 boneless chicken thigh

1 tsp crushed black peppercorns

half an onion

1 preserved lemon

250ml chicken stock

pinch of saffron

pinch of cinnamon

Chop the onion (you don't really need a picture, but here's one anyway!). Fry until softened in Fry Light in a heavy-bottomed pan that has a tight-fitting lid.

Crush the black peppercorns in a pestle and mortar

Make some chicken stock using a stock cube and add the saffron and cinnamon

Slice a preserved lemon

Pour the stock over the chicken, adding the crushed peppercorn and the preserved lemon.

I also added some potatoes, though tagines are more often served with cous cous.

Place the lid on the pan and simmer over a medium heat until the chicken is cooked through and the potatoes are tender.

This is not really a traditional tagine but it is along similar lines so hopefully Chris will accept it for the Bloggers Around the World challenge, where the theme this month is Morocco.