Moroccan Chicken Pie with Okra (from BBC Celebrity Masterchef)

To celebrate Brown Mummy's new haircut/colour...

Ruh Roh - who's Red Mummy now?

...we decided to pour a few glasses of wine and cook something adventurous. 

Enter North Africa.

All the Spices.

North African cuisine is warming, nuanced and complex, using a variety of meats, vegetables, pulses and flavours that make you eat WAY more than you expected, all on account of tasting and re-tasting each dish :)

You will need:

- All the spices (see above - cinnamon sticks, gd turmeric, gd coriander, gd cumin, salt and pepper, plain flour, chili powder, sugar)

- Two solid wine glasses, filled with your vin of choice.

Boxed rosé. So far so good. 

- 1lb chicken thighs on the bone

- 2 small onions, chopped

- 1/2 a lemon, zest only

- 1/2 an orange, zest only

- 40g/2oz fresh cilantro (coriander, for our Commonwealth readers), stalks and leaves chopped

- 2 sprigs of fresh cilantro, tied into a bundle

- 5 cloves garlic (3 peeled and crushed + 2 peeled and finely chopped)

- 2 inches fresh root ginger, peeled and chopped roughly

- 75g/3oz dried apricots, chopped roughly

- 20g/1oz flatleaf parsley, stalks and leaves chopped

- 2 free-range eggs, lightly beaten

- 75g/3oz peeled almonds, finely chopped (the joy of peeling almonds is posted here)

- 12 sheets ready-made filo pastry

- 150g/two-thirds c. melted butter

- 250g/9oz okra, cut into 1-cm thick discs

- Vegetable oil (for frying)

Red Mummy tried zesting the lemon and orange with a box grater. That didn't work so well.

Itty bitty zest. 

Using a basic peeler worked wonders instead.

All the zest. And Red Mummy's fabulous manicure.

Start with the chicken. Place thighs in a large saucepan with two sprigs of cilantro.

Add one chopped onion, lemon zest, orange zest, one cinnamon stick, two sprigs of cilantro, three crushed garlic cloves, and half the chopped ginger root.

Be sure to take an artsy-ish photo of it.

The BBC recipe at this point suggests you "cover" the chicken with water; Two Non Blondes suggest you voraciously drown it. Several pints of water will suffice -- you need plenty of poaching liquid to use later as a broth.  Bring to a boil, then reduce and gently poach until the chicken is cooked through.  Remove the chicken and let cool.  Discard the skin/fat and shred into strips.

Strain the poaching liquid into a clean pan, discarding the solids. Bring to a full boil, then add the whole apricots and set aside to soak.

First stopping to exorcise your cat, if necessary.

For the pie, heat the vegetable oil in a medium pan and gently fry the onion for 4-5 minutes, or until softened but not coloured. Add the garlic, ginger, ground turmeric, ground coriander and ground cumin and cook until aromatic.

In other words, add all the things.

Remove from the heat and stir in the chicken, fresh coriander, and parsley. Moisten with 400ml/14 fl.oz. remaining poaching stock...

...then stir in the eggs, almonds and soaked apricots (TNB Side Note: we coarse-chopped the apricots, as it seemed odd to add in whole ones.) Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

At this point, a discussion about Dean Martin prompted by a pasta commercial should ensue. (If it doesn't, refill wine glasses with rosé till this part makes sense.)

YouTube "Volare"

The filling is now complete....sort of. We found that, while dangerously high amounts of delicious, it was completely lacking a binder, making it very loose and crumbly.  In other words it would have just rolled out of the pie when cutting it.  Red Mummy decided to stray from the recipe just a wee bit and create a chicken-based light gravy to help hold the filling together. But first, don't forget to top up.

Red Mummy demonstrates. 

Start with a basic roux (essentially flour fried in a fat, usually butter.)  Bring about four or five pats of butter to a sizzle, then add about a tablespoon of chicken bouillon paste (''Better than Bouillon" brand is a good one.)  Whisk in enough flour to absorb the liquid and form a paste (a few tablespoons, just eyeball it,) letting it fry for a minute or two.  Thoroughly whisk in about a cup to a cup and a half of liquid (broth from earlier is ideal, but as discussed earlier, we barely had enough as is, so we just used water.)  Whisk until a smooth, light gravy is achieved.  

Incorporate into the pie filling to hold everything together.  It only takes a small amount to hold everything together, so it did not overwhelm the flavors in the filling itself, and the chicken bouillon keeps the flavors right in line with the rest of the filling. 

Use the layered filo pastry to line the base of a deep buttered pie dish, leaving excess filo pastry to overhang on the sides (enough to later fold back over the entire pie.) Sprinkle with cinnamon because everything is better that way.

Fill with the chicken mixture, then fold over the excess pastry to cover the pie. If the filling isn’t completely covered, add a few more sheets of buttered filo pastry over the top and tuck into the sides. Brush the top with more melted butter and sprinkle with more of the sugar and cinnamon mixture

Bake the pie for 35-40 minutes, or until golden-brown and piping hot all the way through. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool slightly before serving.

Or until you can't possibly wait anymore because it's 10:30 and you're a tad tipsy and Homeland is coming on.
Did you know Homeland is awesome?

Serve alongside the okra that we didn't particularly care for (the BBC website recommends slicing lengthwise; be good to your tastebuds and slice into discs instead)uiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiij, and proceed to devour. This pie has so many different flavors, each one working together beautifully with every bite. Delicious enough to finish the entire pan between two people over the course of three straight meals.  Ya know.....if you do that kind of thing. So, overall review of North African Moroccan Chicken Pie:

So good the cats will contort themselves.