Sarah Venning’s recipes

Thomas in Morocco via Paris and Clerkenwell:

“You need a chicken, one or two pickled lemons (Waitrose do sell them), half a jar of black olives, powdered ginger, saffron, plenty of parsley and fresh coriander. You sweat an onion in your tagine, then add a teaspoon of powdered ginger, a bit more of saffron, some garlic and salt and pepper, and half a pint of water or more. You salt and pepper the chicken, and then turn it well in the mixture, and leave it to simmer for an hour (as very often with north African recipes, you don’t brown it), turning it a few times. You do a strange manœuvre with the olives in which you blanche them three times in boiling water for thirty seconds (running under the cold tap each time): this seems to soften the taste a bit. Scoop out and discard the insides of the pickled lemons, and cut the skins into strips, and chop up the parsley and coriander. Add all this fifteen minutes before the end. You want to end up with lots of juice to be soaked up by the couscous. The recipe I had said to cook the whole thing in a casserole and transfer to the tagine once it was all cooked, but this seemed like cheating, and I couldn’t really see the point.”

Thomas emailed this so I shall quote him verbatim:

“Our main course was dictated to me in a series of rather confusing answerphone messages, but I liked it as a chic alternative to the rough, Nigel Slater-ish ways of cooking quails that I normally like. For this one, you brown the quails, flambé them in brandy (this step doesn’t appear in the recipes, but, as Grand’mere said, it can’t do any harm), then braise them for 20 minutes or so in grape juice and a glass or two of white wine, adding a good number of real grapes for the last ten minutes. The proportions I had involved two pounds of grapes (half juiced, half for the pot) for six quails. I overcooked it (we had drunk quite a lot of champagne), which did the quails no harm, and meant I had a nice brown reduced sauce.”

8 plum tomatoes, cored and coarsely chopped
4 v large red peppers
50ml groundnut oil
200ml water
100ml extra virgin olivec oil

Heat large pan, add tomato and red pepper and cook until they caramelise (1/2 hour), blend with water, add olive oil, serve with chopped basil