As promised this evening we ate out of a book called Medina Kitchen.

It is by Fiona Dunlop who also wrote a book called New Tapas which is a tour around Spain and its more modern Tapas bars and the food that they serve there. It has at least two recipes that I like to cook on a fairly regular basis being slow cooked squid in a red wine and tomato sauce and salt cod paella. The squid has featured here in the past and the salt cod paella should be on here soon.

Medina Kitchen follows a similar format as it spends time in the kitchens of various women in Marrakech, Fez, Tunis, Carthage, La Goulette and Tripoli. For some reason I have not cooked from it before but I picked it up yesterday when thinking about something new to do with the chicken I had bought from The Farmer’s Market. My eye was caught by a recipe for steamed stuffed chicken from Fez and then I saw recipes for chickpeas in a tomato snd herb sauce, sweet potato with raisins and an aubergine salad. All that sounded as it had the makings of a good lunch so we were on.

I had only been able to buy a small chicken but it was just the right size to squeeze into the steamer. I stuffed it with a mixture couscous, onion, chicken liver, garlic and coriander. It cooked in just over an hour and I was careful to make sure the water didn’t dry out.

The sweet potato was made by sweating a couple of onions in oil and then adding saffron and water and cooking the mixture down before adding the sweep potato cut into chunks and the mixture being cooked through until done and then at the last minute I stirred in a good hand-full of golden sultanas. Some chopped parsley was stirred through before it went onto the table.

To keep the kids happy we also had some roast potatoes although I sprinkled them with some crushed coriander seeds and cumin as they cooked.

The potatoes went down best. We will have the rest cold tomorrow evening.

Listening now to the wind and Miles Davis in almost full on electric mode looking to run some voodoo down.